A picture and a thousand words
Susan's project and family blog
As a quick project before we left on our trip, I made two more rice- and lavender-filled microwavable heating pads.
I inadvertently filled these ones a bit more than the original, but the slightly less moldable shape works well with the smaller size. They’re a great size for sticking in my suitcase. Since I still use my original heating pad more evenings than not, it’s a relief to know I’ll have a good allternative for the trip.
All of the seedlings on the kitchen counter have been merrily growing away. I’ve been debating what to do about transitioning them to outdoor weather, and when to replant them, but we’re heading out of town for a ten-day east coast trip and I procrastinated long enough that the answer ended up being throwing them into containers the day before we left and hoping they’d survive my absence. Benign neglect has worked surprisingly well in the past, so hopefully a similar strategy will work this time as well.
For the first time ever, I not only have everything in appropriately sized pots, but I actually amended potting soil with compost the way you’re supposed to.
I’m very pleased with myself, especially after such a half-hearted and late attempt last summer.
I have two containers of peas, two beans, one oregon star tomato, one brandywine tomato, a large bowl planter of leeks, and a strawberry pot. The tomato pots still contain multiple seedlings – I’ll thin them a final time once the plants are bigger. I divided up the lavender, but otherwise left the flowers in their seedling trays until I get back. I’ll wait for them to get larger and sturdier and then just transfer them into the ground directly. I bought supplies (aka a lidded bucket and some flexible tubing) to make a drip irrigation system for later in the summer so that I’m not tied to the daily watering, but I didn’t have enough time to get it up and running before we left. Instead, the containers are all in a huddle in the part of the patio that I guessed was most likely to get any rain and sunlight while we were gone.
Grow well, little plants!
My parents have good friends who live in Seattle, and they’ve made a tradition of inviting us out when the Red Sox are in town. The seats are amazing — right behind the visitors’ dugout — and we always enjoy the game. The Sox are only in town once this season and so we were quite pleased to be invited again.
Sadly, the Red Sox lost, but it was still a great game to watch. The baby seems very into baseball — lots of kicking, especially when the game is tight. I’m sure I probably just have lots of adrenaline that he’s reacting to, but it does feel like he starts rally-kicking when when we need or get a great hit!
This week was the week of furniture turmoil. Once we sat down to think about it, and especially after we started moving furniture, we quickly compiled a surprisingly long list of preferences and requirements. The red couch looks best in a room with green walls, the glass coffee table does not work with the other fish room or family room furniture, blue fabric and oak furniture looks best in the fish room, the dining room table and cabinet should stay as-is, we like the butterfly chairs in the corner arrangement in the family room, etc, etc. We had opinions about the traffic patterns of rooms. Kevin considered forgoing a desktop (and a desk) altogether. We considered five places in three rooms for my desk. We considered buying a new couch, or new chairs, for a living room grouping.
We were pretty pleased with ourselves for considering options, moving things around to see if they worked, and stopping for breaks before we got too frustrated or discouraged. The house plan and to-scale furniture helped a lot.
And now we have a tentative plan for a shared office that we’re sitting on for a few days to be sure that we’re both happy with it. 🙂 It feels like a very successful week.
The farmers market opened two weekends ago. I’ve been going to prenatal yoga on Saturday mornings (a wonderful thing) and now I can pop over to the market afterwards. They don’t have very much produce yet, but the flowers, as usual, are spectacular.
In the foreground: Mothers-to-be Day tulips from Kevin! 🙂
In the background: Total disarray. The furniture/rooms question was starting to weigh on us, so I measured all of our furniture and printed out a floor plan of our house and to-scale furniture so that we could start considering our options. We have a three bedroom house, and currently we each use one bedroom as an office. My office also has a twin/trundle bed in it for when guests visit. Once the baby comes, we’ll turn Kevin’s office into the baby room. But the third bedroom isn’t big enough for both desks and the guest bed, so some creativity is required.
We were doing a good job with the paper cutouts for a little bit, but before too long we thought we had a good option and just rolled up the rug and started moving furniture. Several couch, coffee table, and bookcase configurations later, we abandoned the effort in favour of dinner. I took the photo while Kevin cooked.
With a bit of a break, we thought of new possibilities to try which actually turned out pretty well. We’re still not quite there, but definitely getting closer, and we got the room put back together once we’d eaten.
In a big step closer to baby-preparedness, we have a carseat! (A gift from Kevin’s parents!!)
For those who are interested in such things, it’s a Britax Diplomat. We decided to skip the infant seat in favour of a convertible, and then I found a great sale price with free shipping.
We had a good time trying it out in the car (with my 26-week shape quite evident). Rear-facing for the first year:
And then forward-facing up to forty pounds:
It’s now packed back into the box in the garage. We’re saving all of the LATCH and installation fun for July, which still feels very far away. People keep telling me that time is going to start to fly, but I’ve been feeling acutely aware of the fact that it isn’t and I’m struggling not to feel impatient.
Continuing the theme of baby knits on the rock wall in the back yard, here’s the finished Debbie Bliss Ribbed Jacket with some pretty white mystery flowers.
This sweater, knit in aran weight yarn, was a lightning-fast knit. I used Cascade 220 superwash, and I’m wondering if I should have gone down a needle size as it grew substantially when I blocked it. The fabric feels nice, with good stitch definition, and while the under-arm seams aren’t smooth, I think they’ll look fine when the sweater is actually being worn. (Ignore the raggedy hemline, here. The sky was starting to open again as I took the photo, and I didn’t take the extra second to straighten it. In real life, it’s even.)
I suspect that the buttons may not be in the best taste, but I’m leaving them anyway.
I bought them on Queen Anne in the first month or two after we moved to Seattle, and I’m quite pleased that they finally have a home.
After a long interlude without buttons, the baby surprise jacket is done!
I finished it early in the week but the rain and dark clouds were a constant this week and this yarn is had to photograph without real light. After so many days of downpour, the garden is vibrant, though, so it was clearly for a good cause. Here’s the finished jacket with the blooming violets, forget-me-nots and periwinkle (not to mention the ever-present moss and a few ivy starts that I missed while weeding. You can also see a stand of mint in the upper-left. The mint was simply delighted with all of the rain this week and has been flourishing. We’ll have to do mojitos or something similar soon to subdue it a bit).
A less leafy view of the front, but hard to see the purple and green accents in the yarn:
And here’s the back:
I probably won’t use this yarn again – it feels wonderful and was so pleasant to knit with, but the color variation looked prettier in the ball than knit up, I think. Nonetheless, I’m pleased with the sweater and it’s so nice to finally have the buttons sewn on and be able to cross it off the list.
After four nights of work, including during a particularly unfortunate 0-13 Red Sox loss, I finally finished seaming the Sunrise Circle Jacket, and got the buttons all sewed on!
I’m reasonably pleased with the fit. The arms are a bit long (an inch or two shorter would probably be better), and the entire sweater is roomy, especially under the arms. The back fits very well, though, and the length is great. I’m still not wild about the color (probably the sweater’s biggest fault), but it’s cozy and I think I’ll wear it, especially in the evenings at home. I think the style should work for breastfeeding, and it’s machine-washable so that’s certainly a plus.
The button placement works well for my current body shape, but I’ll probably redo the bottom button or two at some point next fall. I love the way the button line looks with the overlapping hems and pretty curving rows of stitches.
The buttons were a find. I’ve been looking for quite a while without much luck (that purple is tough to work with), and then found these. I think the color and size are great, and I love the carved circles on the surface – they reinforce the lines of the sweater well, I think.
All in all, a long project, but a satisfying result.