Holy. Crap.

Well, my Ravelry invite arrived the day after I last posted, so at last I know what all the buzz is about. For any of the umpteen-thousand folks still waiting for an invite, know that it's fun but not knitterly-life-changing (thank goodness...enough changes going on here already). It's kind of like squirl on steroids. You can use Ravelry to record your entire stash, all your knitting needles and crochet hooks, your knitting/crochet books...basically, all the minutae of your knitting and/or crocheting world. You can also record your knits themselves: the ones you've finished, the WIPs and your to-dos, complete with photos, links to patterns and/or sources, notes on modifications, errata, yarn and needles used...the list goes on. And then there are the forums, blog links, LYS listings and other features to keep you connected to your sisters-and-brothers-in-wool. It's very impressive, actually, and this is only its beta form.

But....

This is why I really love Ravelry. Somewhere in its labyrinthine depths, I came across the following link, and photo (there are even more at the link itself), titled "The World's Biggest Stash."
















Could you just pass out? Seriously, I'm still catching my breath. When I first saw this, I thought, that can't possibly be someone's stash. It's a yarn store that's been mislabeled.

Then I caught a glimpse of the upturned ride-on kiddy car in the lower-right corner and the giant blue plastic teddy-bear-looking-thing on a table beyond it thought, hmmm...unusual decor for a yarn shop.

Then I meditated on the general disarray in the photo, and after much denial and mind-boggling finally forced myself to tear my eyes off the photos and read the accompanying text which explains that yes, this is an actual private yarn stash.

Holy. Crap. Who wouldn't love a website that can link you over to yarn pron like that?

I think I'm going to be spending a lot more time at Ravelry.

Ravelry

Well, I'm number 162 on the list, so it looks like I won't have to wait much longer to find out what the fuss is all about.... :)

Hello, Work? I'd like my life back thankyouverymuch.

Well, the semester has finally gotten up and running, which means I can now begin once again to devote actual time to things like "family" and "eating" instead of working like a crazy woman and sleeping in fits and starts in between.

Fortunately (and this only falls into the "fortunately" category because I'm a knitter), I have a lengthy commute, which means pretty much one thing (when I'm not nodding off on the 1 train, that is): knitting continues even when the rest of life does not.

First finished: a Mason-Dixon Knitting baby kimono in Knitpicks Swish superwash. I picked the colors -- indigo and lemongrass heathers -- thinking I would use them separately to make two separate kimonos, but I liked the quirky combo so much I wound up with this:















Entranced by the unexpected cuteness of the kimono, and quite likely high on the superwash fumes, I cast on for a project I never in a gazillion years believed I'd actually attempt: a pair of Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Longhies.

For those of you without a copy of Knitter's Almanac, run right out and buy one. It's small and costs under ten bucks but will probably be one of the best knitting buys you ever make. Go on. I'll wait.

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There, now that you have your copy, open it to February, the month of knitted baby items. Pause for a moment to ogle the vintage-style baby jacket and take a glance at the instructions for the double-knitted baby blanket, the very same that I used when making Zoe's burgundy blankie. Now, check out the longhies.

They're basically knitted long underwear for kids. Later on in the Almanac, there's even a pattern for a full-sized adult version. For years, I remember thinking to myself, "Knit long underwear?? Who would ever do such a thing?"

Well, folks, here's who. And here's how they look:




















Is that not the cutest thing? And not the ginormous pain in the ass I expected it to be. In fact, it's been knitting up quite quickly and easily, right down to the funky little color pattern of my own design at the knees. At first, I'd hoped to make the kimono and longhies a coming-home set for little Zoe, but oops....




















While the kimono is probably sized just right for 0-3 months with a little bit of room to grow, the longhies look more like they're sized for a one-year-old. Baby M was big, but Zoe would have to be the size of a baby giraffe to need legs that long at birth. I'm sure I could just stuff her into them anyway -- who looks at how the coming-home outfits anyway when the adorable baby inside is the focus of all attention? -- but I think I may just knit up another set in 3/4 or even 1/2 size to bring her home in. Yes, she'll outgrow them practically overnight, but that's what I'll have the larger ones waiting around for. Let it never be said that I don't have a plan, even if it's only the result of an earlier plan going hopelessly awry.

When I realized I'd be just a few yards short of what I needed to complete my color pattern (which was intended to thriftily use up the leftover indigo from the kimono), I ran right out and bought another nearly-20 skeins of Swish in a variety of gorgeous heathered hues (no sense in paying shipping on one stinkin' skein when Knitpicks will pick up the postage on a $45 order). So in addition to another pair of longhies, I'm also planning on knitting a Fair Isle sweater for Baby M, matching Heart Hats for both sisters (see EZ's Knitting Workshop for that one) and maybe even a Baby Surprise Jacket depending upon how many leftovers I have.

Now all I need is an even longer commute to get it all finished.

Fun Fiber Stuff

It's funny how sometimes things just seem to work out. Like, I've been thinking a lot lately about how much crap I've managed to accumulate over the past near-decade in this house, and how I should really, really purge a whole lot of it, especially as we're looking to turn the under-used rooms in the house into actual living space and not just glorified junk closets.

Well, lo and behold, what should I spot on a fiber swap list but someone looking for a fabric cutter for rug hooking. Now, several years back I bought the gear to hook my own rugs -- not the ticky-tacky latch hook rugs that everyone was doing back in the 70s when disco ruled and shag was everywhere, but traditional hooked rugs made from strips of wool pulled through a backing like monk's cloth. I love hooked rugs, think they're just gorgeous, and had a blast playing with hooks and wool at our county fair every year at the booth set up by the local rug hookers' guild. BUT...when it came right down to it, it just wasn't for me. Don't know why, really, but I found my other fiber passions just took right over and bitch-slapped poor rug hooking into a corner. So, not only did I have a fabric cutter sitting right on my workbench (which worried me since Baby M had the occasional tendency to toddle over to it and twirl the pretty handle, which spun the cutting wheel and which, theoretically in my mind at least, could slice her finger should she decide to stick one in the moving parts -- not entirely likely, perhaps, but you're talking to the woman who, as a young child, managed to reel her finger into the moving gears of a stationary exercise bicycle), but I also had a nice rug hooking frame, assorted hooks, a book or two and several boxes of nicely prepared wool fabric all ready to be cut up and made into rugs.

Not too hopefully (because I've never been much of the salesperson -- more of the "donate it to a secondhand store" type) I emailed telling this person what I had and offering it for sale at a decent bit off the new prices. I also said if she bought both the frame and the cutter, I'd throw in the other bits and bobs for free.

Wonder of wonders, I sold the lot! And for more than enough money to finish paying off my Journey Wheel, which I'll collect in Rhinebeck next month. Woo-hoo! So instead of having lots of items that I'll never use spread all around the house, instead I'll have one really cool item that I'll definitely use. A good deal all around.

Also...remember the dragon spindle I had custom-designed by the Goldings a couple of months back? Well, they asked if it would be okay for them to post the design on their website and offer it for sale to others. Of course, I said yes...and I just received a letter from they saying that since it went up on the site, they've had orders for it, so they refunded me the $30 design fee that I paid plus they sent me a $10 gift cert good on any Golding fiber tool. Neat, huh? The coolest part, though, is that other people liked the design I helped create. I must say, I'm pretty proud.

I'm also pretty proud of Baby Zoe's little kimono, which I just finished up tonight. No photos yet, but it looks gorgeous -- will take pictures and post soon. Next up: a pair of EZ baby leggings to go along with it.

And the Awesomest Mom Ever award goes to....

ME! For keeping my sanity when a) Baby M has gotten up every freakin' night for nearly a week now -- and gotten me up in the process -- for everything from needing to go to the bathroom to wanting to hold hands after a bad dream to simply begging/pleading/crying/wildly gesticulating to come into the "big bed" with Daddy and me, and b) Baby Z-to-be has decided to shift position and dig some sort of sharp, pointy body part into my... kidney?? gall bladder?? causing me shooting pains that left me doubled over on the subway and so scary-sick looking that I was actually sent home from work yesterday by my worried colleagues. Remind me again why I have children....

Remind me, too, why I knit for them. This has got to be the slowest-going baby kimono I've ever knitted. I like the yarn, the pattern is a breeze, but why isn't it finished already??

There's also no good way to photograph this thing in progress.















Unfolded it looks completely unrecognizable as an article of clothing, at least one that would fit a human being.















Folded but on the circular needle it still looks...let's just say weird and leave it at that.

I also think that in widening the sleeves so the cuffs will accommodate a wrist larger than Barbie's I inadvertently caused the v-neck to come up so far that poor Baby Z might as well be wearing a turtleneck instead of a wraparound kimono. But I'm feeling just a little sick at the thought of ripping all that work back, so I think I'll just call it a design element and leave it at that. Plus babies need warm necks, right? Yeah, that's it...I'm only looking out for the welfare of my little girl.

It's the least that the official Awesomest Mom Ever can do.

Finishing Stuff....

Well, my vacation is nearly over. It's amazing how fast three weeks just speeds by. Monday I go back to work -- to intake testing, actually -- and then it's just two more weeks before the new semester starts, another week more before I begin teaching, and then...well, then it's just five or six weeks till Baby Zoe makes her appearance. Yikes! That's fast!

I haven't yet gotten things ready for Little Z's arrival. Baby M's outgrown clothing still sits in ziplock baggies and disorganized piles in her closet, which itself needs a good cleaning out an reorganizing. Not to mention that I have to figure out how to make space in her dresser for her little sister's stuff even as her own stuff is getting more and more voluminous. At least we have a couple of contractors coming over in the next two weeks to give us estimates on dividing the large, little-used upstairs space into two bedrooms and a bath for the kids.

And at least I've been knitting! I finished Zoe's blanket a few days ago, right down to the duplicate stitching of her name (and thanks to those who provided me with the name of the technique -- it was driving me crazy trying to think of it).





























At first I thought I'd duplicate stitch a giant "Z" right in the center of the blanket but on further thought decided that might look a little too Zorro-ish for my taste. I like how her name turned out, but I was incredibly disappointed to find that a) the lovely soft alpaca that I was knitting with had some splits and joins in the skein -- I know I was working with Knitpicks yarn, which is decidedly budget-priced, but c'mon, folks, let's try to keep the skeins in one piece, shall we? and b) the joins sucked, to the point that as I was duplicate stitching Zoe's name, one join completely disintegrated and I lost several stitches of my basic knit fabric before catching the break and halting the damage. Aargh! Now, this wasn't like dropping a stitch and picking it back up -- the yarn itself had broken right in the middle of a stitch, right where I had been working with my tapestry needle, so of course both yarn ends took off in different directions, pulling out of their stitches and running (downward farther than upward) without leaving a clear indication of where they came from and how they should go back together. Not to mention that I had to join the freakin' ends somehow, so even if I could have figured out how to pick up the stitches seamlessly, I wouldn't have had enough yarn left after tying the ends together to do so.

I solved the problem by cursing loudly (didn't solve much, but sure made me feel better) then tying the errant ends together tightly and duplicate stitching over them. It's not a perfect fix, but no one but me will ever notice.

I've also started an MDK baby kimono in Swish Superwash, a deep heathered purple colorway. It's knitting up really nicely -- far nicer than the dishcloth cotton I've used with this pattern in the past. Once I have two or three of the kimonos in a couple of colors all knitted up, I think I'll be done with knitting for baby for the time being and may move on to doing something fancy, like a pretty lace shawl for myself. Just the thing to beat the postpartum blues.... :)

Here at Chez No A/C, Baby M and I have been valiantly trying to beat the sweltering heat all week. Monday we hit the local swimming pool; Tuesday it was a trip to the mall (a place I loathe but at least it was cool) followed by a $1 movie (gotta love second-run theaters); yesterday we camped out at DH's parents' house. But today? Today I had to get the freezer fixed.

Remember this? The Iceberg that Ate the Freezer? Well, thawing it didn't help. Oh, it got rid of the immediate problem of melted ice-water flooding the kitchen (and maybe, just maybe, if it had made the house even one degree cooler, I would have sucked up the water damage just to help beat the heat), but no sooner was the freezer nicely ice-free than it started icing itself up all over again, first a thin trickle down the back wall of the freezer, then an suspiciously iceberg-shaped layer coating the bottom shelf. Action needed to be taken.

And so. Baby M and I have been chained to the sweltering house all day waiting for the freezer repair person. While I was at it, I figured I might as well get that load of mulch that I'd been waiting on all summer finally delivered. Of course, the freezer has long been fixed, but the mulch is yet to show. I've already bribed Baby M with a trip to the air-conditioned library (taken before our 5 freakin' hour wait-time window for deliveries and repairs began), a candy bar and half a sippy box of organic chocolate milk. I did manage to get her down for a nap nearly an hour ago, amid much wailing and many cries of, "Mommy, HELP! Gigi CRYING!" (Just in case I hadn't figured that out myself, you see.) So, what have I been doing with a blessedly quiet if heat-hazed hour to myself and no sign of mulch in sight?

Why, I've been knitting, of course. Knitting, and photographing knitting.

First up: Baby Zoe's in-progress baby blanket.















Luscious 100% alpaca, Knitpicks Decadence. I bought six skeins awhile back for a project I had in mind. Can I remember what the project was? Of course not. And so I did the smart, not to mention frugal, thing: when I decided to make Zoe a blanket, I shopped my stash and decided to use the Decadence. Yes, it would be a pain in the butt to handwash a baby blanket. But, honestly, how many times have I washed Baby M's baby blankets? 'Nuff said. Plus I lovelovelove alpaca, and I knew that the pattern -- EZ's double-knitted baby blanket from Knitter's Almanac -- would be even softer, squooshier and more deliciously huggable in alpaca than in plain ol' wool.

Of course, the blanket was looking a little plain, what with the simple stitch pattern and no colorwork. So, I decided to add some color by stitching a great, big "Z" on the front side of the blanket. There's a name for this technique, I know, where you stitch embroidery-style directly over each knit stitch so it looks like you did fancy intarsia or Fair Isle work when you really didn't, but damn if I can't remember it now. Nor can I be bothered to look it up. Suffice it to say, I of course went straight to the Knitpicks site and picked out a lovely rose color skein of Decadence to make the Z with. And since it wouldn't do to pay for shipping for one lousy skein of yarn, and since Knitpicks is kind enough to provide free shipping with a $45 purchase, I just had to pick up a few more things.

Like some Swish Superwash in Indigo Heather and Lemongrass Heather, both to make MDK baby kimonos for Baby Zoe. Poor thing will be born in November, after all. We'd better have some cold-weather knits on hand to keep her warm.

And two skeins of Knitpicks Shimmer (alpaca/silk blend...yum!) in turquoise to knit this, from my latest fave knitting book, Victorian Lace Today:















Isn't it gorgeous? A lacey, spiderweb-type shawl, something open and interesting enough to work well with the muted tones of the subtly variegated turquoise yarn.

And four more skeins of Shimmer in Stained Glass to make this:















This shawl is done in something called a Trinity Stitch, which I think will look amazing with the vibrant purples and pinks of the Stained Glass colorway.

And just 'cause I can't pass up an "oops" sale, a couple of skeins of Essential Special in Peacock. Now that I may actually have a sock nearly finished on my sock machine (we'll overlook the fact that it's sat there in its nearly-finished state for over a month while I work up the nerve to take it off and find out if it is indeed a sock or yet another giant, tube-shaped tangle of wooly misery), I might as well start picking up some pretty-pretty sock yarn as well.

But the first thing for me to do is finish that baby blanket. That, and figure out what else to do to get away from this blasted heat.

Just yesterday I was reading Crazy Aunt Purl's blog post about the zen of deep cleaning and thinking, "Wow...why don't I do that?"

Well. Be careful what you wish for is all I can say.

This morning I woke up to DH saying plaintively from the kitchen, "Oh, no." DH, as it turns out, had discovered a big honkin' puddle of water in front of the fridge, the very same fridge that busted a water line not once but twice and flooded the out-of-sight area behind the cabinets so badly that it collapsed the ceiling in the garage. A puddle in front of the fridge is very bad news in our house.

DH soon realized that a busted water line wasn't to blame this time. It was this:















And this:
















The Iceberg that Ate the Freezer (not to mention the frozen corn...clearly, it's been way too long since I've checked up on the frozen corn).

How did we get to this sorry state of affairs, you might ask? How could our freezer possibly get so choked with ice that it finally began to melt around the edges in the furnace-like heat we've been having lately and ooze out all over the floor?

I must admit, I think it was my fault. If I were to be totally honest, I'd admit that it's definitely my fault.

I have a thing about stockpiling food. It's in my family's blood. Even as a little kid I remember Mom and Dad keeping one corner of the credenza in our teeny tiny apartment reserved for the "emergency food." This mainly consisted of a bag of uncooked rice and several cans of potted meat, the kind with the devil holding a pitchfork on the paper wrapper. I think my mom used to rotate the food every once in awhile, swapping out the old bag of rice for a new one and using up the former "emergency bag" over the course of several dinners. Dad was the only one who ate the potted meat. I don't know what kind of emergency they thought they were planning for, but apparently boiled rice and meat spread were going to see us through it.

In light of that, it makes perfect sense that I keep lots of food on hand. (OK, maybe it doesn't exactly make sense, unless by "makes sense" you mean "still sounds crazy"). When DH and I moved into our house and bought the Icy the Fridge, I originally picked it out because it looked like the biggest one they had. Before we signed on the dotted line, though, I asked the salesman if they had an even bigger one.

"Ma'am," he said, clearly trying to be polite to the crazy woman, "this fridge holds enough food for nine people. Exactly how many people are living in your house?"

"Just the two of us," I replied calmly. We then bought the fridge...and the largest chest freezer the store had in stock. Never let it be said that I would run out of food in my lifetime...or anyone else's.

Eight years later, Icy and the chest freezer have been joined by a second fridge in the garage (given to us by DH's brother when he bought a new one) and a pantry full of food. Not to mention the kitchen cabinets, also full of food. None of which would be bad, except....

Well, let's just say I'm not nearly as good as Mom at rotating the food around. Our freezers in particular tend to resemble archaeological digs, with the oldest stuff at the bottom or the back and the newer stuff piled on top or in front. If I were a good rotator, I would probably have paid more attention last year when I noticed that I could no longer pull out the bottom freezer drawer in the kitchen fridge. I might have said to myself, "Self, it's time to pull the bags of corn up front and use them. But, what's this? They're frozen solid to the back of the fridge? Hmmm...maybe, Self, you should look into this."

Instead, when I noticed that I could no longer pull the bottom drawer out of the freezer, I simply let it alone and placed the newer food in front of whatever was in the back (see "frozen corn," above). Maybe I heard a few crickets chirping quietly in the back of my mind. All I know is when I mentioned to DH as he sopped up the mess in front of the fridge that maybe, just maybe I'd noticed the bottom drawer had been a tad encased in ice for, oh, the past year or so, he simply stopped and stared at me incredulously. I think it was all he could do not to ask how I could have been so incredibly stupid. I sort of wonder myself. How have I not managed to seriously hurt myself these past four decades?

So, that was our day: chipping great hunks of ice out of the freezer, melting ice sheets with the hair dryer, using up copious amounts of towels (at least they were cloth -- no trees were killed as a result of my stupidity) and occasionally resorting to the wet/dry vac to get rid of the watery evidence of my extreme lack of good judgment and sense. I did at least manage to give the freezer a good deep-cleaning, washing all the shelves to within an inch of their lives, scrubbing the inside of the door handle, throwing out the frozen squash puree from three or four summers ago when the garden produced way more pattypans than one family should have to deal with.

The freezer has now been deep-cleaned. Funny, though, I just don't feel the zen of it.

I can't believe it's been so long since I've written. I knew it was a long time, but nearly a month? Loooong.

It's been an up-and-down month, with doctors giving sometimes conflicting information, my hopes going up one day, crashing down the next, DH doing his best to be the stable rock I hang onto when it all gets to be too much. Nothing else to do but wait and see how Zoe is once she's born.

Did I mention we picked a name? Zoe Francis. Zoe because we like it and because we like the meaning: Life. Francis for my dad, even though he never went by that name and always used Frank instead. We had an ultrasound a few days ago and saw Zoe kicking her legs, flexing her feet...DH even thinks he saw her curling her toes, though I have no idea how he could have possibly seen that on the grainy black-and-white sono screen. Still, it's good news. And I feel her kicking now, annoyed by the pressure of the edge of the laptop on my abdomen, right above her legs. Kick-kick means nerves that work, nerves that are getting messages from the brain to the body, all the way down the legs and to the feet. I have to stop myself from deliberately poking Zoe, hoping she'll kick back. Just three more months to go.

I've been working on a blanket for Zoe. It's alpaca, Knitpicks Decadence in a deep wine-red color, made from the February baby blanket pattern in EZ's Knitter's Almanac -- double knitting, which takes twice as long but results in a blanket twice as thick and soft, bordered all around in garter stitch. Simple and beautiful. I'll have to take a photo to post.

And one more thing, a special treat for myself, something I started working on before I found out all this about Zoe, something that just arrived in the mail the day before yesterday and that stunned me with its beauty and craftsmanship.



















It's a Golding custom spindle, and the slightly out of focus photo doesn't even begin to do it justice. It's a Chinese dragon, a design I worked on with Tom Golding over several weeks, tweaking it until it was just right, picking out the perfect vintage carved silver ring for the outer edge, choosing the wood -- dark walnut -- and the paint colors, everything, and still it came out so much more beautiful than I imagined. You can't really see in the photo, but the dragon is covered in tiny painted scales, he has little flaming golden eyebrows and a shot of fire coming out of his mouth. Even the claws have been individually carved out of the wood, one by one.

Chinese dragons bring good luck. My spindle couldn't have come at a better time.

Checking In, Checking Out

It is so hot...too hot to move, too hot to think. These are the days -- and nights -- when I want to throw my eco-friendly, too-cheap-to-have-AC reservations to the wind and freeze the hell outta this house until we're all nice and comfy and completely unaware that it's an absolute blast furnace outside. Right now, it's a blast furnace inside, and it's nearly nine at night.

Baby M is too hot to sleep. She's whiny and fussy and calling for me endlessly. Trouble is, when I sit with her, she really never gets to sleep -- just stays up, holding my hand, looking around, basically waiting to see what's going to happen next...which is never anything except my eventually leaving the room so she can get to sleep, whereupon she wails as though her little heart were breaking. Hearing her cry like this on top of the heat is just about making me crazy.

DH is outside, and believe it or not, he's working at his smithy, which means he's heating metal rods to red-hot and banging them into different shapes.

The man has truly lost his mind.

No Guarantees

There's only so much that medical science can tell us. Today we met for the first time with the pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr A, who read the MRI. He was the most hopeful-sounding of the doctors yet. He said this doesn't look like a typical case of spina bifida at all to him, not the kind with brain damage and all the other horrific possibilities we were first confronted with last week. He thinks instead this may be a case of a tethered spinal cord, which basically means that during formation some part of the spinal cord didn't fully detach from the surrounding skin. This condition can cause problems as the child grows, but it can be corrected surgically after birth. There's a range of potentialities: in the best case, the child could wind up with no lasting aftereffects at all; in the not-so-best-case, the child could wind up with some degree of paralysis and/or loss of bowel/bladder control. The doctor said they won't know more until our baby is actually born, but he thinks the main worries are the physical problems -- he feels that her chances of having brain damage are very slim.

And so, we wait and hope. I totally broke down in the doctor's office today, not out of sadness but because he'd confirmed the hopes I'd been holding onto these past few days. Poor guy; I don't think he could quite understand why I was crying like a baby but telling him I wasn't sad, I was happy.

I was also pretty stunned to hear him say, as we were discussing going forward with the pregnancy, that some couples wanted him to guarantee that their child would be 100% fine and healthy, and if he couldn't do that (which of course he can't in any case), they would terminate the pregnancy. DH had actually suggested that maybe the reason our first doctor had been so callous and matter-of-fact about wanting to do that with us without even getting a second opinion was because most of his patients opted to do that as soon as they heard there was a problem. I thought DH was just being cynical, but after hearing Dr A today, maybe he was right after all. I'm certainly the last person to judge someone else -- I know how agonized I was when I thought our baby would be so profoundly damaged that she would have no quality of life at all -- but it just seems sad that people would need a guarantee of a perfect baby in order to want one at all. I mean, nothing in life is guaranteed, right? Everything can look perfect but not be, just like everything can look hopeless at first glance but not be.

In any event, we've made our decision, and as DH says there's no looking back. We'll have our daughter at Columbia-Presbyterian where she can have an MRI within a day or two after she's born to find out the extent of her injury and the best way to treat it. The facilities aren't as nice as the ones near us -- shared rooms instead of private, more patients therefore (I'm sure) less personalized attention from the staff -- but the doctors are so much more knowledgeable and competent in dealing with high-risk pregnancies than our local doctors are that it will be worth it.

Now all we can do is wait and see what the tests show after our little girl is born.

And of course, we can now jump headfirst into all the fun stuff we should have been doing since last week, like picking out a beautiful name for Baby M's little sister.

Waiting

Had the MRI yesterday. I am consistently impressed with how good the staff at Columbia-Presbyterian is. The procedure itself -- my first MRI -- wasn't bad at all. After getting a foot-long needle in the abdomen for the amnio, I suppose no other test will be quite as bad, ever.

And now, we wait. I'm strangely calm. What worries me now is that I've gotten too hopeful, hung on too tightly to the positive comments the doctors have made. No chromosomal abnormalities, no indication of anything wrong in the brain, no unusual chemical markers in my prior blood tests that would indicate an open lesion...how can I help but picture a best-case scenario, one where my little girl has no lasting effects from whatever this thing on her back is?

We'll know more on Friday.

One Small Step

I can't say thank you enough to everyone who was kind enough to comment on my last post. Thank you for your words, your wishes, your thoughts and prayers.

DH and I are hanging in. Today we got the preliminary results back from the amnio, and they show no chromosomal abnormalities -- so that's one bright spot at least.

Tomorrow I go for a fetal MRI; Friday it's a meeting with the pediatric neurosurgeon and hopefully the complete results of the amnio plus the MRI. All we can do is hope for more good news.

It's strange; I can feel my little girl kicking away inside me as though nothing in the world were wrong. It's so hard to believe that she really, really might not be all right.

An Appeal

It's been a rollercoaster of a week. Wednesday we went in for our 20-week ultrasound all ready to find out whether it's a boy or a girl. What the doctors told us instead was that our baby -- a girl, incidentally -- has spina bifida.

Spina bifida is a neural tube defect. It occurs when the spine doesn't close properly over the spinal cord. This results in all sorts of damage, anything from major paralysis and brain damage to, well, maybe no damage at all. It all depends upon just about a million factors, such as how low on the spine the problem is, whether the spinal cord itself is involved, whether it's exposed to the amniotic fluid.... You get the drift.

So, Wednesday sucked hard. It didn't help that the doctor who did the diagnosis suffered, in DH's words, from a serious case of hubris. This doctor, who shall remain nameless, basically said, "You can go for a second opinion if you want, but any other doctor will agree with me." He then told us we had a week to arrange to terminate the pregnancy.

Needless to say, we went for a second opinion. We were supremely lucky to get referred to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. The staff there is top-notch, everyone from the doctors to the "customer care coordinator" to the person who does all the fiddly insurance stuff. Kind, caring and totally, one-hundred-and-ten-percent professional all the way.

They squeezed us in for an ultrasound on Friday morning, and that doctor -- who suffered from no hubris at all -- said it could be one of two things: spina bifida (which he tended to think was probably the case) or something called a sacral-coccygeal teratoma -- basically, a benign tumor that carries its own potential problems, such as the potential to grow large enough to suck too many nutrients from the fetus and cause damage in utero. At least this doctor, Dr. R, gave us specifics: the mass is 1.9cm and located in the sacral area of the spine, vertebra S1 or below. This is far more than Dr Hubris even bothered to write up in his report, which was so vague that a friend of ours who (luckily!) just happens to be a well-respected pediatric neurologist, and who we showed that first report to as soon as we heard the news, basically said she couldn't tell us anything at all from it.

So, here's where we stand. Wednesday we pretty much heard a death sentence for our little girl. Thursday after consulting both our friend the pediatric neurologist and a pediatric neurologist recommended by Baby M's pediatrician, we heard some of the potential things that could be wrong with a baby with spina bifida. Awful, awful, awful. Crying, heartsick, awful days. Friday we took the second ultrasound plus an amnio, something I'd avoided because of the risk of miscarriage it poses, but now a necessity to make sure there's no chromosomal abnormality that may be the cause of (or simply another problem to go along with) the visible mass. And we gained back some hope. Maybe it isn't as black as it sounded at first. Tuesday I'm scheduled for a fetal MRI, which is probably the best chance we have of finding out if this is definitely spina bifida, and if so, how serious it may be. In our advantage are the facts that it seems relatively low on the spine, there's no indication of anything wrong in the baby's cerebellum, and so far at least, it looks like whatever's inside that mass isn't in contact with the amniotic fluid (doctors know there's a connection between contact with the amniotic fluid and damage to the nerves in the spinal cord, they just don't know why). Dr R basically said we could have a baby with problems...or we could have a baby who gets operated on at birth and shows no aftereffects at all. And much as all these tests can tell us, what they can't do is guarantee anything at all. It's all a guess, albeit a more informed one.

Spina bifida is a one-in-a-thousand thing and doctors don't even really understand what causes it, although they suspect some combination of genetic predisposition plus environmental factors. It just goes to show you can do everything right -- take the prenatal vitamins, not drink, smoke, do drugs -- and still something completely unexpected and horrible can happen.

So, here's my appeal. Please put in a good word for us, for our little girl, with the higher power of your choice. If you're not a higher-power type, please just send us some good thoughts and wishes. We're hoping to hear good news, or at least the best news possible under the circumstances, in the next few days. Please keep your fingers crossed that we do.

Today's the Day

In just under two hours, DH, Baby M and I should find out if Little Sibling is a boy or a girl. Woo-hoo!

You know, I'm not one to open presents before Christmas or turn to the last page in a book to read the ending ahead of time or anything, but I just cannot wait for this, no matter how many people talk about the fun of "being surprised" and all. With Baby M it was more of an adjustment issue. I was sort of freaked out about becoming a parent anyway, so having the fewest amount of surprises in store seemed like the best way to go at the time. Now, I'm just plain excited. I want to pick a name and picture a little person instead of a featureless "it" inside me.

And, of course, I want to start knitting.

I'm a What, Now?

You Are An INFJ

The Protector You live your life with integrity, originality, vision, and creativity. Independent and stubborn, you rarely stray from your vision - no matter what it is. You are an excellent listener, with almost infinite patience. You have complex, deep feelings, and you take great care to express them. In love, you truly see relationships as an opportunity to connect and grow. You enjoy relationships as long as they are improving and changing. You can't stand stagnation. At work, you stay motivated and happy... as long as you are working toward a dream you support. You would make a great photographer, alternative medicine guru, or teacher. How you see yourself: Hardworking, ethical, and helpful When other people don't get you, they see you as: Manipulative, weak, and unstable

What's Your Personality Type?

The Sock Machine Comes Through

So, months and months after getting my antique circular sock machine up and running, I've finally done something more than drop stitches, make "practice" tubes and glance guiltily at the machine as it sits gathering dust in a corner of my bedroom. I've actually made...well, not a sock, it's not that exciting...but a bath puff!















That's right, an actual finished something (even if it isn't an actual sock) from my csm, and I cannot tell you the absolute rush I got watching my little ol' machine crank out two feet of stockinette stitch tube in just a few minutes. I think it took me longer to do the finishing work than it did to knit the whole darn thing. Now all I can think about is figuring out how to make honest-to-goodness socks on the csm. Next project, here I come!

Annie Modesitt Needs Our Help

I feel like someone should be walking around with a wicker basket, a la "It's a Wonderful Life," collecting dollar bills and busting open the jukebox to help out someone in need -- in this case, Annie Modesitt, the uber-talented knitwear designer whose husband was recently diagnosed with cancer.

Annie is selling her Red Carpet Convertible pattern -- a stunning pattern for a super-sexy gown that can be anything from a floor-length formal to a hip-length corset -- as a way of raising money to help cover the expenses associated with her husband's illness. The pattern costs a minimum of $4.50; you can (but aren't obligated to) add any amount on top of that as an additional donation.

And believe it or not, the link to the .pdf is right there on Annie's blog, where anybody could just download it and not even make a donation. Free for the taking. Knitters are absolutely amazing to me -- that Annie would put the pattern up and trust knitters to donate anyway, and that knitters would (and do) donate...it just makes me feel good about people.

So take a minute and head over to Annie's blog and make a donation. Then, make yourself one helluva dress.

Now if only I could buy the body to go along with it.

Butterfly Bog Jacket















The good news is that Baby M's bog jacket is finished! Months after I finished the lion's share of the work, leaving only the piddly little detail stuff to complete, I dug the jacket out of my work bag and just did it. I love how it looks. I love the frilly crocheted "butterfly wings" I added to the ends of the sleeves when I decided I didn't like how they looked plain. I love how the funky buttons add an unexpected splash of bold fuschia to the more earth-toned jacked itself. I love just about every darn thing about this jacket, in fact.

Which brings me to the not-so-good news: I think all those times my mother wished I would have a daughter just like me (and never because I'd done something good, mind you) have finally taken effect.

Baby M absolutely, positively refuses to wear her jacket. She won't even try it on.

DH tried to get me to see reason. "It's summer. It's hot out. Of course she doesn't want to wear a heavy wool jacket." But I know better.

When I was a kid, my mom sewed most of my clothes herself. I had cute little handmade pinafores, which she even took the time to get me to draw on in crayon and then iron the drawings in permanently -- a real mother/daughter project if ever there was one. I had handmade pants, handmade tops, even -- I kid you not -- a hand-crocheted bikini.

Mom made my clothes for many reasons. She was a trained seamstress. She loved playing dress-up with her sole little girl (when she was pregnant with me, she prayed for a girl because the clothes were so much cuter than for boys). Coming from a sewing family, she already had a large supply of fabric in the house. I'm sure it was cheaper to make my clothes (considering she only used fabric she already had) than to buy them new in the stores. But, underneath all of that, I'm sure she also made my clothes as a tangible expression of her love. What more loving thing is there than to clothe your child in a garment of your own making?

It was the zebra pants that did it.

I must have been in the fourth grade. I had worn the cute pinafores and crocheted bikini, but I had also worn the weird, 70's-era bell-bottoms made from gold flowered fabric that must have started its life as some sort of bizarre upholstery. The clothes that fit perfectly and never wore out but always stood out wherever I was and whatever I did. No one else in school wore clothes like I did. No. One. And when one day my mother produced a white pair of pants with great, big zebras printed all over them, I finally blurted out, "Can't I just wear jeans like everybody else?"

And that was how I got my first pair of jeans. And, I'm sure, broke my mother's heart, although I don't remember her showing any upset when I rebelled against the black-and-white bizarro-pants she'd made in all good faith and with all the good intentions in the world.

And now at age two -- two! -- my daughter is making my mother's fondest wish come true. She's refusing to wear the clothing I lovingly made for her with my own two hands.

She didn't even wait for the zebra pants.

You Know You're a Fiber Freak When....















The most use your hand mixer sees in a year is for making twisted cord.