Happy Valentine's Day

I found so many awesome Valentines online that I wanted to create a treasury of them.

This last one is dedicated to my husband, who fixed up my "balloon".

Hats and more hats

It's been over a month since I updated. I am doing better than I was then, just because I've had time to digest what's happened in my personal life. I'm trying to do NaNoWriMo this month, but I'm finding myself very distracted and generally emotionally drained. That's a bad thing. I feel really off my game. Some of those who have given me constructive criticism have said that one of my greatest strengths is my ability to convey emotion vividly in writing. I don't feel like I can give it my all right now. Even when I'm not thinking about my daughter, I just have that weariness.

Anyway, I've kept knitting. I have about six weeks left to finish gifts, and I can safely admit here that I am making hats for my family, knowing they will never ever read it. So far, I'm on my 8th hat. One for each of my siblings, my mom, as well as Jorge and me. I wanted to make another one for myself because I'm selfish like that. I also made mittens for Jorge and myself. I am getting really psyched about seeing snow for the first time. If I have time after making the 9th hat (for me), I will make a cowl/scarf. I am on fire! Not literally, but if I was then that would be too warm, what with all the winter clothes and all. I will post pictures eventually.

The hat I'm currently working has cables, and in a sad and lame way, I'm excited about learning cables.  Sometimes I look at that hat and say, "Oh, you fancy, huh?"

See how disconnected this all is? Back to NaNoWriMo-ing. It is sure to be a muddled mess.

I last updated this blog on September 12, 2012. Two days later I wound up in the hospital, and to make a long story short, I am no longer going to be a mother in February. I guess you could say I'm a mother now, but we didn't get to take our daughter home. Not the way we wanted to. I feel like my whole world just went swirling down the drain.

So many knits to make, so little time

I have so many projects I want to start, I don't even know where to begin. I tend to have periods of extreme motivation to do things, and then I have these lulls where I can't bring myself to work on something to save my life. That's kind of how I do most things, including housework. I will procrastinate until things get very messy, then put in a few solid hours and make a huge difference.

I go on knitting and reading binges all the time. I mean, I'll go six months without reading a book, then in 3.5 weeks, I finished all 7 Harry Potter books. Well, I have knitting fever once again, I just finished a wool lace shawl, am about 5" away from finishing the other sock, and am wondering what comes next. I made swatches for a sweater for Jorge. I bought the yarn back in January, and I want to finish so he can use it this winter (if it even gets cold... HA!) I settled on everything, It's just a matter of casting on.

But I can imagine I'd be working on this thing and nothing else till almost Christmas. That leaves me in a pickle, considering my ambitions include making warm weather accessories for my siblings who just moved to Minnesota, and I have a long queue of baby items waiting. I have until around Feb. 1 to finish, and then I will have no more time for knitting. That's because I will be too busy being a mother! That means, any items I want to use for the baby will have to be finished by then, hopefully much earlier. When planning these things, it seems like the months will fly by. Heck, it already seems like that now. I've had a productive year, though. I finished my knitcoat (which I started in Oct last year), and I've finished & started 3 shawls, 1 wrap, *almost* a pair of socks, a pair of mitts, and some random small projects like a needle roll and an Oliphant that looks like Max Rebo. I really should post these, shouldn't I?

I made a sock!

I am now halfway through making my husband a pair of socks, still trying not to get distracted with other projects, namely baby ones. I'm at that age where everyone I know is pregnant, which means everywhere I look there is baby pictures, baby news, cute baby things. I really should try my hand at tiny baby things, they take so much less yarn. The next socks I make may be tiny ones. Anyway, this is the first one just before I bound off. He was so happy to wear that one sock, telling me "No one has ever made me a sock before!"

Hello, blog

How long has it been? Too long, surely. Well, we've been up to many things lately, and I suppose that I ran out of a bit of steam when it came to documenting. As a matter of fact, I don't see how I will be able to permanently keep up with a blog with all the other stuff I've got coming up this next year.

For the moment, I'm enjoying my home with my husband, and all the domestic bliss that comes with knitting by his side while he plays L.A. Noire (a detective game set in 1947). We just finished sending my mom and siblings off to the northern parts of the midwest, where my siblings will surely suffer shock when they experience their first winter. I still haven't seen snow, though.

Tonight I hope to finish a shawl I've been working on, and will block the beauty sometime over the next week. I just finished the first of a pair of socks for DH, and will eventually make its mate.

Anyway, I'm a knitting fiend at the moment, I can't get enough. I go over to Ravelry for times like this, because they understand me there. Yes, I realize that it makes me sound like a hipster, but hipsters are big frauds. They like to do things before they were cool, but doesn't that imply that they wanted to be cool first, though? I'll never understand.

Till next time.

Not-so-winter Garden - Week 3

So much for "winter" around here. We had some torrential downpours here, and the garden seemed to shoot up overnight.

As you can see, the red bucket is filled with water pouring off the roof- it filled up in just a couple hours.

More sprouts popped up all over. These are the habaneros and cayenne peppers.

Whoops, one zucchini too many. Have to either get rid of it or transplant it!

These are sweet peppers from a carnival mix. I guess I won't know what they really look like until they bear fruit!

Eggplant! This interesting plant will always remind me of that episode of Inspector Gadget where he feeds a bunch of Mammoths some red eggplant things.

Tiny fernleaf dill sprouts.

The row of moneymaker tomatos grows as I feel pity for the runts and transplant them instead of getting rid of them completely. I don't know what I'm going to do with everything I have!

The first tomato set fruit. This is why I do this.

Another angle of my tomato runts.