Feeling relieved

It's been a little worrisome at work for the last few days. On Wednesday, I found out that the reason co-worker Rob hadn't come back to work yet after the birth of his son was that apparently the baby was sick. That's all the information we had. "Sick". Now, I don't care if "sick" is defined as just a little bit of a stuffed nose, if I had a two-week-old in non-perfect health, I would be Freaking. Out. So I've been quite worried about the baby. However, Rob is back to work today, which must mean that all is well. So far no reaction about the sweaters...I would imagine he has yet to even reach them underneath the pile of work that has built up on him over the last three weeks!

From the comments...

Milkshake asked about the pattern for the Carnival Coat. It comes from the book "Top Down for Toddlers" by Deb and Lynda Gemmell. I've done some Internet hunting, and unfortunately this is not a very mainstream book. Neither Indigo, Amazon, nor amazon.com carry it, and it's not available for borrowing at the Toronto Public Library (so I doubt any other city would carry it in their libraries). And while a few of the patterns are available for individual purchase over the Internet (such as the Florabel Sweater), the Carnival Coat is, alas, not one of them. So you will have to buy the entire book to get it. Fortunately, it is available from numerous online merchants, such as:

• Jimmy Beans Wool ($21.95US)
• Yarn Market ($21.80US)
• elann.com ($27.44Cdn)
• The Needle Arts Book Shop ($26.95Cdn)
• Karp Styles ($26.95Cdn)
• A Stitcher's Haven ($21.95US)
• Kinver Beach Knit Design ($26.95Cdn)

Those are the top Google searches, anyway. Hope that helps!

Also from the comments, loulou responded to my subway story from yesterday. She mentioned that she's had people move away from her to avoid injury from her needles. :) For myself, I would feel really bad if anyone felt they had to do this. I am super-careful about not jabbing people with my needles - as long as they are staying within the confines of their own seat, of course. If they're taking up more than their allotted space and encroaching on my seat, they're fair game. :) Usually I find that a few annoyingly repetitive nudges as I knock them with my arm or needle while knitting is enough to make them move their shoulder/elbow/arm/whatever back to their own side. Heaven forfend that I actually say anything, of course. I couldn't do that. Not the Canadian Way, doncha know. :)

Itchy-and-Scratchy mittens for baby MacDonald

The knitting of mitten #1 is complete. I've started doing the duplicate stitch embroidery on it for Scratchy. Scratchy, by the way, is the cat. Itchy is the mouse. I didn't know that before. I had to go to this fan site to figure it out. Ain't the Internet grand? Anyway, the mitten looks like this so far:

I know, it doesn't look like much. It's just the mouth, nose and the outline of the bottom of the face. It will be more recognizable as Scratchy as I keep going. The only snag is that I don't have a dark enough gray in my DMC embroidery floss arsenal collection to do the face. I'll have to go buy some. Oh hell, who am I kidding. I'm probably going to be able to mooch it off my dad. He has a bigger arsenal collection.

Carnival Coat for DD

The skirt gets ever longer. I refuse to take a picture, though - it's just a rectangle. Highly unexciting. At this point I'm over 40% done.