Someone new to knit for

Behold the reason for my scanty blogging.

(See! I promised pictures!)

I don't know what it is about the first trimester, but twice now, it has completely wiped out my desire to knit. I don't know if it's the tiredness or the nausea or some bizarre, anti-knitting, early-pregnancy hormonal thing, but the pattern for me seems to be that whenever I think about knitting in the first three months or so, the answer that comes back from my brain is, "Meh. Ick."

Thus the lack of almost any knitting progress - the only exceptions being those gift items I had to finish for imminent babies.

Arabesque blanket for baby Mendez

At some point after my last real blog entry, DH went out and picked up more white sportweight. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it was the same colour, the same ply and (supposed to be but I have my doubts) the same weight as the original, you can still tell where the first ball ended and the second ball began if you really look. However, I don't think many people will be really looking.

I finished it up the night before the celebratory lunch for my co-worker, washed it, blocked it, and started in on the fringe. I'd done a fair bit along one side before deciding that it looked like crap. (DH concurred. That is to say, he certainly didn't use the word 'crap' by any stretch of the imagination, but he did agree with my assessment that the fringe wasn't as dense and 'oomphy' as one might hope.) This combined with the fact that it was already getting rather late into the evening decided me: there would be no fringe. I declared it finished and went to bed. In the morning I added a tag, gift-wrapped it up all nicely, and brought it to work. My co-worker was thrilled.

I will be submitting the pattern to Knitty as soon as...okay, I admit it, as soon as my brain allows me to remember to do it. (Sigh.)

Little Alejandro (Alex for short) was born two weeks after the party and unfortunately had to stay in the hospital for awhile because of some kind of infection. Aside from having to be on antibiotics, though, he apparently seems healthy, so my freakout has been reduced to a minimum. I'm hoping he's either already home or will be sent home soonsoonsoon with a clean bill of health. Go, Alex.

Textured cardigan for baby Harding

I finally got down to work and started in on the math for the fronts.

However, it was too late. My lack of desire to knit over the past two months conspired to make this the first co-worker baby gift ever that didn't get done in time. I was super-pissed about that, I don't mind admitting. However, enough was done by party time (the back, both fronts, one sleeve, the neckband and a fair bit of sewing-up) that I was able to make it look a lot like a cardigan and wrap it up for giving.

Despite the one-sleeved-ness and lack of side seams, my co-worker was really, really delighted. She actually hadn't expected any gift at all - she had figured that since I'd already made something for her first kid, I would bother for kid #2. Silly lady. :) All new babies deserve good stuff!

I finally finished it on Thursday and am really, really pleased with how it turned out. I'm definitely proud to include this pattern in my still-hypothetical-but-getting-more-realistic-as-more-patterns-get-designed-and-tested book. I offered to drive it over to my co-worker's house this weekend since her place is about a half hour away from my mother-in-law's (whom we were visiting this weekend), but she told me not to worry. Apparently she's planning to bring the baby into the office to visit sometime in November, so I'll just bring the cardigan in to work with me sometime soon and wait for her to show up.

Garden Shawl for MIL

Now that all the frantic baby projects are done, it's back to the Christmas knitting! I've done just a few more repeats of the edging on this, no big deal, but at least it's continuing. Hopefully my desire to knit will come back in full force really, REALLY soon so I can start burning through this and get it blocked and done and checked off.