Dogs Steal Yarn

Real-time insomnia plus boredom plus late-night interlopers

That schlumpy February feeling somehow led to my taking photos of our dinner plates tonight. That schlumpy February feeling plus insomnia has somehow made it seem like a good idea to post the photos. At the risk of boring you to tears, I present: Dinner

The grown-ups had leek barley risotto, broccoli, and cauliflower:

Thumper had broccoli, cauliflower, and quinoa puree:

And liked it just fine, thanks:

Jeez. Even the food looks schlumpy. I assure you, it was quite tasty.

Damn. I've actually managed to bore myself before I even hit publish.

And now a surge of adrenalin as the bedroom door, which had been shut tight, was pushed open though all humans and dogs were already here inside the room. For a split second I expected an uninvited human to walk through the door, but luckily it turned out to be an uninvited cat with super-feline strength. I have no idea how he managed to push that door open, but considering the alternative I'm happy to see him. (He gets locked out of the bedroom at night because he has this bad habit of trying to sleep on the baby's head.)

Okay...maybe time to try to sleep again...

Maybe after some sleep I'll manage to write a post worth reading. If not, hey...more dinner pics. We eat dinner every night, after all. And lunch and breakfast too. And often snacks... Why, the blogging possibilities are endless...

Still here

Sorry for the silence. Things are happening, but not much that's bloggable or blogworthy. Preparations for selling baby patterns are proceeding quietly backstage, and I hope to make the first pattern available in a week or so. All knitting is for patterns I plan to post here, so can't show the knitting right now. Thumper is great. Billy is great. I'm okay too. Basically okay. More or less just fine.

I've got that schlumpy February feeling. Clearly I need to increase my chocolate intake.

What I learned this evening

While I am entirely capable of flipping a tortilla española under normal circumstances that allow me the full use of both hands and arms, I am not capable of doing so with a baby strapped to my hip in a sling.

He's teething and there is simply no putting him down today. At all. He's uncomfortable and wants to be held. No problem. I love to hold him. But I was also quite attached to the idea of tortilla for dinner. I tried to flip it using my usual "invert onto a plate veryvery quickly and then slide back into the pan" trick and found that I didn't have enough range of motion on the side where the sling was. I found that out mid-flip. The tortilla fell apart. Well...now we're having scrambled eggs with potato and onion. It's not pretty but it tastes fine.

Isn't this fascinating? I'm telling you about my kitchen disaster to distract from the fact that my agent wants more revisions. She's right (she's always right, I'm finding) but I'm beyond ready to be done with this book and move on to the next. Ah well. Back to work on it. Some day, when I've written and published three or four more books, please remind me to laugh about this.

In happier news, sweet Thumper is asleep next to me as I write this. Poor boy. Teething doesn't look like much fun.

The first and most obvious separation from my son was his birth, of course. I’d gotten used to feeling him move in my belly, his sharp little heels poking out or his butt piking up to be rubbed through my skin. Feeling him sleeping and waking and having him always there with me. And then he was born and I recognized those same movements and rhythms in this creature now outside of my body and breathing on his own. But still kept close to me, worn in a sling against my body by day and snugged up beside me in bed by night. Fed from my body. Still a part of me, nearly.

At six months he started sitting up independently. He no longer needed me to hold him while he played with toys. And then he started eating solid foods and was no longer exclusively dependent on my breast milk for his nutrition.

Now, at eight months, I still wear him in his sling and we still breastfeed and sleep cuddled up together at night. But he’s getting ready to move. He’s trying to crawl and wants to be helped to stand. Sometimes I’ll nurse him and he’ll cry in hunger, no longer satisfied with just my milk. He now wants sweet potatoes, peas, carrots, apple. He’s over 21 pounds and he’s a hungry guy.

I’m proud of how he sits up on his own and plays with toys. I’m proud of the fact that he wants to move around and explore. Proud that he enjoys his food and happily tries new things. And it’s not like he’s gone off to school or even daycare. Not like he sleeps in his own bed in his own room. We’re still very much attached, very much together. (Perhaps more together even now than other moms and babies with different parenting styles are from birth.) His growing independence, the fact that with each developmental step forward he becomes more and more an other, his own person separate from me and from my body, is a natural, healthy progression. It’s exciting to watch, but at the same time it hurts me. He needs me less with each passing week. Today he wants breast milk, but he also wants oatmeal and blueberries. Someday soon he won’t want the breast milk.

Yesterday I had to go to the dentist. Previous attempts to bring him with me were an absolute disaster for all involved, even when my mother came along to entertain him in the waiting room. The obvious solution was to leave him home with my mother while I went to the dentist. There and back plus the actual appointment would have me gone for no more than four hours. And so that’s what we did. I was afraid he would cry the whole time. I was afraid I would cry the whole time. Billy had taken him out for an hour or two before to let me work, but always stayed close to the house so they could run back to me to nurse or to cuddle. Never before had I been the one to leave. How would we handle it?

He was fine. He played. He ate some pureed carrots. He napped. He cried a bit when he woke up and found I wasn’t there, but then he played some more. When I walked in the door he looked up and smiled. He was happy I was home, but he’d been happy cuddling with Gramma too. I’ll admit I’d been half-hoping for a tearful, relieved reunion for us both. But it turns out we were fine. Both of us, fine. It’s natural. I have to remind myself that it’s natural to start to have some independence—both of us from each other—at eight months. The fact that I felt mostly okay going out and leaving him at home with my mom proves that. But it feels strange to be okay with it.

I trust that each subsequent separation will be just as natural. When he no longer wants to be carried in his sling, when he sleeps in his own room, when he starts school, becomes a teenager (oy vey), goes off to college… I’m guessing we’ll both be just as ready for these things as we were ready to be apart for a few hours one day this week. So if we’re ready for the separation we’ve just had, and I trust that we will be ready for the coming separations, why am I so anxious? Why am I wishing I could hold on to that little nursling tucked into his sling forever?

I love watching my baby grow into a confident little boy. I do. But I already miss that time when he was small and sleepy and completely mine.

The personal evolution of a scarf

The fourteenth way of looking at Clapotis

And the fifteenth

No need for clever text this time.

Scattered but grateful

I've been remiss. Terribly, embarrassingly remiss. I've meant to show you a photo of the beautiful roving Julia so kindly custom-dyed for me, and I kept forgetting to take the picture. That is, I'd remember I needed to take it, but usually at four in the morning and by the time the sun was up the thought was gone.

Well, today I remembered.

Isn't it pretty? Thanks again, Julia!

I haven't sat down to the spinning wheel or picked up a spindle in probably a month, so I'm still 3/4 of a bobbin away from the second ply of that Lorna's Flames destined to be socks. But after that stuff is spun and plyed and the wheel is freed up, I'm diving into this lovely Vesper goodness.

And while we're looking at pretty things, have you seen these shawl pins?

Thank you all so much for your enthusiastic response to the idea of my selling some patterns here. I really appreciate the encouragement. And yes, I'm going to do it. I'm working on the first pattern now. I've got notes for seven so far, so watch this space! (Watch this space with some patience. Once the patterns are knit up and written up and pdf'd I still need to tack a shopping cart onto the ole blog. I hope it won't be too long or painful a process. Miriam has already offered some great advice.)

Testing the waters

I've been thinking about ways to supplement my part of our income. What I'm currently doing is freelance editorial work after Thumper goes to sleep. Thumper goes to sleep around ten or eleven, so this means I'm up until two a.m. whenever I'm on deadline. Not great, but not working isn't an option. So I'm thinking I need another income source to allow me to take less editorial work. I don't mean stopping the editing altogether...just a small additional income stream to help make ends meet.

I've got several patterns knocking around in my head--things I want to knit for Thumper. And I thought I might post the patterns again for free. And then I got to thinking...those free patterns I offer already generate a lot of traffic and get knit fairly often (and thanks to everyone who sends me photos of the finished knits, by the way). They're very simple patterns and I wouldn't want to charge for them. These other patterns in my head will take more time and effort for me to knit up and write up. Maybe I should charge a small amount and offer them as pdf downloads.

What do you think? Would you be interested in paying...I don't know...$5.00?...for a cute kidswear pattern? I promise the cute. I will absolutely bring the cute. And functional. Because cute without function is useless in the face of real-baby-wear.

If there's interest, I think I'll give it a shot.

Methods of distraction

Things are a bit crazy around here at the moment. Please allow the cuteness to wash over you and make you forget that there's no real post here. And even if you can't forget the lack of posting, do allow the cuteness to make it all alright.*

*Alright in the Velvet Underground sense of the word. One of these days I'm going to write that essay about the various meanings of "alright" in rock music that I've been threatening to write for years. Never mind that I don't actually write essays...

Lorna's revenge

You may recall an incident awhile back that involved Billy watching me knit the first in a pair of socks for him, allowing me to finish the first sock before admitting he didn't like the colorway.

Well.

Yesterday morning, rushing around to get dressed for work, he reached into a pile of recently washed handknit socks and pulled out what he thought was a pair of his socks. Except they were too small. Because they were mine--the socks that had been meant for his feet and which were then resized for my smaller feet. So this leads to two points.

• Point the first: If he hadn't rejected the socks when I was knitting them for him, he would have had warm toasty handknit socks on his feet yesterday instead of lowly storebought socks.

• Point two: I have enough handknit socks right now to get me through two weeks without sock washing. He has two pair currently. (We've both lost pairs to big big holes and accidental felting and other sockly horrors.)
  
• Point 2a: The man needs more handknit socks. I've already cast on for a new pair. (Opal Tiger)
  
• Point 2b: I need more handknit socks. What would I do after two weeks if for some reason I was unable to wash the current sock supply? Clearly I need at least another week's worth. I've already cast on for a new pair for me. (Also Opal Tiger)
  
• Point 2c: Thumper shall also have Opal Tiger socks (he's outgrown the pair that were gifted when he was born) so we can annoy people with how cute we are with our matching family socks.