Knitting Again (Naturally)

After three big days of not-knitting and not-missing-it-at-all, December has started and the knitting feeling came back for a little relaxation.



The news has reached the house, that the Christmas knitting is on (can you feel it, can you feel it?). Knitting in Babyland.

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Nursing mama goodness galore!



fruit: oranges, clementines, pears, apples

vegetables: cucumber, carrots, potatoes, yams, cherry tomatoes, corn lettuce, cauliflower, shiitake mushrooms, zucchini, red bell peppers

mama treat: nougat chocolate

The Rishikesh Blanket

There are some times in life that are so special and so precious, like the first days with your newborn, that you hardly find words for them.

I will not even try to do it, but show you the last finished object before Carolina Aura was born, because that is quite an interesting thing, too.



The last weeks of pregnancy a lot of mamas, and I am no exception here, try and tie up loose ends, so that for the time of birth everything is ready and the nest is cozy. The last thing on my handmade agenda was the Babette blanket (I have written about it before here). There were quite a lot of loose ends that needed to be woven in. Nearly all of the squares were crocheted in the month November two years ago, in my time in Rishikesh/India. And it took me another two years to sew all those squares together and weave the ends in. Truly, most of the two years it just lay around out of sight (but in a distant corner of my mind)...

There seemed to be a secret connection between the blanket and the baby - the baby wouldn't come before the blanket was finished. Weaving in those ends and the last three endless rows of the double crochet border helped me with their boringness through the last sleepless nights before birth and helped me falling asleep again.

When my water broke on Sunday morning I thought I have to hurry now! Or maybe I could speed up the onset of labour with it. The blanket was finished at 11 am, but it would take another 21 hours before Carolina Aura was born (that would have actually been enough time to block the blanket...).



I call it the Rishikesh Blanket now - the colours of the borders have symbolic meaning: turquoise was my favourite colour when I first came to Rishikesh in 2004 and thought I will be back. Pink was my favourite five years later then when I did my International Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Rishikesh. And the last deep red row is the colour of Carolina's bootees. Ravelry notes here.

And with the rule "One project off the hook, next project on the hook" I started playing with the African flower hexagon.



There are two things I learned for the new project:

- ends don't get woven in by itself from just lying around or working on other projects
- so better start joining squares and weaving in ends as you go

PS: I might not have words, but I have a picture.



PPS: That blanket around Carolina is also from Rishikesh.

Carolina Aura

... was born at home Monday morning after an easy and joyous birth.
We are full of gratitude and love.

Doll Dress Up Day

Advent bazaar time!
On the first Sunday of Advent the church next to Clara's kindergarten arranges a bazaar. And like I knew from last year and hoped for this time, the church's knitting group sells handknits (and crochet) for Barbie dolls.



Grannies with a lifelong knitting knowledge make those clothes and they are sold for about 1 Euro (!) a piece. I am just impressed by the designs.



Very fashionable!



I am not quite sure, who is more happy about the new outfits - Clara or her mama...

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The Batavia lettuce first.



Furthermore fruit: apples, bananas, pears, oranges



Various vegetables: potatoes, yams, onions, eggplant, red bell peppers, mushrooms, Hokkaido pumpkin, cherry tomatoes, carrots, beetroot, fennel, avocado

Clara's Little Lambs

I couldn't help myself - I made another dress for Clara. Inspired by Katharina's sheep jacket, I got the girl's version of the loden fabric.



Like I said, you just can't have enough of those.

Mama & Baby Knitting (and Sewing!)

The other mamas have been busy, too! Like I saw this morning at our weekly mama & baby breakfast and knitting club.



Anna wins the knitting trophy.



The first prize for sewing goes to Katharina for her adorable sheep jacket (not to mention the hat)!

Fresh from the Sewing Machine

Baby knows, not to come before mama has finished her projects and is mentally prepared. Busy sewing this morning to get the matching dresses ready for my girls.



I think, Clara just can't have too many of them, whether knitted or sewn. They keep the core and the back covered and warm during the colder months, they are comfortable and they look good. The patterns were improvised with the help of my sewing teacher, using and customizing some older patterns. Simple, plain and cute, just how I like it. Made from a loden-viscose material.



First I wanted crochet flowers as embellishments and dreamed of butterflies last week. Decided to skip the flowers but stay with the butterfly theme when I found this ribbon in my drawers.

And I just couldn't wait to throw it over my big girl, just in time for her dancing class!





Works well for running around and having fun.



And also for the quieter times at home.



Drawing and crafting.



Or being read to by Papa (in a matching-colour sweater) on the couch.

Life is live

found here: http://shop.holstee.com/collections/all/products/holstee-manifesto-poster

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With my appetite slowly returning, it's time for some wholesome freshness.



Fruit: pears, apples, clementines, pineapple

Vegetables: Chinese cabbage, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, carrots, potatoes, leak, tomatoes, red bell peppers, green banana peppers, onions, yams



... and some endive, that wouldn't fit in the picture.

Silent

The storm I I felt coming on Wednesday came, but in another way than expected. It had something to do with my belly, too, but more in the gastro-enteritis way. Funnily, I had talked this week with my midwife about her time in India, when she had worked in a little village near Calcutta in the Nineties. She was sick a lot there. I had great times in India and the only time I caught a stomach bug there, people over here in Germany had also been sick. You don't have to go to India for this kind of trouble, I told my midwife.

Self-fulfilling prophecy? Who needs that a couple of days before birth? But what I really could need was a day-and-night-sleeping-marathon, my body totally forcing me to rest. Even knitting was completely out of the question. But who knows, when will I ever get so much couch time in the near future? Probably not too often.

And here are the pictures my little attentive nurse Clara drew for me to get better (in between bringing me glasses of fresh water and making me eat dextrose-vitamin-candies which she considers perfect medicine):



I could go to the hospital, says my nurse...



... or put this heart-card on my heart.

I loved getting this postcard from her:





... on the beach in a hammock, that should help!

Silence before the Storm

All is very quiet around here, just in case you were wondering.



I am going to my sewing class to make some more dresses for the girlies.



... trying to destash (or more correctly to reorganize and restash), but couldn't throw any yarn away - is that a sign of approaching labour?

... trying not to start any new knitting projects, but stick to the Babette Blanket and the Traveling Companions (I have the idea that any too exciting new projects might get in the way of labour and distract me too much or just imagine making a mistake and having to rip it out shortly before birth, too unsettling)



... but allowing inspiration



... and dreaming of flowers and butterflies for a little change and distraction from endless rows of garter stitch and weaving in ends



... couching, resting and nesting

24 Hours of Fog

Sisters and Dresses

This is going to be a longer post about little girls, photography, mistakes, life itself and of course, knitting. The knitting mama I am, the idea to knit matching dresses for my girlies crossed by mind. This idea still seems kind of strange to me not knowing what "Number Two" will look like, without really knowing her apart from the little kicks from inside. Very fittingly, I found the patterns for Big sister's dress and Little sister's dress by Tora Froseth. Cute, top-down, a seamless knit in the round.


Still life: Sisters' dresses

As you might now, life with little girls is not that still and motionless...





The lighting is as good as it gets in these foggy November conditions
(though we had two days of sunshine before the dresses were finished).



What I found out: gauge matters!
First I knitted the version for a 3-months-old baby, but had other yarn (the wool came once again from my bargain stash) and went up from the indicated 3mm needles to 4mm needles.



What a surprise - the dress fits my tall, soon to be 5-year-old Clara!

For adjusting gauge and pattern you can follow the rule of three (a very in-depth German post on this topic you can find on tichiro's blog here). As this seemed to overstimulate my pregnancy brain (cheap excuse...), I just went along knitting with my feeling, played it by ear and used the measurements for the 3-months-version. My modifications you can check in my Ravelry notes.



The opening and the button turned out to be on the other side this time, I have no idea how this happened... but hey, it's not a mistake, it's a design feature ;-) And my girls will not be the same anyway.



Still no little sister to play with ...



So it's doll Lily's job again.









Clara, the loving big sister. Before you watch the following video called "The Truth", do some gentle yoga: bring your left ear to your left shoulder. And remember: Don't do this with a real baby...