Starting Over

I am determined to post on this blog more regularly. In fact, feel free to give me a kick in the butt (real, or virtual) if you haven't heard from me in more than a week, ok? So, this is what I'm planning...
- a weekly update (at the least) of what I've been up to, even if it consists of 'spent the whole week trapped inside the house because Lily was sick/overly clingy/just plain weird and the weather was terrible' (*not that those things have happened much over the last 2 months or anything* said in my most sarcastic voice - at least they haven't been simultaneous occurrences really)
- to take and upload photos of what I've been making/cooking/doing that seems interesting and actually share them (I have a reasonable list to catch up on, but am not going to do them all at once, small steps)
- to let you know about some of the things that make our lives great - kinda reviews of the products, places, maybe even people that we enjoy on a regular basis
- to end my postings with a question, to try and encourage discussion in the comments ;)
So, does that sound like something you'll actually read? Or am I wasting my time with this whole blogging thing?

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Welcome 2009

I had grand plans for the start of 2009.
- I was hoping to have all my email correspondence up-to-date within the first week (actually, I was planning to have that done before the new year even ticked over, but since I only made that plan 3 days beforehand and I had a clingy 6 month old to look after, well, you know).
- I wanted to sit down and look at what I want/need to achieve this year - I'm not really the resolution-making type, but along those sort of lines, I guess.
- I really wanted to decide what I want this blog to be and get going on updating it regularly again.
I actually think I've made progress on the first part of that last statement, since I've had time to think. I just haven't had any time to 'do'. And I don't have a lot of time to do now, either, as Lily seems to be waking up and will no doubt demand my attention, as she has been doing every waking hour for the last few weeks...

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Long time, no see

I have no idea how to catch up on the last two and a half months in the unpredictable time I have before Lily wakes up, so I'm not even really going to attempt it. I have been way too busy getting used to my role as Mummy to spend a lot of time on the computer. And when I do have free time, I generally have more important things to do than blog. But I have been thinking about it and I reckon that with Lily's photoblog and our determination to keep things that are relevant to both of us on our website, I need to refocus this blog.

I feel like my everyday life type stuff is either too boring, or too personal to publish publicly.
I'd love to have a cool, crafty blog (as if there aren't already millions of those out in internet-land) but am only just getting back into stuff like that and don't feel like I'm doing anything new or original.
Or, I could just abandon the blog, since it often just feels like one more thing I have to catch up on...
So, to the (two or three?) people who actually read this - what should I be talking about here? What do you actually want to read? Why do you check this page or have it in your blog reader anyway?

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Just in case...

...you read this blog, but not our website, you should probably know that I had a baby on Monday. Photos, vital stats and an explanation as to why this is such a brief announcement are over at kateandgraeme.com

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My 6hr trip to the doctor's

So usually when I go to the GP for my check-up, I leave the house about 40 minutes before my appointment (to account for the inevitable wait for a bus) and am home within another 40 minutes. Today, I arrived home 6 hours after I left...
My appointment was actually with the surgery nurse, just to do a check on my blood pressure and protein levels, since both have been sitting right on the borderline of acceptable. My protein was fine. My first blood pressure reading? 153/110. Seriously. That's insanely high. She made me sit for a while and take some deep breaths, took it again and it was still 141/100. Still too high. High enough that I had to call the hospital, talked to a midwife and was told to come in for monitoring. So I gave Elizabeth a call, she came and met me and we went to the hospital where they hooked me up to a fetal monitor, made me sit back in a reclining chair and took my blood pressure 3 times over about an hour to assess the situation. My blood pressure dropped steadily over that time and Squishy's heartbeat and movements were fine, so they sent me home with instructions to rest and to call the delivery suite if anything feels off over the weekend.
OK, I admit, we could've been home about 4 and a half hours after I'd left the house, but by then, we were both hungry and I really wanted to get some yarn to knit a little pram blanket for Squishy, so we went and got some lunch and visited the local yarn store (where the lady was heaps more friendly and helpful than anyone I'd previously encountered in the shop) before heading home.
So basically, I left the house planning on seeing the nurse, getting some yarn and coming home to relax, probably including an afternoon nap. Instead, I had a massive detour to the freakin' hospital because my body is being a pain. I've been giving the baby pep talks, trying to convince it that coming out soon would be a good idea. Not too sure it will work though...

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stuff i made

Just putting up little photos, most of which are pretty dodgy and quickly edited but better than no picture at all. You can click on them to see them bigger.

OK, first up my new address book. 4x6" index cards that I designed and printed. Easy to update/replace when people's details change and plenty of space to make extra notes or whatever. I'm keeping them in a perfectly-sized mini file folder thing that I found.


This quilt block was made as my contribution to a project organised by an online community I belong to. One of the members lost a lot when her home was broken into shortly after they'd experienced a fire. So we made her a quilt. Well, a bunch of us made squares and one of the really talented quilters collected it all and assembled it into a quilt.
I painted the land masses onto some blue cotton, stitched the planet onto the black (by hand - I was impressed at my own skills) then embellished with embroidery floss.

A needle holder. After over 2 years of living in this country, I am still getting used to the space restrictions and the importance of well-organised storage. My biggest problem is with the 'well-organised' bit at the moment and I found myself knowing I had things I needed for projects, but unable to find them. Like various sized needles. So I got some felt (didn't even choose the colours - they're the ones that were in the little pack I found), stitched a few pieces together with some embroidery floss, attached a button and voila - no more lost needles.

Calorimetry is one of those projects that everyone in internet-land seems to have knitted. And here's mine. I'm not sure how happy I am with it - I think it's too fat, as in it covers too much of the top of my head - but since I managed to finish it right as the weather got too warm to wear anything like it, I'm going to call it finished and re-visit when it gets cool again after Summer.
This is the point where I should tell you what yarn and needles I used and any adjustments I made, but I can't actually remember much and don't know where I'd have put that information. When I get around to updating ravelry (one step at a time) I'll put the details there.

And, saving the best for last, some clothes for the baby.

That there is a 0-3 months sized onesie (because I refuse to buy anything smaller, anticipating a big baby) that I embroidered. I googled jellyfish to find an image as a basis, added the text then printed, transferred and stitched. I had grand plans to make a bunch of cute little personalised onesies, but so far, this is it. So baby will be wearing lots of plain white to start with.


Tank top/Vest (it seems to have been published under both names) by Debbie Bliss from Essential Baby, one of the many knitting books I have borrowed from the library in the last few months. Knitted in the recommended yarn, which is Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino - one advantage to living in the UK is when stuff like this is easily available (and much cheaper than you'd pay back home). The actual top only used just over one ball, so I made a matching basic hat with the rest - I kinda winged it, based on something I found about baby head sizes, so I have no idea when exactly it will be the right size for Squishy's head, but that's cool. Especially since even though I knit the 0-3 months size in the top, my tension/gauge was off (I knit loosely) and I ran with it, so I don't know exactly when that will fit either. Besides, who really knows how big a baby will be before it's born...?
Anyway, I'm really happy with the top. It's my first ever actual garment - I had to sew seams and attach a button and everything. I successfully matched my decreases front and back, picked up stitches for the neck and arm bands and I even did a neat job of weaving in all the ends. And, I really like the stitch pattern, simple but effective, and think it will look totally cute on little Squishy.

I have a couple other projects I want to work on, but the energy is not there at the moment. And I'm a bit worried about pulling out my sewing machine, which most of the projects I have in mind require, because I don't do well on the sewing machine when my brain is not fully functioning - I get frustrated easily enough at the moment, without adding in a piece of heavy machinery. Oh well, I'll just let my body keep working on the biggest project of all and get back into it when I feel up to it.

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8 days to go...

OK, I'm well aware that due dates are really a rough guess, rather than a deadline and that my chances of giving birth on June 2 are slim to none, but you should all know how the number 8 has a strange appeal to me and hey, at least it prompted me to write a blog post, right?

So what's been happening? Not much. That's why I haven't updated - don't really feel like there's much to say. Ummmm...

In case you didn't follow the link in my last post, I have been still taking photos and making silhouettes of my growing belly, but they're now over in Squishy's very own photo blog. This is also where the very first photos are likely to appear once s/he's born.

We're now planning on putting most of our photos on our website - ones of the baby on the photo blog and the travel ones as galleries attached to our posts about our travels. This is partly because it seems so silly for us to have underutilised web-space, but also due to the fact that my flickr pro account came up for renewal recently and I just wasn't feeling it, so I am back to being on a limited account. Of course, this may change later, if and when my interest in the online world returns.

OK, it's not completely true that I spend no time on the computer. In fact the last week or so I have probably had my laptop out more than I'd like. But I'm just not feeling up to interacting, so most of the time is spent playing silly little games (I'm a sudoku champion). I am still reading blogs and occasionally checking places like ravelry, facebook and flickr, but I'm not saying much. I'm not really sure why this is. I guess it's partly because it feels like more effort (mentally/emotionally) than I have at the moment. I think I also worry that I'll just come across as a whining pregnant lady or something.

Speaking of whining pregnant ladies, I'm pretty much over the whole thing. So yes, Sharon, you were right - you definitely hit a point where even the pain associated with labour seems like it will be a relief. I want to be able to roll over in bed without fully waking up and having to readjust my many pillows to make myself comfortable again. It would be awesome to be able to climb the stairs or walk for more than 15 minutes without running out of puff. And I cannot wait for the day when I can stand up (from the couch/bed/wherever) and not need to go to the loo right that instant. I'm also done with the health stuff - I don't feel like going into too much detail, but let's just say the woman I saw at my 36 week check at the hospital was hopeless and I left the place almost in tears, because, as often seems to be the case in this country, I had gone into something with (I was going to say high, but really the problem is having any) expectations.

That feels like a really bad note to leave the post on, but I can't think of anything else to talk babble on about. I have some stuff to show that I have made, but I'd rather do that in a separate post, besides, I need to sort through the photos first.

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site update

We've spent some time working on our website. It's not quite finished, but there are a couple cool new features and some actual blog posts, so go and poke around.

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