the buck stopped here

Yesterday around lunch my neighbor called from her car to say that she just pulled into her driveway and saw this guy hanging out.

Not a normal visitor to our 1st ring suburban neighborhood.

Later he circled back for a closer shot.

The bud kept calling him a reindeer. It seems the excitement of the "reindeer season" is already upon us.

Our poor little tiger (aka the Bud) seemed to catch just about every bug out there last month. I am crossing my fingers that he is finally on the mend for good.


Thankfully we have managed to keep the Cupcake healthy during this very germy time.

Meanwhile... I have been knitting away on many secret projects.

finished this (ravelry link)


checked off this (ravelry link)


still working on this (ravelry link)


and this (ravelry link)


and this (ravelry link)

(I recently learned that I can now post photos directly to Ravelry - so there are more pics and details there)

I did take a little break from secret knitting to whip up a beret for myself - or as my friend called it, a beret-k (just say it out loud).

I love a good beret - every girl needs at least one in her hat arsenal - and when I saw this one in the recent Vogue Holiday magazine, I knew I needed to cast on.


I have finally learned how to read a chart "lefty style" - it's like a whole new knitting world just opened itself up to me. This lace cart based on a Japanese stitch pattern was a joy to knit.


Many folks, including the infamous yarn harlot, have fallen in love with Dream in Color Starry lately - this is very similar (superwash, semi-solid, fingering weight, spun with a little silver), but is from Zen Yarn Garden - a favorite little shop of mine.

Ravelry Link

I hope you all are making time for a break (or a beret-k) for yourselves.

Happy Halloween

Time with Sweeties

It seems these days that when I am not spending my time with this little sweetie

or this little goofball sweetie

there is not much time left for online adventures - if you are looking for me these days, I tend to spend my limited online time checking in on Ravelry or with a quick photo dump on flickr.

We have made it out and about in the real world a bit recently...

We couldn't miss the fabulous Franconia Sculpture Park Fall Festival last weekend,

where you can view my new favorite sculpture.

More photos from FSP

We also celebrated Great-Grandma Alphie's 95th birthday

More Photos of Alphie's Birthday

Our little Cupcake is named for Alphie's mom. Yes, "Cupcake" is a traditional Norwegian name.

There has been some knitting, but the change to Fall has brought about the change to secret, gift knitting. There may be some sneak peeks on Ravelry as things get finished.

And I do have it in my plans to eventually post a pattern here for my Blue Wheaties Socks.

Note to self: find those notes.

Our little Cupcake has been home for 4 weeks now.

If you know me in real life, you may know about my cousin's little Tinkerbell born three days before Cupcake, who is not yet home. The two girls started off together in the same NICU. Cupcake finally passed her "due date" this week - little Tinkerbell has another month and a half until she passes hers.

Please send thoughts and prayers to my cousin's little one: Tinkerbell's Site

No ribbons, but a prize

Well... my knitting did not bring home any ribbons from the State Fair this year,

but we brought home a far better prize yesterday.

Hooray! Our Cupcake is home!

It's a... Cupcake!

Never have I loved having my iPhone as much as I have over these past many weeks. Every email and message on flickr, facebook and my blog came to me via my phone at points when I really needed to have some good thoughts coming my way. Thank you!

I really haven't had much energy for responding to things, and now it seems like so much time has passed - please forgive me and know that I appreciated every single message!

Here is a quick overview of our wild ride:

Saturday, June 17^th, we went up to Grand Forks for a family wedding. That evening I wasn’t feeling quite right, so Mr. 5 and I went to the ER just to get reassurance that all was well. Instead of getting reassurance, I was admitted with preeclampsia and told to get ready to deliver that week (10 weeks early!).

Both Mr. 5 and I felt very strongly about having this happen back home, so luckily on Monday I was transported via ambulance from Grand Forks down to Abbott in Minneapolis.

The goal was to let cupcake keep growing inside me as long as possible, but on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning the preeclampsia started to affect my liver – that meant delivery needed to happen right away.

Our little Cupcake was born at 5:44 a.m. on Wednesday, July 22. She was 3 lbs 6 ounces and came out crying!

In the 24 hours after she was born, I was not recovering quite as expected. There was some scariness on Wednesday night getting me stable, but nothing 4 units of blood and a little monitoring in the ICU couldn’t fix.

Cupcake has done amazingly well since arriving a bit early in the world. She needed a bit of help with oxygen as her first day went on, so they put her on a C-Pap machine (which is like a baby version of the ones folks use for sleep apnea).

On her third day she graduated from the C-Pap machine to just a nasal cannula (the little tube that blows oxygen under her nose).

After a few days she was breathing room air just fine.

Over the past weeks, our Cupcake has been growing....

and growing...

and growing!

She is now about 5 and a half pounds! It blows my mind that she has grown so fast.

We are hearing talk from doctors and nurses that she could come home as early as next week.

ETA: I just looked at the post settings, and I started writing this post on August 7th - I hope my next post doesn't take quite so long.

Cupcake Still Cooking

After a wedding outside of Grand Forks on Saturday, I went to the ER and was admitted for preeclampsia. Made it down to Abbott on Monday night. I'm holding steady and will be here until delivery - whenever that happens. I'm 30 weeks Wednesday (tomorrow) , and the goal is to keep Cupcake "cooking" as long as possible.

My little Donald O'Connor

The Bud is totally enamored with Donald O'Connor's number "Make 'Em Laugh" from Singing in the Rain.

He has been reenacting it for a few days now. He doesn't know all the words - but enough to make it pretty convincing. Key components to the reenactment include jumping down from someplace to start off the song (O'Connor jumps down from a piano at the beginning), hitting someone with a hat, sliding on the floor on your knees, spinning in a circle on the floor while laughing like crazy, and general jumping around with fancy leg kicks. Thankfully there have been no attempts to do the wall climbing flips. Whew!

What Mind?

For the life of me I cannot find anything I need this morning.

I said to the Bud, "I'm losing my mind!"

He replied earnestly, "What mind?"

Exactly. 

Coffee-Boo on the Morning Deck

It's Monday, and I have no clear plan of when I will get out of my Jim-Jams for the day. I love summer!

So far we have done some stamping (note the blue ink on the arms and face of the Bud in the close-up pic below), played a little Chutes and Ladders, and had a coffee-boo on the morning deck.

Last week Mr. 5 made a deck in a day on the back side of our house (the side that faces the garage and driveway - a prime playing area). He has had some scrap lumber set aside for the project for awhile. The back side of our house is always shady until noon - perfect for enjoying a morning cup of coffee. The cabin deck on the other side of the house (which I love - don't get me wrong) gets blasted with sun until the evening.

It's the perfect size for a couple of chairs and a little table.

The Bud loves his "coffee-boo". Which should probably be spelled Coffee-bou after this place - which is where he first had a steamed milk with caramel syrup. I'm not sure how he decided on the name - they call it a reindeer drink there.

My brain is in "easy knitting only" mode. So I started a simple garter stitch shawl with an eyelet row every so often. The pattern calls for a ruffled edge with a crocheted picot edge on the ruffle. I plan to keep the ruffle, but not the crochet picot - that's a little too much frosting for me. Ravelry Link

I've been feeling a little under the weather with a summer cold for the past few days. With Cupcake along for the ride, I am unwilling to take any drugs, so the cold seems a bit worse than it really is. Grandma G loaned me one of these yesterday. I was frightened at first, but once I tried it - it made a lot of sense. Today I feel like I am more on the mend. I'm hoping that feeling continues.

Happy Summer, Everyone!

They say it's June

...but you wouldn't know it from the weather this weekend.
It's been so cold and rainy.
The drizzle stopped enough today for a small group of us from the Roseville String Ensemble to play at a re-dedication of an amphitheater of a local park.



Let me tell you... it was cold. I was very thankful for my fingerless mitts -  and yes, I kept them on during our performance. Did I say it was cold?

We had no idea just how cold and windy it would feel out at the park.
Grandma and Grandpa pulled out the emergency blanket they had stashed in the car!







Thanks to Mr. 5 for taking a few photos while I was trying to keep my fingers warm and moving enough to play selections from Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story. 
There is something special about playing show tunes in a park though. I don't get to do that enough.

Speaking of the photos. We got ourselves a new camera in preparation for a new spurt of important photo taking with Cupcake arriving this fall. Thanks, Bertha, for allowing us to upgrade with your upgrade.

Also in preparation for Cupcake...



...the Baby Surprise Jacket is finished. I used fingering weight, so it is small - but it is the perfect size for a newborn.
I love how this pattern looks in a semi-solid yarn. 

I love knitting away at the soothing garter stitch. 

And I love the complete genius of Elizabeth Zimmerman - only an amazingly gifted knitting mind could come up with such a pattern.
I am knitting a Sweet Baby Cap to match, and I might think about some booties or socks if I have enough yarn left after that.


Ravelry Project Page

I may need to make another BSJ in a slightly larger size, we will see.
I did splurge last weekend and purchased a kit for a Tulip Cardigan (with the Anita's Rainbow set of colors), and I have some other ideas too. I'm not sure what I will start next. 

So many choices.