Marek's Room

I think my mother was a construction contractor in another life and the fact that our baby room is up and running is proof.  She stayed with us for a week and whipped the place into shape.  I'd come home from work every day and couldn't believe all the progress she'd made.

She painted the room.  She assembled all the baby furniture.  She laundered and sorted metric tons of baby textiles.  She organized and re-purposed items she found around the house for decoration and storage.  She cleaned and sanitized hand-me-down baby gear we'd inherited. 

Even down to the artwork on the walls.  I'd been hoarding Peter Rabbit things for years because I love Beatrix Potter and we raised rabbits as a family and I thought some day if I ever managed to have children, I'd like a Peter Rabbit room.  These are Wallies wallpaper cut outs I bought on clearance 20+ years ago.  I think I bought them at a Ben Franklin store--that's how long ago it was!  We went to the Dollar Tree and found these floating glass frames and Mom cleaned and assembled them and we didn't have to mess around with mats or coordinating papers.

This is a beautiful art print greeting card I bought in London or York probably 10 years ago: "The First Born" by Frederick William Elwell.  It has been tucked away in my stash of printed matter all this time waiting to be put in a nursery.  She framed and hung it and I'm so glad I can see it every day.

This is a framed print of sheep (you know how much I love wool!) I had in a box of stuff that still hasn't found a home since we moved in.  I think I got this at the Cancer Garage Sale and the frame came from Joann's or Hobby Lobby or somewhere.  She dug through homeless household goods and found it and made a good point, "Sheep are good for a baby room!"  Up it went on the wall.

She made the curtains out of stashed Peter Rabbit fabric and lined them with stashed muslin.  I'd bought the curtain rod months ago at Joann's with a coupon and up it went over the window.  We used our Menard's rebate money to purchase a blind for the window and up that went.  That little Ikea table was new and unused in the package downstairs and consigned to the baby room.  That little trunk used to hold fabric in the sewing room and was dispatched to hold baby blankets.

She bought us that dresser as a baby gift and assembled it for us.  That little bookshelf was already in the room but cleared of all the Katie books and now holds baby books and toys.  The most painful part of the whole process was the carloads of books I took to Saver's to make room.  That closet is filled to the gills with varying sizes of diapers we received from my coworkers.  The dresser is full of baby clothes I've knitted, hand-me-downs from my sister and her friend, and more gifts from my family and coworkers.  I have been so overwhelmed with the generosity everyone has shown for this little boy they haven't even met yet!

Here  is my mother hard at work.  She jokes all the time that she has a degree in furniture assembly.  Doesn't she look like a little Ikea elf?  I told her I was afraid I'd be charged with elder abuse because she was stuck here without a car and worked her tail off all day while I was at work.  It wouldn't have gotten done without her, that is the plain truth of the matter.  We appreciate all her hard work and I know she was happy to do it.  I am thrifty and appreciate how she was able to do so much with things we already had.  It makes everything so much more real now that we have a baby room that will soon be occupied by a newborn.

Winter Knitting

My oldest niece has a December birthday and this year she wanted "wool mittens".  I really wanted to make these horse mittens because she is quite the horsewoman, but I was on a time crunch.  Lovely as the design is, they are knit with sock yarn and size 1.5 needles and just wouldn't get done in time with all the other baby knitting I'd been doing.   Maybe next year.  In the end, I found this pattern and dug through my stash and found all the Cascade 220 I needed so I didn't even have to make a special trip to the yarn store!  I gave them to her months ago without taking pictures of them and asked that she send me some knitting glamour shots.  She came through complete with a winter snowscape and birch tree backdrop!

We are 36 weeks along this week.  It is flooring me to think we could be literally having this baby any time now which makes the pressure all the higher to get things done.  We bought our stroller/car seat travel system months ago with Cartwheel savings and Target $5 gift cards I'd been rat holing for some time and paid half the original price...and then it sat in a box in the den for almost 6 months.  We got it out and acclimated ourselves to it this weekend.  As Dave was unpacking the box I thought, "This is a Kodak moment," and snapped this picture in his moment of bewilderment.  I think it is such a funny picture as he works with something so foreign to him.  We chose the Evenflo Sibby system because of safety reviews and we're loving how easy it is to manage.  I've been with people and tried helping collapse or connect their strollers and seats and you'd need a degree to operate the thing or lose your fingernails in the process.  We were joking that we'd time each other like they do in the Army disassembling and assembling their rifles!

And speaking of that baby, here is another pair of Hosenmatz for that fat little boy who is coming.  I used the same pattern as before with a sock yarn purchased at the fiber festival this year.  I went down one size in needles (these are 2.75 mm) to make the fabric a little denser and to slightly shrink up the dimensions and am quite pleased.  These are a nice neutral mottled colorway that should go with all sorts of tops.  I have one more fiber festival manly blues colorway I'd like to use up on this same pattern in the 3-6 month size.  After he outgrows those, I have a larger sized Drops pattern that uses DK and I have London yarn in mind for that one.  On the subject of travel and knitting, I'm happy to be using my Twilley's dpn's I purchased years ago in Ireland to finish this project  :)

I have not had time to participate in the Knitting Olympics this year or indeed watch much of any of the telecast, but I do know that Norway is a force to be reckoned with in these games! 

HEIA NORGE!

Do you have flour?

What about water, salt and yeast?  Then BOOM!  You've got bread!  

It is still very cold outside and sometimes you just need something comforting like fresh bread.  I was on call Friday and Saturday night which really took a toll on me this weekend.  David had the flu so I was taking care of him and yet trying to avoid him like the plague at the same time.  I felt like Sunday was my only true day off and spent much of it in the kitchen. 

Fresh French loaves are very easy and always welcome around here.  I mixed the dough and let it rise while I did the shopping.  I usually save time by making one fat loaf on a sheet pan but I got out my baguette pan for yesterday's bread.  When I backpacked years ago, I ate so much fabulous bread all over Europe and couldn't wait to get home and try to recreate those loaves.  I hunted for a perforated baguette pan as a trip souvenir but never found one over there so I ordered this one from somewhere when I got back.  I love the look of the late afternoon sun dappling the shaped dough and later the baked loaves.  Skinny loaves like this take only 15 minutes to bake in the oven and the upstairs was so wonderfully warmed by it's heat. 

I was digging in my cupboards earlier in the week and found some old Lipton Soup mixes with a website on them for recipes and decided to take a look.  They had a recipe for White Pizza Fondue and my interest was immediately piqued.  And it couldn't be easier!  I saw some sort of bacon soup/dip mix at Aldi which would also be good in this recipe.  I was even thinking that some cooked crumbled bacon might have been tastier than the pepperoni.  I always think pre-packaged dry mixes or sauces tend to under salt or season so I think this could have used a little salt to make it pop.

This is what we ate as a late lunch/afternoon snack yesterday.  It wasn't very colorful but it was carb heavy and warming and comforting.  Dave usually watches his sports TV in the downstairs living room but we sat together in the warmed upstairs yesterday and I put up with golf on my TV.  We don't see much of each other during the week and we avoided each other as much as we could on Friday and Saturday because Marek and I do not need to catch the flu.