Knitters Connection

Things have been quiet here on the blog because things have been not quiet in our lives. We've been so busy! Between the garden going into full swing, weeds constantly needing to be beaten back, sickness, and a visit from my friend Gwen there hasn't been time to sit down and chronicle it all. This is week two of wellness and I am so glad to be off antibiotics. I had to have three courses of them for separate issues (a sinus infection, an ear infection, then another sinus infection) and Josh had to have two. Maegwin had a fever of 102 at one point but fought it off like the tough cookie she is. I missed my sister, Missy's, graduation because I had to stay home with the sickie but that's ok.

We've been working on solids though they are more for play than true nutritional value. Maegwin has mastered eating about a tablespoon of food and has tried rice cereal, avocado, banana, butternut squash, and yesterday sucked on a brussels sprout. We're also working on drinking from a cup and have been using one of my smaller milk storage containers to fill with water. She has a lot of fun with it.


She had her six month checkup yesterday and her stats were:
length: 26 inches
weight: 15 lbs 15 oz
head circumference: 44 cm
The doctor said her head circumference shot up from last time so we have to monitor it and measure next month and call her so she can chart it. Right now she said it isn't a cause for alarm since it is in same percentile as the rest of her body. It would be more of a concern if we had another spurt. Of course I'm imagining the worst now but she said she is very active and alert and is right on target with milestones so it should be fine.

For the last two weeks my friend Gwen was visiting from the Bay Area. She came out to sell her yarn at Knitters' Connection-a local yarn show. I was quite disappointed that this year the show was only half the size of last year and many of the vendors I loved last year didn't come back. I was hoping to see Jennie the Potter there again and buy one of her pendants or mugs or yarn bowls as gifts. Oh well, I'm not sure I would go to the show next year. Gwen signed up to get on the waiting list for the Wool Gathering in September and I volunteered to work her booth with Mom if she gets in. Hopefully that will help her make a profit this year and it's a fun show. Maegwin got to help out on Saturday at the show after our baby yoga class. She kept knocking the cards off the table so we gave her a sample sock to play with.

She must have taken the Ice Cream Sundae name of the yarn literally.

Then she posed with it-all her idea. I didn't help at all.

She decided that was pretty funny, probably because we were all laughing so hard.

I'm pretty sure we were bringing more people to the booth but I don't know if we distracted from the yarn.

My mom got in on the baby action. I think she was probably Gwen's best customer at the show.

Daddy came to pick her up after working for a while on Saturday and they gnawed on his badge together.

After we were done breaking down the show we all went to Buca di Beppo for dinner. I can't recommend the place enough if you are in the Columbus area. They serve family style and the food is delicious. We all shared one dessert and it was enough for Mom, Aunt Lynn, Gwen, Josh, and I to all have some. Maegwin had a great time playing with spoons though she did hit herself in the eye once.

Gwen gave me some yarn for helping out at the show. I got some of her Mousse yarn that I think I will start with to knit the French Quarter socks next month. I have to finish up this Hippo toy I'm making for Maegwin and I'm still going at it on Josie's blanket.

I also learned how to crochet while Gwen was here and started a summer top with some cotton/tencel yarn in white. It's the one on the third row down all the way to the right.

Garden fence complete

The garden fence is complete and today we had the dogs in there. They loved it! Yesterday while Josh worked, Maegwin and I hung out on a blanket. We alternated between sunglasses on and off (though I got no photos of her with them on). The sun hat doesn't really fit so I had to roll it back to keep it off her face.
First we rolled off the blanket.

Then spied the bright green, tasty looking grass.

Mmm, don't mind if I do!

Into the mouth it goes...

Ooh I'll try that blade next!

Conclusion-delicious.


Obviously staying on the blanket alone was not an option so we layed together and looked up at the leaves.

They were pretty cool.

Then we snoozed for a bit in the shade.


All in all, it was a great time outside. She took a really long nap today so we got the chicken wire laid out to have on the ground and fold up along the fence. We also twist tied it all to stakes on one side. It got ridiculously hot though and we came in. I have no pictures-I was working too hard. We'll take some when the brutal sun goes away. We bought a bunch of plants to put out. The plan is to line the fence with marigolds and geraniums to repel pests. We also have some foxglove to discourage deer. There is sedum that we will put out probably along the far side of the house to start spreading over the area where the geothermal pit was dug. We also bought shasta daisies to fill in the area under the tree next to the paver patio. Between those, the black-eyed susans, and the cone flowers the area will look great by the end of the summer.

vegetables & such

We were all laid low by sickness. I had a sinus infection which after my first course of antibiotics turned into an ear infection bad enough that I almost ruptured my ear drum. I'm just able to hear out of my left ear now. Josh had an upper respiratory infection and Maegwin had a perpetual runny nose. Good thing we all see the same doctor. Now that we are feeling better I wanted to catch you all up on the happenings of the house.

This week our seedlings have started exploding from their little containers. It is so funny how we went from just a few random brussels sprouts to literally tons of plants. Our tomatoes, green beans, soy beans, peas, beets, and cabbages are up. We are still waiting on the lima beans, summer squash, butternut squash, and black beans to peep up their lazy heads. I think I wasn't watering quite enough at first to really soak the seed coats on the harder beans so they are behind. We are a bit delayed from stuff we would buy at the nursery but honestly we had a late spring this year so we will probably also have a late fall. Or so I hope...

Josh finished building all the raised beds and they look really good.

We've already planted our leeks and onions. It is amazing how quickly they shot up. We got a medley this year so we can decide which ones we like the best to plant in the future. There were so many onions in the set that we could not plant them all. The closer plants in this photo are the leeks and the further ones are the onions.

And for some close ups....leeks:

and onions...

We also FINALLY had a weekend without rain so we used our newly acquired tiller (it's an attachment for our weedwhacker, isn't that cool?!) to till all the beds and plant our butter lettuce and seeds for arugula, romaine lettuce, more butter lettuce, and spinach. Crossing our fingers that all the subsequent rain will make them come up soon.

The strawberries and asparagus are in the perennials bed. As you can see, there has been some nibbling already. Need to get that critter fence up!


Yeah, yeah you say...all well and good but what about that adorable baby? We're sick of all these garden pictures! Patience is a virtue my friends. The heavy snow and lack of below zero temps for much of the winter made our herb garden (and the weeds) go nuts! Our chives, oregano, thyme, and mint all survived and are spreading like wild.



Maegwin and I have done two weeks of Mommy & Baby yoga and she LOVES it! The whole time she is rolling over, laughing, chattering to the other babies. It is so nice and I plan to keep going with it for as long as we can. The first week three of the other women invited me to breakfast and we hung out for a few hours at a restaurant called Northstar in Clintonville. It was really good and I'd never have known it was there if I didn't go with them. So funny because it is just down the road from the farmers' market we go to regularly. It has been open for three weeks now but we haven't made it out there yet. I was going to go this week but the weather is crap and I didn't want to trudge around in the rain.
Maegwin graduated to the exersaucer and she has so much fun in there. Her favorites are what I call the "baby slots" and this sort of gummy circle with a star on it. She bends the stick down and gnaws on that thing like there is no tomorrow.

We also tried solids a bit this week. She was intrigued by the avocado though I'm not sure if she liked it or was just puzzled by it.

The rice cereal on the other hand was a total no go. She hated it and made very unhappy faces.

We concluded that she probably is not quite ready so we're going to wait a few weeks and try again.

In knitting news, I finished a little sun hat for Maegwin to wear. It was quick and used a skein of yarn that was the second one I ever bought.

I'm also making progress on the wedding afghan for Josie. I'm about 3/4 of a way through the first repeat. I plan to do four repeats of the pattern plus a border to match the one on the bottom. It is actually five feet across so I only took a photo of one section.

Why yes, those are little cupcake stitch markers. I made a little visit to the Wee Ones store at Etsy. If you knit and haven't looked, go now. Her stuff is too cute! I also learned how to spin. Ok, I attempted to learn how to spin. All the history of spinning was very interesting. We learned how to prep fibers, how to spin, and how to ply yarn once you have spun singles. Here is my sad little skein of yarn which took me 30 minutes and a lot of frustration.

It's not very even but I'm told that once I get better I won't be able to spin like this again though I might want to.

I might buy a drop spindle in October when we go to the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs but I probably won't be buying a wheel anytime soon. I just can't justify the expense when I'm not very good. What's that you say? You won't get good if you never practice on one? Probably true, but I'm told that all the skills you use with a drop spindle are the same as for a wheel and they are more affordable. I'll put that on my wishlist with a sewing machine, eh?

We got an estimate on getting the final bit of knob & tube wiring taken out of the house and it came in under what we thought which is great. The electrician is coming tomorrow morning and while he's at it he's going to replace the rest of our non-grounded outlets for free! We had enough extra from our budget that we got an estimate on getting the ductwork extended upstairs for our geothermal. Right now, the upstairs gets a bit hot in summer and cold in winter (as Mom & Laura can attest to) so we want to get that all fixed up before Maegwin moves up there. That bid was very reasonable also so we just need to get it scheduled. It will also add value to the house to have a central heating/air flow.

I think that is all the interesting happenings here. Tune in next time for the critter fencing and the firepit improvement. Dun dun duh!

When will it stop raining on weekends?

So sorry I have been remiss in posting a blog, we just get busy doing other things and these things take time. We finally got to start our seeds a few weekends ago. We also planted our onions, leeks, and strawberries. Something has been nibbling on the strawberries already so we need to get a move on getting the critter fencing up. I think we've found a good compromise solution with a meshy sort of fencing for the top and then chicken wire on the bottom and fanning out onto the ground. That is supposed to deter those animals that would dig underneath to get in. So far the damage is minimal and we didn't expect to get berries this year-we more planted those to start establishing the patch. The seeds are doing well under their light. So far we have a few cherry tomatoes, soy beans, brussels sprouts, sugar snap peas, and broccoli. Hopefully more will come up as the week goes on.

As you can see we used a lot of egg cartons we had saved. They work great for keeping in the moisture and they also stack! It is definitely a technique I would recommend and we'll be using it again in the future. I just wish we had thought of it sooner and saved more. We eat a lot of eggs. Our potatoes will definitely be ready to go out by the time we hit our frost free date. They have some pretty long sprouts already. They look like some kind of weird alien life form.


We took Maegwin for her four month check up. She is doing really well and is still measuring off the charts on height at 25.5 inches and I believe is somewhere around the 75th percentile on weight at 14 lbs 3 oz. The doctor said she is growing like a weed! We finally caught a video of her laughing and it cracks me up everytime I watch it.

and more...


In knitting news, I finished a sweater that had been a year in the making. I wore it to work and decided it was really about three inches shorter than I'd really like it to be. I dutifully ripped out the bind off and added three more inches. I decided I should wash it again to even out the stitches and block it. Something happened in the washer which I still don't really have an explanation for. I've washed countless knitted items in there on handwash. I have a front loading washer and I use wool wash. Long story short it felted...all except for those three inches I added on. So now I have an unwearable sweater. I was so upset about it. Once it sits in time out for a while maybe I will cut it up and make a pillow or something. Right now I don't want to see it.

After that incident I had to do something fast to make me feel better about knitting so I cast on for a sun hat for Maegwin. That turned out great and was just the one day project I needed to use up some cotton that had literally been in my stash since I learned to knit.

The yarn is Blue Sky Organic Cotton and the pattern is a free one called On the Sunny Side. (Ravelry linked for those so inclined). Still working on the wedding afghan and it is coming along. I had to take a break to let my thumb heal which is now totally back to normal thanks to a cortisone injection.

I was down with a sinus infection last week and am slowly improving with the help of antibiotics. They really are wonderful things. I'm so used to not being able to take any medicine now that it was almost luxurious to have my symptoms addressed. I'm feeling better just in time for the start of Mommy & Baby yoga on Saturday. I'm really excited. May is a super busy month overall for me. I'm signed up to learn how to spin on May 16th, Mothers' Day is this weekend, stamp camp was last weekend, and somewhere in there we will be filling out the garden more. I'll probably blog tomorrow with pictures of what we do in the garden. In the meantime, I leave you all with this cuteness to ponder.

Getting through spring

Whew we've been so busy the last two weeks! We finished building the raised beds and put out cardboard on the new beds to start killing the grass and get the worms to move in. Saving all those boxes from buying baby stuff paid off. We also saved all our egg cartons and toilet paper tubes for the last several months. They made great little seed starting containers! I spent last Saturday planting seeds for squash, tomatoes, parsnips, black beans, sugar snap peas, and beets. We set our seed potatoes out to start chitting and they are taking off like crazy. Mom came up with Sarah on Sunday and it was very helpful so we could get some things done outside while Maegwin was visiting with Grammy. Our leeks and onions are now filling up one bed and Josh turned over the perennials bed so we can put in our strawberry and asparagus plants hopefully this weekend. We also put in some more phlox around the pond and a really pretty lungwort plant. I'm amazed at all the perennials we planted last year. They are coming up so wonderfully and fuller than last year. Hopefully we can plant our lettuce, spinach, corn, and cabbage this weekend.

Maegwin is also getting so fun. She is pushing up and creeping.

She also figured out how to pull her little frog toy and make him sing. She is so funny...she will sit there with her little hand on it and wait for the song to end before pulling it again. We were dancing when she activated it so now she looks at us each time she pulls it as though saying "Dance, monkey! Dance!"

She's really grown into some of the stuff her Grammy knit for her which is great, but at the same time sad. I told her she has to stay small a bit longer. :p She wore this sweater last week and looked so big:

She also wears her little flower hat a lot and it is perfect for spring since it is made from cotton so not as hot as the wool ones she has.

Friday is her four month well baby check-up so she'll get her next set of vaccinations and we'll find out how much longer she is and how much she weighs. I'm excited!

Our wild yard

Last weekend we worked on getting the raised beds done. I spent a lot of time pacifying Maegwin but I did lift a few boards. I can really tell whenever I do manual labor how much strength I lost not being able to work out more strenuously while pregnant. Lifting 40-50 pounds used to be no big deal but now it is a struggle. Oh well, small steps I guess. We took a few pictures throughout the day as things progressed. We opted to just do the first two layers since we didn't really have the funds to build them all the way up. It will still be nice though and we love how the beds are more delineated. We're losing about a square foot on each but we are also adding three new beds this year for a total of 11.3 (a smaller perennial bed).
Here's a shot with two of them completed:

Maegwin and I chilled on the picnic table for a bit. We moved it closer to the house. Actually we found this picnic table back in the trees behind our house. I'm guessing at some point someone didn't want it but it is in really great shape and we love it.

Then we went for a walk around the yard to see all the spring flowers coming up. One of the things I love best about our yard is that we don't do much at all with the lawn part. We let whatever grows come up. No planting grass seed and fertilizing and agonizing over how green it is. This results in some wonderful surprises and lots of forage for local wildlife. One whole section of our yard looks like a meadow full of beautiful tiny pink and white blossoms.

The bees were already hard at work in this section. We have a bunch of honeybees that live in our backyard and some bumblebees that live in our shed. According to wiki, they should find a new spot every year but apparently they really like our shed. Josh was pondering killing them off because they do kind of swoop around when we are out gardening but they are endangered and great pollinators. They are also not aggressive so we are going to let them be. Who wouldn't want pollinators living right next to their plants? This photo also gives a good idea of how many different kinds of little plants make up our yard.

There are also grape hyacinths everywhere! I love these little flowers and each one I see makes me smile. We put out lots of tulip bulbs last year too that are just starting to bud so hopefully in another week we'll have a beautiful show of color.

Our forsythia bushes are putting on quite a show this year. The one in the back is covered in flowers. The ones by the driveway aren't as bloom covered but we also didn't really trim them last year. We will this year as soon as they start leafing out. That way they will set their buds on the newer growth.

We also have this mystery plant that comes up every year. I have no idea what it is but it lives by our creek near the daffodils. I'm guessing it must be something native to Ohio. Clues anyone?

By the end of our meanderings, Josh had quite a few more beds done. He also hacked down all our wild blackberries and mowed over the patch. We want to put in some other berry bushes there or a small garden area for Maegwin once she gets a little older. I used to really love planning out my little garden and growing flowers from seeds when I was a child so I want her to have the same experience.


This week was pretty hectic with work. It was my first quarter end back and I ended up pulling a few long nights to get things done. Some of the things I had passed off needed to be fixed so that took extra time as well. Maegwin went home with Daddy every day and she did great. One little victory this week was that I fit into one of my size 4 pre-pregnancy skirts! It was a little snug by the end of the day but I didn't care. I was really happy about it. I can't do the pants yet but I'm definitely getting closer. Maegwin and I are starting a Mommy & baby yoga class on May 8th that goes for six weeks on Saturday mornings. I'm looking forward to doing yoga again and it will be a nice thing to share with her. My friend in Columbus is also enrolled so I'll know someone starting out. Maybe I'll be able to meet some other moms and socialize. I'm super excited about it.

This weekend will be all about cleaning out the weeds from our bed with the pond, finishing up the raised beds, and getting our leeks and onions planted out. We got stuff to start our indoor seedlings that need a full month's germination so we'll start those and probably set our seed potatoes out to start sprouting. We may also put up the critter fencing depending on how much time we have. So much to do!

Thanks to all the family for the little Easter presents. Maegwin really LOVES the Hug and Miss Spider's Tea Party books. I'm working on sending out thank you notes, but as you can see things have been a bit crazy here. We're having a good time with it though. Maegwin is now rolling over from her back to her tummy and she pushes herself up to 90 degrees and is doing a bit of creeping. Her four month well baby check up is on April 23rd so then we can find out how much more she has grown. I know I've definitely put some of her clothes away that no longer fit her and we're into the six month stuff I bought at Once Upon a Child before she was born.

We bought our tickets for Josie's wedding so Josie, you can't change the date now!  hehe  We're excited to see the Bay Area again and honestly we've been talking a lot about all the food we'll eat again.  Ohio leaves something to be desired in terms of ethnic foods.