So much happens so fast these days. I don’t have time to write as much as I used to, so I have to be more selective about what gets on the ‘blog, I mush numerous topics into 1 post, and I write less about each topic. Oh well.

Remember this photo?

If that was Before, this is After:

I still wonder how I managed to carry such a big baby. I did have Matt take a bare belly pic toward the end, I think it was the week Meredith was due. (If you’re curious, you can click here to see it [it's safe for work]. ETA: Someone has suggested that showing my bare pregnant belly on teh Internets was in “bad taste.” Now that I’ve gotten over the initial sting of having my feelings hurt, I must say that I heartily disagree. With my history, I am proud of that lumbering belly.)

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My garden is growing. I planted vegetable seeds, bulbs for onions, and potato chunks this year (no seedlings, except for the tomato plants), so I’m quite pleased to see the tiny dots that I tossed in the soil transform themselves into real vegetables.

The first radish. It was tasty!

Baby bok choi, radishes, scallions

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Lastly, I include a VERY good banana cake recipe.

I used the recipe here but omitted the streusel.

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 large egg
2 very ripe bananas, mashed
a splash of milk (1/8 c or slightly more)

Heat oven to 350°F. Spray a brownie pan (8×8 inch) with PAM baking spray. In a small bowl, thoroughly mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and beat well. Add banana and milk. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix well. Bake for ~45 minute or until tester comes out clean. Cool and serve.

I have a knitting FO to show - actually, it was completed right before Meredith was born. In fact, I had blocked it on a towel in the nursery the afternoon before labor started.

Note - this was not blocked with pins or wires, I washed it, spun out the water, and patted it flat. I used a ruler to ensure that the width was consistent throughout. The final dimensions were 60″ x 14″.

To recap, the yarn is spindle-spun Merino/Tencel (50/50) - read all about it here. To finish the shawl, I wove in the 2 ends. Here are some photos:

Even though I had tried to plan the size of the scarf to accommodate the amount of yarn, I still ran out with only 3 or 4 rows left to go. I didn’t want to order another 2 oz, so I stash dove - luckily, I surfaced with pink fiber and grey fiber, both 50/50 Merino/silk. I blended it coarsely by hand and spun something similar enough to finish the border.

I didn’t feel like dressing up to model the shawl myself, but I found a willing prop lying around the house.

Maybe Meredith will want to wear it when she is a little older. :)

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I previously promised you a parade of handmade baby clothes - first up is a handdyed, crocheted vest. Yarn is dyed bye Anne, vest made by Cathy. Isn’t it sweet?

Thanks to all who took the time to leave a comment or send an e-mail after Meredith was born. We treasured every note and were delighted by the warm welcome that she received.

Matt’s parents visited for the first 10 days after Meredith was born, and it was so nice to have their help around the home. But even with the extra hands, we have been super busy. I frankly had no idea that babies spent so much time eating. I knew feedings would be relatively frequent, but I didn’t realize that a single feeding could take as long as an hour (factor in time spent coaxing baby to wake up and eat, actual eating, burping, diaper changing, diaper changing again [she'll poop, we'll wait a few minutes for the second blast, change the diaper, and then she'll poop again seconds later], settling her down, etc). Lather, rinse, and repeat 8 to 10 times a day, and whoa, that’s the whole day and night.

Thankfully, she is a good sleeper (the Bockol sleep gene is strong in this one), and she’ll often go down for 2 or 3 hours at a time. She’s rarely awake when she’s not feeding, but I’m guessing that will change sooner or later.

Matt and I have spent hours staring at her sleeping. I never in a million years would have thought I’d be entranced by a sleeping baby, but what can I say… It’s oddly compelling.

First Fathers’ Day

I am recovering well from the surgery. The incision is healing appropriately (at a follow-up examination, an obstetrician declared that the incision was “beautiful”), and I am getting stronger every day. Incidentally, we learned that oxycodone makes me cry. I was taking it for a few days immediately after the surgery, but I realized I was getting super-emo - anything and everything made me resentful and sob like the world was ending. (The baby is awake - WAAAH!!! It’s 2 PM and I haven’t showered - WAAAH!!! The sky is blue - WAAAH!!!) I stopped taking it and came back to myself in 24 h - I much preferred to be in some pain but in my right mind.

The other funny thing - I gained about 34 (or slightly fewer?) lbs with the pregnancy. During labor, I had multiple episodes of freakishly low blood pressure - the standard way to deal with that is to administer a shot of epinephrine ephedrine (thanks, Laurie!) and a bolus of fluid (intravenous). My blood pressure would not stabilize, and the docs kept pumping me full of fluid, so much that after they pulled essentially 10+ lbs of baby and placenta out of me, I was only 4 lbs lighter when I came home! However, in the past 2 weeks, I’ve lost more than 25 lbs. I’m only 5 or 6 lbs above my pre-pregnancy weight now, although my belly is still 4″ wider around. (*sigh*) I tried on a pair of “fat pants” from last year, and alas, they do not even zip up all the way. I have quite the “mama belly,” soft and squooshy. Something is getting skinnier, but I can’t tell what!

Oh, and we have fiber content!

Here are those stay-on baby booties that I made a while back (blogged here). They fit!

With so many fiber-crafty friends (Real Life Friends and Imaginary Friends Inside the Computer), Meredith has a lot of wonderful handmade clothing. Stay tuned for the parade of baby knits!

Matt and I are pleased to tell you that we are now parents of a baby girl.

Meredith Kin Bockol
Date: June 2, 2008, 3:03 AM
Length: 22 inches (55 cm)
Weight: 9 lb, 7.5 oz (4,300 g)

Who would have guessed that I could have such a large baby?

We had numerous, unexpected complications during labor. After 28 hours, every option had been exhausted, and Meredith was born by cesarean delivery.

I guess we are a little tired. :)

Everyone is fine now, and we came home from the hospital on Wednesday.

Things are going well, but I won’t be posting a lot for a while. There’s a newborn baby in the house!

Thanks to everyone!

While we’re waiting for Baby to be born already, I thought I’d summarize what I was planning to do about its poop. :) It turns out that baby diapering is a pretty controversial subject, at least in the US. Lots of opinions abound, and no specific way is obviously superior. Like a lot of things in life, you just have to choose what you think will work for you.

We’ve had to guess about a few things and will surely be tweaking the system as we go forward, but here’s what we have set up. It’s sort of a balance between convenience and good environmental stewardship, what we can take care of at home, what the day care requires, and so on.

We’ll be using cloth diapers at home and disposable diapers at day care. The gDiaper supposedly is an absorbent, flushable, compostable diaper, made without chlorine, perfume, plastic, etc. (Sounds great, but the downside is that it’s kind of expensive.) It’s a 2-part system, made of an inner flushable piece and an outer fabric (reusable) cover. According to the Web site, the inserts should be OK for flushing in low-flow toilets. I’ve heard of some babies being allergic or sensitive to some component of the diaper, though, so we’ll see what happens.

I talked about sewing cloth diapers previously, and I’ve made up what is probably a 2-day supply (I think there’s 24 in there, or maybe 26?).

I was feeling mildly bad about not knitting more for Baby, but when I saw the diaper stash, I realized I’d been putting in many crafty hours for Baby’s sake (each diaper takes me several hours to construct). Hopefully, the extra gestational week or two doesn’t make Baby so big that it immediately outgrows this size diaper. That would suck. :b

At home, we’ll be using cloth wipes. (I’m guessing the day care will require disposable wipes, but I don’t remember right now.) I ordered “precision-cut” wipes from Wazoodle to make our own.

I sewed two fabric types together - one side is bamboo jersey (very absorbent but flimsy), the other side is cotton flannel (a little sturdier). The cotton is desperately prone to fraying, and it would function best if the edges were serged. However, I have only a sewing machine, so I just sewed a border (using tiny stitches) about 1/2″ from the edge and plan to let it fray.

Some of the printed flannels in the diaper wipe kit are downright bizarre. Check this one out:

Your what? Or is that Engrish?

Many folks make their own mix for wetting wipes. I’ll have to do a little more reading to figure out what concentrations are needed, but I think I’ll start by diluting some soap, oil, and aloe vera in water. We’ll spray this onto a wipe to clean up the kid and follow up with a wipe dipped in water.

A lot of wipe solution recipes call for essential oils like lavender oil or tea tree oil for their antimicrobial (or antifungal?) properties. However, after reading this article last year, I’m a little leery about exposing a prepubertal child to such oils every day. (Yes, yes, I’m sure your kids are just fine.) Feel free to consider me paranoid.

OK, so that’s how we’re planning to clean the baby. Now, how are we going to clean the diapers?

Everyone tells me that poop from a breast-fed baby is generally inoffensive and easy to clean. (Yeah. Tell that to Matt.) I suspect Baby will be in diapers long after it starts eating food, so we might as well start with a plan that we could stick with for a few years. I figured we’d use diaper liners to facilitate slopping poop into the toilet (I was not looking forward to hunching over the toilet, flushing, flushing, flushing), and then I learned that some parents use handheld showers, like what you might have at the kitchen sink, to rinse stuff off the diaper, directly into the toilet. These mini shower heads plug into the toilet water supply line and don’t require a plumber for installation. I researched a little more and stumbled across The Potty Pail:

This is actually quite clever. The bucket sits over a toilet at a slight angle (everything runs out the unplugged drain hole), it has a notch to hold the shower head, 2 hooks to let diapers “drip dry,” a lid to cover everything up, and a tray to go underneath when you need to set the bucket on the floor. The main advantages that I see are 2-fold: no need to bend over and flush diapers in the toilet, and the tall bucket walls minimize the amount of dilute poop spray going all over the bathroom. (Pause for a minute, ewww….) Yes, I suppose you could make a similar bucket yourself if you are handy in that way, but I am not, and I’m always willing to pay someone who can do better work than I can.

After the solids are rinsed off the diaper, it will be washed in a regular washing machine. (I imagine I’ll be doing a load of diapers every day, or maybe every other day after the baby goes to day care.) Many common laundry detergents apparently leave residues that eventually make fabric somewhat water repellent, so I ordered some Charlie’s Soap specifically for diaper washing, it has a good reputation in cloth diapering communities. Hopefully, it will work well for us.

The cloth diapers that we are starting with are the “all-in-one” style - meaning it’s a 1-piece diaper (just like a disposable, except you wash it), it has no separate diaper cover, no pockets to stuff with soakers, etc. Matt was not so enthusiastic about cloth diapering in the first place, so I wanted to make it as easy as possible for him. The problem with this style is that they are kind of thick (full of terry cloth and flannel), thus making them hard to wash and dry efficiently. Some discussion board folks have noted that it takes hours of high-heat drying time to get them truly ready to reuse, and I knew that wasn’t going to fly in our house (ours is an electric dryer).

Enter the Spin-X - this is the “grown-up” version of a swimsuit dryer. Anyone who has read my ‘blog for a while knows that I’ve wanted one of these gadgets for years - they are SO AWESOME for washing fleece, srsly. And now I have one, muhahahaha! (I said, as I pulled out my credit card, “But it’s for the Baby!!!”)

I love this thing. It doesn’t hold a lot at once (1/3 of a full laundry machine load), but each cycle is pretty fast (2-3 minutes long).

It’s a little tricky to stuff evenly (it makes a terrible racket if unbalanced), but I have been using it every week and am finally getting the hang of it. It is gobsmacking amazing how much water comes out of a load of laundry, especially if you are washing mostly cotton clothing - I can extract up to a HALF GALLON of water before I put the now-barely-damp clothing into the dryer. Anyway, I test-washed 24 diapers, and after extraction, they were bone dry with 1 standard dryer cycle. Fantastic.

The last part of our diapering plan is to attempt to train myself to notice when Baby is about to pee or poop. I know this sounds pretty far fetched (I certainly thought so when I first heard of it), but some parents can anticipate Baby’s potty needs with considerable accuracy and plop the kid over a sink, tub, bowl, whatever, just in time to “catch” it. (If you’d like to know more, it’s called “infant elimination communication,” and you can start reading about it here.) We bought a teeny tiny trainer toilet.

Oh, come on, isn’t it cute?

I don’t have great confidence in my ability to do this, but I figure if I can save even 1 diaper a day, that’s 7 a week that I won’t need to wash. Matt doesn’t think it’ll work, but he’s game enough to try it with me. Maybe between the 2 of us, we can figure it out.

And finally, this has nothing to do with diapering, but I wanted to talk about 1 more thing. I got a really wonderful gift from the ladies who attend the local knit night - it’s almost some kind of rite of passage for a knitting mother-to-be - check out this handknit blanket!

Everyone knit squares, and they had a party in April to assemble the blanket and crochet an edging. It’s wonderful. I imagine Baby and I will have many nights sleepily rocking in the gliding chair, snuggled under this blanket.

Baby is still in utero and seems to be healthy. I’m fine, just disappointed to be running late. Induction is scheduled for June 9 (42w1d). Pray that Baby comes before then.

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It’s raining here, and if I were at home today, I’d be having this for lunch:

(As it were, that was my lunch sometime last week!)

Nubby tomato soup (modified from a recipe in this book)
2 cans whole tomatoes in juice (28 oz per can)
1 1/2 T brown sugar
4 T butter
4 shallots, sliced thin
1 T tomato paste
pinch of ground allspice
2 T all-purpose flour
2 c chicken stock (low sodium)

Drain tomatoes, reserving all of the juice (mine was slightly less than 3 c).

Heat oven to 450 F, move oven rack to the upper-middle position. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil. Open up the tomatoes, remove any skin and seeds, and place on the baking sheet in a single layer. Sprinkle with brown sugar and bake until tomatoes are dry, 30-45 minutes (some of my tomatoes were slightly charred on the edges).

Melt butter in a saucepan. Add shallots, tomato paste, and allspice. Saute until shallots are soft. Add flour and stir constantly - this will turn very thick. Add chicken stock little by little, stirring like mad to prevent lumps. After all the chicken stock is added, stir in tomato juice and roasted tomatoes. Bring to a gentle boil, reduce to a simmer, and let the flavors meld.

Take the pan off the heat. Bring out your stick blender and have at it! (Or put it through a regular blender.) The final texture will not be silky smooth, it will have a little nubbiness to it. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you like, stir in a little cream before serving.

I ate it with a ham and cheese sandwich on whole-grain bread and a lot of baby arugula leaves. I’m not usually a fan of bitter greens, but arugula in a sandwich hits me just right.

Oh, c’mon. You think I’d be talking about yarn if the Baby were here?

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I recently finished spinning a second lot of Merino-Tencel yarn for the pink lace stole. To recap - I’d picked a lacy scarf pattern to match the yardage that I originally had, but I ended up reworking the design (wider and longer) to be a much larger stole. I knew I’d have to double the amount of yarn needed, and I ordered more fiber (same colorway, different dye lot). Anyway, that fiber is now yarn.

Three skeins (1 not pictured): 1) 21.6 g, 170.0 y; 2) 20.9 g, 150.3 y; 3) 9.9 g, 66.0 y
Total weight and yardage: 52.4 g (1.85 oz), 386.3 y; equivalent to ~3340 ypp

Now, if you compare that with the previous batch - ~475 yards of 2-ply laceweight (53 g or 1.87 oz), equivalent to ~4,000 ypp - you might note that the yarn is a bit denser the second time around. That was a deliberate choice, actually, although I assure you that the grist of the yarn is quite similar for both.

I spun the 2 lots differently because I was interested to see how the color variations would play out. The first, less-dense batch was spun from the fold. I didn’t draft the top at all, just pulled puffs of it off the full thickness of top and set it to spindling in a woolen manner. The second lot was spun by peeling thin strips from the top and spindling in a worsted manner. With time and wear, I’m guessing that one half will be slightly fuzzier than the other. The spun-from-the-fold yarn has very long lengths of a single color, whereas the spun-from-strips yarn has a more homogeneous appearance because the stripes are shorter.

I think I like the upper half better - no huge swaths of dark grey.

If the rough calculations I did last night are accurate, I have just enough yardage remaining to complete the second border. (I did have to rip out about 30 rows of the body [~2 h of knitting time], oh well, but I’d rather not have to spin a third lot of fiber.) If Baby stays put a little longer, I might have a chance to complete this project in the next week!

I’m guessing why you’re checking in - but not yet! Maybe soon? (EDD is this Sunday [or Tuesday next week, depending on who you believe].)

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Corn muffins, my arch-nemesisisisis….

I am still baking up corn muffins in hopes of finding one that meets Matt’s expectations. I thought I’d try a recipe from Baking Illustrated. I spied this cookbook a few weeks ago at a used book store but didn’t buy it, thinking that I’d be too busy to bake pretty soon, and I was sure it would get scooped up quickly by another baker. Well, we went back to the store last week and it was STILL THERE. I took it as a sign and scored a pristine book at half price ($17.50). Woot!

So, corn muffins!

2 c unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 c yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt (I used kosher salt)
2 large eggs
3/4 c sugar
8 T (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 c sour cream (I used a 50% reduced fat version)
1/2 c milk (I used skim)

If you can, melt butter in the microwave using a 2 c measure with pouring spout.

Move a rack to the middle of the oven and heat oven to 400 F. Place paper baking cups in a standard 12-muffin pan, spray paper liners with Pam for baking (mix of oil and flour).

Combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk to aerate and combine ingredients thoroughly.

In a separate medium bowl, whisk eggs and sugar until thick and light in color (a couple minutes). Pour melted butter in a steady stream with 1 hand as you whisk frantically with the other hand. Scrape out the last of the butter using a spatula.

In the same measuring cup, combine sour cream and milk. Whisk until roughly homogeneous. Start whisking the egg mix and slowly pour the sour cream and milk in a steady stream, whisking until everything is smooth.

Add wet ingredients to dry. I used a “folding” maneuver (like folding egg whites into batter) to combine the 2 until everything was evenly moist. Avoid overmixing if possible, this flattens the muffin top.

Fill muffin tin evenly. This seemed like a lot of batter to me - each cup was nearly full. Bake for 9 minutes, turn the pan around, and bake for 9 minutes longer. Muffin tops should be domed and golden, a skewer inserted into the center will come out clean. Cool muffins in the tin for 5 minutes, move to a wire rack, cool for another few minutes, and serve warm.

I thought the muffins came out looking very nice. The tops were domed (unlike some of my previous muffin attempts), the texture was light, the sweetness level was appropriate. I’d make this recipe again. Best of all, Matt liked these!

Yep, still pregnant. But I’ve been having more frequent and harder contractions since Friday…

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I’ve been going through a “quick dinner recipes” cookbook (this one, by the fine folks who bring us Cooks Illustrated). To be honest, I’m not crazy about this cookbook - the recipes by and large can be prepared in 30 minutes, but the meals are a little boring - sort of standard American food (read: solid, meat-heavy fare), nothing adventurous. They’re not miracle recipes that taste like you spent hours slaving in the kitchen - they are rapidly prepared, taste OK, and make enough leftovers for lunch the next day. I feel like we get out what I put into it. That said, we did like one of their egg dishes that I made last week.

This is a Mexican-inspired dish with veggies, chorizo sausage, and cheese. This is my interpretation of the dish (I halved the recipe but doubled the veggies, if that makes any sense.)

6 large eggs
3 T half-and-half
salt and black pepper
2 T unsalted butter, softened
1 t chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced
1 small garlic clove, minced
6 oz chorizo sausage, cut into thin slices
1 red bell pepper, cored, sliced thin
3 scallions, white and green parts separated, sliced thin
1/4 c sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
Slices of toast (thick)

Thoroughly combine eggs, half-and-half, a scant 1/2 t of salt, and some black pepper (I like a lot of pepper and probably added about 1/4 t). Set aside.

In a small dish, mash the butter and chiles together until homogeneous (I used a fork for this). Set aside.

In a nonstick skillet, add chorizo and cook until the fat begins to render. Add pepper and white scallion parts, saute until scallion browns. Set aside.

Wipe skillet with a paper towel, add a little of the chipotle butter and the eggs on medium heat. Using a spatula to lift and fold egg curds to keep them fluffy - do not overcook, this can happen rather quickly. Remove from heat.

Start toasting the bread. Fold the chorizo and vegetables into the eggs. Sprinkle with green scallion parts and cheddar cheese. Butter toast with remaining chipotle butter. Plate eggs with toast and serve immediately.

Matt didn’t like the chipotle-buttered toast, but he did like the rest of the meal. He commented that it would be “even better” if I had cooked potatoes along with it - like home fries. That’s actually a pretty good idea - had there been cooked potatoes in the fridge, I definitely would have gone for it.

Nope, no baby. Not yet. Still more than a week away from the EDD.

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I enjoyed myself at the Shepherd’s Harvest festival last weekend. It has expanded considerably since the previous year - the vendor areas went from 2 barns to part of a third, which I think is great. I saw more indie dyers and a lot of needlefelting supplies, but few people were selling spinning wheels (or spindles, for that matter). Even though I knew about 10 or so people who were going to the festival, I didn’t see anyone I recognized.

The weather was cool and rainy, so I wore my Noro wrap in lieu of a coat. Nothing like wearing a great big handknit to a wool festival! About 5 people stopped me to ask if I’d made it, what kind of yarn it was, etc, and that was great fun. Matt said to me later that while I was busy shopping (and he was following me around totally bored, the poor thing), he noticed people nodding to each other and pointing at my shawl.

“Are you sure they weren’t pointing at my ginormous belly?”
“Nope, usually your back was to them, I’m pretty sure it was the shawl.”

This what I bought:

I bought a mini orifice hook to fit my small-orifice wheels. (I discuss making the spinning wheel orifice smaller here.) I also bought 50 g of hand dyed bombyx silk top from Lone Tree Wools (no Web site). I’m planning to use this in a blend, but it’s so far down the project queue, it’ll probably be next year before I get to it.

The two big bumps of roving are from Handspun by Stefania - madder and osage dyed Corriedale and silk. If you remember, I bought a bit last year. I enjoyed spinning it so much, I decided to get enough for a complete project. This time, I bought just over 1 lb. Of course, the dyelots are a little different, but I think I can overcome that.

I had (in theory, anyway) wanted to finish spinning the fiber I purchased last year before this year’s show. The pygora, as I mentioned previously, is at least in the plying stage. Not so for the Stefania roving. I started spinning this on vacation last year, put it on hold, and only recently pulled it out again. I’ve completed 1 bobbin!

The 2 dyelots are shown in the picture - it’s hard to see, but the new stuff is a little less intense red. (Last year’s lot is almost Chinese-flag red.) But it still is pretty close. I am stripping the roving into thin pieces and spinning long draw. This will eventually be a 3-ply yarn, 1 ply of last year’s fiber, 2 plies of this year’s fiber. That way, I should have at least 24 oz of homogeneous yarn… hopefully enough for a full-size project.