Crystal Madrilejos

Hi hi! Apologies all around for being MIA. Finally getting around to sitting in front of the computer to do… computer-y things. Since Ellis was born (2 and a half weeks ago!), I have been solely connected via my iPhone and I can’t stand typing on that thing. My main interwebbing activity has been done through Instagram.

Slowly, slowly, slowly I’m getting around to emailing people back and such, but we’re still finding our balance around these parts when it comes to free time. Free time meaning free-of-baby-and-toddler-time, which is basically non-existent. I’m constantly having ideas for things that I want to blog about, but have resorted to just making lists of things to blog about.

Also, my grey hairs have seem to multiplied exponentially in such a short period of time. I wonder why…

So, without further ado, I’m happy to introduce the newest member of the clan, Ellis:

It seems like just yesterday we were announcing Q’s arrival. *Sigh*… they grow up so fast!

-c + a + Q

While we’re waiting, waiting, waiting for Baby Girl to arrive, I’ve been doing what is normal for anyone who is mega-preggers – taking on huge projects that are made infinitely more difficult by my huge belly and constant body pains. That’s normal, right? Right?!

So, my current obsession and project in the works: crocheted rag rugs! We’ve been in the process of fixing up the kids’ room – which I hope to post about soon – and one of the rugs we have in their room is just too big, in my opinion. So, of course, I decided to make a new one. You know, before the baby comes. Ha!

I was trolling Ravelry (if you are a knitter or crocheter and aren’t on Ravelry, do yourself a favor and check it out now!) and came across this amazing crocheted Calico Rag Rug by Gillian Hamilton which inspired me to give it a shot. I did a little more research and also came across King Soleil which has a whole page dedicated to her process of creating rag rugs and tips and tricks she’s learned through her experience. She mainly uses upcycled materials, which really appeals to me since the amount of material it takes to make one rug can get pricey. I’m thinking a thrift store run is in order!

However, this current one that I’m working on (pictured above) is made from muslin that I purchased at the local fabric store. Basically all you have to do is find any sort of woven material you want, cut it into long strips and start crocheting in a circle and, Voila! you have a rug!

So far my rug is about 2 feet in diameter and there are few things I’ve learned:

l. Crocheting on a large scale is a workout. Think less wrist movement and more entire arm movement. Multiple times I’ve had to ask Andrew, “Is it hot in here?” Nope, just doing my crochet workout.

2. Working with such large pieces of fabric yarn requires the largest crochet hook I’ve ever seen. It’s obscenely large and slightly embarrassing. The hook I’m using for this particular rug is a 15mm – Q hook.

3. I’m a pretty experienced crocheter and I still had some problems with the rug getting wonky and wavy. I’m still not exactly sure why this was happening but with some minor adjusting I was able to straighten it out and it seems to be back on track.

I will post more pictures when the rug is done, which hopefully will be sooner than later.

-c.

Image via paisleyjacket.tumblr.com

We’re still here – “Still one person,” as my boss likes to say.

This past week has been a swirling mass of craziness. So just an update on the progress of Baby Girl. And by progress, I mean the lack thereof.

Around 37 weeks or so we had an ultrasound (Side Note: I’ve had more than the “normal” amount of ultrasounds due to the fact that I have Graves Disease AND Gestational Diabetes. Sheesh.) and as it happens, during this ultrasound we find that the baby had turned head up after being head down for most of the pregnancy. So, this was bad news for me and major blow to my plans of having a VBAC and trying for a natural childbirth. Though my doctor assured me that there was still plenty of time for the baby to turn, we went ahead and scheduled a c-section for the 22nd (yesterday), just in case.

Fast forward to last Wednesday and all through that night the baby was moving so much I thought that I might be in labor. It was really painful, but I ended up falling asleep and waking up and baby was still chillin’ in utero. So, I called my doctor to be sure that the pain I was feeling was okay. They asked me to come in that afternoon, just to get it checked out and, lo-and-behold, the baby had turned and that’s what I was feeling all night!

I had my 39 week ultrasound on Monday and baby is still head down, so that means no scheduled c-section! And as happy as I am about not having to have a c-section, there was part of me that had already accepted it and was consoling myself with the idea that she would be here sooner than later. So, now I’m an emotional and physical wreck. Having to wait around until whenever the baby decides she is ready to arrive is torturous. Could be tonight… could be my due date (Aug. 27th)… could be a week AFTER my due date, eeek!

So, of course I have to occupy my time. I’m still going into the office – which is difficult, but a good way to keep my mind occupied.

And of course, just like when I was pregnant with Q, I have multiple projects in the works that I hope to post about soon!

-c.

Every year we do something different to stake up our tomato plants. These things get seriously unruly. I think the first year we planted a TON of pea tomatoes (never again) and we didn’t even try to stake those. When harvest time came, it was a total mess. Andrew describes the experience as sounding like you were stepping on bubble wrap. Just tiny little pea tomatoes everywhere popping underfoot. Til this day, we still have volunteer tomatoes popping up all over the garden from those little guys.

This year has been a good year for the tomatoes. Even the New York Times is talking about what a great year tomatoes are having. Apparently we aren’t the only ones enjoying this phenomenon.

For us personally, I think it also has to do with the fact that we weren’t overly ambitious in the garden this year. Yes, a lot of stuff just downright failed. But I didn’t feel overwhelmed with a huge garden and its never ending to-do list. The tomatoes were growing like crazy and the only thing on my list was to stake them up. Easy-peasy.

In a couple hours over the weekend, I was able to fashion this bad boy out of some sticks that we had lying around the yard, some wood tomato stakes from some previous year’s experiment, and some string. It’s totally got that “a face only a mother could love” look to it, but it works nicely and it’s sturdy.

This photo was taken exactly one year ago today – 08/08/11 – and I noticed it was taken on 8th Street! And look at little Q – his hairdo is hilarious.

This was from our yearly trip back to our home-away-from-home, New York City! We miss so many things about living there, mainly our friends. But also everything else the city has to offer – convenience, restaurants, sidewalks, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I love where we live now. Nothing beats living close to family. With that said, I think not being able to take our yearly trip to NYC this year has made me wistful about city living. Maybe we’ll still be able to make the trip after the baby comes. I’m sure she will love it as much as Andrew, Q and I do.

Also, if you missed last year’s “One Year Ago” post, you can view it here. Aaahhh baby boy!

-c.

Finally! A million years later and I’m done with Baby Girl’s blanket. And yes, 3 weeks (or less) to go and we still don’t have a name picked out.

This is actually the only blanket that I’ve ever knitted. In the past, I’ve only made wearable things. I always thought making a blanket would just take too long. It did take a lot of time to make, but in the end, I’m happy that I did it.

Some details about the project you can read about in my previous blanket update. But just to reiterate, I got the pattern from the Purl Bee blog. I didn’t use any fancy yarns, just whatever they had at the local craft store. Next time, I think I will invest in some better quality yarn but I wanted to be sure I could commit to an entire blanket before shelling out cash for the good stuff. My color inspiration came from these blocks by Ambrosia Girl, but obviously I changed them up a bit. It was really the jumping off point. And since we are having a girl, I figured it would be good to balance out all the pink that, I’m sure, will be in her future.

-c.

It’s been an… interesting… year in the garden.

We’ve scaled back a bit and tried some new things this year with varying amounts of success. We only did 2.5 plots and we did them lasagna garden style. It started off well, though we were a bit late getting things in the ground considering the unseasonably warm spring we had. Actually, we planted on time for our growing season but we didn’t take advantage of that extra bit of time when it seemed that everyone and their mothers, due to the crazy warm weather, were getting things going in their gardens. Ah well, I’m pregnant. That’s my excuse.

In terms of successful growth, we were opposite from other years. Normally, our tomatoes are one of our lesser performers and we usually end up with more salad greens than any normal family would know what to do with. This year though, we didn’t get ANY salad greens! I believe rabbits were the culprits this time. They burrowed into the garden and ate themselves silly just like poor Peter Rabbit. I hope, just like Pater Rabbit, they tore their fancy jackets and lost their little shoes in the process too.

Same for our green beans and carrots. Eaten before they had a chance to produce anything.

Butternut squash…argh… I’m pretty sure chipmunks kept digging up the seeds and just eating those. I planted those suckers TWICE and every time I went out there, the seeds would be gone!

Basil – never recovered from one night of odd frost.

Strawberries, we had a couple. But at one point I found a freaking toad burrowing beneath one of the plants. Birds did their damn best to get through our netting that we draped over the row. One even died in the process, which is always pleasant trying to detangle a dead bird from netting. Thank goodness Andrew can stomach such things. The rest, I believe, fell victim to the chipmunks as well. They scoffed at our netting AND the bird tangled in it.

We bought our seed potatoes. Just never got around to planting them.

Don’t even ask about the blueberries. That is just straight depressing. There were so many! Birds ate them all before we could harvest even one.

Our tomatoes were the one promising and shining ray of light in the whole bunch. They were thriving and looking awesomely full (possibly due to the drier weather?) until some damn deer decided to just bust through our fence and take a siesta right in the middle of the tomato bed.

All in all, pretty dismal showings. The one thing that makes it somewhat bearable is the fact that we didn’t put too much effort into it. Yes, the lasagna beds took some time to build up. But we can still use them again next year. And there is always next year! This year isn’t over and I’m already scheming about next year’s garden, which may or may not involve a greenhouse and a front yard garden. One thing is for sure though, the one word that will describe our plans for 2013: Smarter!

-c.

Image via Flickr

I’m three days shy of being 36 weeks pregnant. Meaning four more weeks until my due date, which in turn means I have the luxury and right to complain (lovingly) about this last stretch. Being pregnant is, seriously, an amazing thing. Right now, as I type, I have a little naked person floating around in my body. I mean, that’s some crazy, other-wordly, type stuff we’re talking about here. But still, there are just some emotions, thoughts and situations that exist regardless of how awesome it is to be growing another human being. Just a couple things to note about my current state:

1. I basically, sorta, kinda (definitely) wore what constituted as pajamas to work one day this week. I just couldn’t handle regular clothes – if you can call maternity clothes “regular clothes”. And it felt great. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I wore an unfortunate combo of maternity clothes that when paired together looked like pajamas. But this time, I literally wore something that I would wear as pajamas.

2. As if dribbling food or drink on yourself doesn’t make you look slovenly enough. Imagine dribbling food or drink on a huge pregnant belly. It makes me look like a total slug. And this happens daily. I might as well walk around with Cheetos dust on my fingers too.

3. I feel extremely motivated to get things done, but am frustratingly hindered by my physical state. I am not one of those women who will be running a marathon at this point. Granted, even if I weren’t pregnant I wouldn’t be attempting such feats. However, not being able to just tend the garden (a whole other post) without help from Andrew is really really maddening.

4. I am  constantly amazed at the resilience of the human body. The fact that my skin hasn’t, literally, split open and spilled out some guts is pretty remarkable.

5. The past couple weeks seem to have taken as long as the previous 30 or so weeks combined. Why, oh why is time slowing down right now when I am most uncomfortable and unsightly?

6. My body hurts. The arches of my feet feel like they are falling. My legs ache. My belly is sore. Sometimes, I just have to lift up my stomach and carry it because my torso just needs a break. I’ve thought about this a lot in the past, the sheer amount of weight a pregnant woman carries around daily. I didn’t even gain that much this time around. I’m about average at 25-30lbs of weight gain. But have you ever thought about how much that actually is? That’s like carrying around 5-6 bags of flour or roughly 3-4 gallons of milk. I gained, like, 50lbs with Q. Have you ever carried 50lbs around? That’s craaay. I’m surprised my knees didn’t buckle with every step.

7. I’m exhausted. Just straight exhausted. Out-of-breath-melting-into-a-puddle-of-slobishness exhausted.

Sometimes, I think pregnancy and its trials are just a big lesson in swallowing your pride and realizing that you are just going to end up in a room full of strangers looking at your private bits.

But in the end, it’s all worth it.

-c.

Stuff like this makes my blood boil. I just have to vent here for a second because sometimes something happens that just makes you think “what is wrong with people?”

A few days ago, Andrew’s Mom took Q on a ride out to their pond (which is one of Q’s absolute favorite things to do) only to find the scene pictured below. Beer/alcohol cans littered everywhere, AND beach/lawn chairs, AND a boat!!!! Whaaat?!!! Someone had themselves a party. And it wasn’t anyone we know. The pictures really don’t do it justice.

As the title of this post implies, I’m going to assume that this was the work of some hooligan teenagers. But it’s also quite possible that they were adults that were acting like children.

Not only was there just a complete disregard for the fact that they were trespassing on someones property, but complete disrespect for said property as well as the environment and natural habitat of a lot of wildlife including fish, frogs, ducks (there were cans and bottles thrown into the lake), blue heron, and deer. Even despite my loathing of the deer, they don’t need to deal with Four Loko cans. That’s just rude!

Joking aside though, come ON people! Andrew’s parents have plenty of land. And in the past, they’ve let neighborhood kids play paintball in the woods just as long as they didn’t leave trash strewn about. They are very laid back, nice people and are always welcoming to guests in their home or people who want to come see their alpacas, etc. So it’s just sad that there are people who do things like this.

Also, lakes and excessive drinking in the middle of the night are just a bad combo. (I’m assuming this took place during the night because they would have to have some serious balls to pull a stunt like this in the daytime, right?) Not smart. Not smart at all.

And until someone comes to fess up, we at least got a boat and some lawn chairs out of it.

-c.

Looking at my post from the other day, I was slightly depressed by not having any new photos to post (the one I posted was old and already posted to my Instagram account…boooring.) Since getting an iPhone I’ve been extra lazy about breaking out the real camera to take photos. Bad technology! Bad, bad! Ha!

Anyhoo, this post is an update on the baby blanket that I’ve been working on for the past 3 months or so. I found The Forever Baby Blanket pattern on one of my favorite crafting/fiber/blog sites, The Purl Bee.  I just wanted something super simple that I could zone out while doing or just sit and not have to be 100% focused on some elaborate pattern. I’m also relatively new to knitting so I didn’t want to be overwhelmed when I knew that the time I had to dedicate to crafting was going to be limited.

This blanket turned out to be just what I needed. The pattern itself is really simple, but not boring. It’s a rib knit so it’s thick and squishy with a lot of texture. My color inspiration came from these blocks (minus the gold + a lighter grey):

I’m still on the fence as to whether I’m going to use black. I bought some with the intention of using it, but when I put all the colors together it seemed too bold to me. Incorporating the lighter grey helps, but we’ll see. I’m winging it for the time being.

I didn’t use any fancy yarns (which I’m slightly regretting) but my reasoning was that 1.) I wanted to see if I was committed enough to finish an entire blanket and 2.) I was unsure if my skills justified using something a bit pricier. However, part of me is glad that I didn’t splurge on this particular project. I did mess up a bunch in the beginning when I was trying to catch my knitting stride so there are definitely some imperfections. I would have been super pissed if I bought nice yarn and wasn’t completely happy with how it turned out. But now that I feel a lot more confident in my skills, I think for my future projects I won’t’ feel intimidated spending a little more on better quality materials.

I’m hoping one day to have some of Andrew’s parents Alpaca wool processed and have someone spin it into yarn for me. Now THAT, my friends, would be super fancy.

-c.