Hello again!

Why, hello there again! Yes, I’ve gone nearly 2 months without blogging. But I promise, I have a very good excuse this time. And not just a secret knitting project (though there was one of those, too). This project is even more awesome…

…I’m cooking up a little munchkin! We’re due around Thanksgiving, and could not be happier. The last couple of months have been really rough (you try finishing up teaching a very demanding writing course AND getting your dissertation studies prepped, and of course finishing up a secret knitting project, all during your first trimester!), but things are starting to get better. I’m really looking forward to that (for now, still sadly hypothetical) burst of energy everyone talks about having in their second trimester. We got to hear our little munchkin’s heartbeat this morning, and it was so incredible – not that I didn’t believe it was real before, but it’s just so much more real now.

For awhile there, I hardly felt like knitting at all – it made the nausea worse. But I’m able to knit again now, and now that I’m done with the secret project, I can knit whatever I want! This is such a strange feeling, I hardly know where to start…but I know I want to knit some cardigans for me (since cardigans are all I’ll be able to do for awhile now!), and some stuff for my little munchkin. On that note, I made a small exception to my StashPact promises (which stupidly didn’t take the prospect of a little munchkin into account) and picked up some yarn to knit an awesome little cardigan for my wee one:

What you see there is some Knitpicks Chroma (worsted weight), with which I plan to knit a stripey cardigan. My plan for now is to do something of a hybrid of Grumperina’s Budgie pattern and the ideas that I had for the baby version of Stripes! (which I ended up setting aside after seeing Budgie, which is pretty similar to what I’d had in mind…no point duplicating such an awesome pattern). That, and I just didn’t feel like knitting a baby sweater in light fingering weight (as I would’ve done if I’d stuck with Kureyon Sock). November Baby’s gonna need some toasty sweaters! So, basically, I’m planning to do corrugated ribbing instead of garter at the hems and cuffs, but to finish the front with an i-cord and zipper (rather than more corrugated ribbing, which I think might end up looking kind of overwhelming on such a small sweater). We’ll see how it turns out!

I’ve gotten utterly, hopelessly behind on my blog reading in the last couple of months – please forgive me! I was hoping to catch back up in Google Reader, but it’s looking like I’ll end up doing the dreaded “Mark all as read” move – so if you’ve got a post you want to point me to, give me a link in the comments!