WIPW: Sunshine When Skies Are Gray

 Last week I CO the Porcellana Cowl. I won a skein of Malabrigo at Eat.Sleep.Knit's store earlier this month and I chose the lace weight in their happy Sauterne colorway. As soon as Knit Picks released the cowl pattern, I knew that's what I wanted to knit the Malabrigo into! I don't get much time to work on it, though this week I made more progress than last because I brought it into work to knit while I pump. I had a bumpy start, which I also did with my Peacock Shawl last year, though this was not nearly as frustrating. Initially, I had a dropped YO or two, frogged once and restarted. My second attempt was much better, my first hiccup was just not reading the chart and stitches quite right, after that it was just a missed YO but because I already had a few rows established, I was able to find where it was supposed to go and pick it up. I finished row 11 (12 rows in the repeats) at my last pump session of the day, so the pattern you see is what repeats 37 more times, oy!

I'm happy to show off Molly again! Substantial progress was made in the car driving from MD to GA and this past weekend, thanks to lots of knitting-while-pumping and putting off starting Pocellana, I grafted my shoulder panels to the back panels! I learned two things:

1. Mattress stitch is cool
2. Don't learn a new skill on diagonal-biased material unless the new skill accounts for the diagonal.

 Don't forget to check out Tami's!

My panels didn't quite graft evenly...

Our First Family Vacation! (Part 1)

Chillin' on our Atlanta hotel

 Where to begin with our first family trip/vacation?

 

I've mentioned Theo's wedding a couple of times now. She currently lives about 10 hours away from us (driving with breaks) so I knew it would be an interesting trip for us to say the least. One thing that I absolutely love about Dan is when I mentioned where the wedding would be, he didn't say "maybe we'll go", he said "when we go". There was never a doubt that we wouldn't get there, despite having two young kids in car seats for a very long drive.

The plan took some working out but eventually we had it pretty much nailed down: leave really late (or early depending on how you look at it) Thursday night and spend most of the drive while the boys are sleeping, check into the hotel, take a nap, cruise around the city Friday and Saturday, drive over to the destination town 2 hours outside the city Saturday evening, go to wedding Sunday morning, head home, stop halfway to see Dan's grandparents, spend the night, drive the rest of the way home Monday. The first leg of our journey took much longer than anticipated due to an unscheduled stop at Wal Mart. What I had not considered was how little I would be nursing during the trip and I didn't pack my manual pump to help with that. Noah had switched into what I call "night time sleepy mode" for the majority of the ride down and slept A LOT. He only ever nursed from one side when we made our planned pit stops, so that left me getting full pretty quickly on the other side. Not having smartphones, I used my GPS to locate a Wal Mart not too far off the highway and we headed for it. Joey had also been upset when he wasn't allowed to play in the driver's seat anymore and had to go back into his car seat, so the other idea behind justifying the Wal Mart stop was to get him a toy steering wheel to amuse him.

Checking out the Cow-Nose stingrays.

We found the Wal Mart, I got the manual pump and a steering wheel for Joey (that sang and lit up, so he liked that--not as much as the actual driver's seat but enough to distract him for a while). We were finally back on the road. We got to our hotel much later than we thought but just after the earliest check-in time so that worked out in our favor. Dan decided to lie down and attempt to nap while I let Joey run around and play in our hotel room. Noah was amused by the pack 'n play because we hadn't used it for him yet, so that was new for him too. One of the cool papers we found in the hotel lobby was a website where you could order take-out from several local restaurants, and this website had delivery drivers who would bring it to your hotel room! The fee was pretty small ($5 per restaurant) and from what I could tell the prices of the food were about the same, so rather than put everybody back in the car or order potentially more expensive room service, we tried this cool service. Apparently there was traffic downtown and the driver was a bit delayed (I got a phone call apologizing) but our food arrived and still warm so we were happy.

Watching a diver putting food down for the fish.

The next day, we went to the Georgia Aquarium which was AMAZING to say the least! Dan and I had gone there on our honeymoon but because of delayed flights and traffic, we barely got there an hour before closing and didn't get to see much.

BELUGAS!

Whale Shark!

Manta Ray!

Helping push.

Joey's turn on my back!

Noah likes the stroller too!

FO Friday!

Fresh off the needles a few minutes ago! My Back To Work Socks :)

I promise better pictures will be coming. Don't forget to check out Tami's! http://tamisamis.blogspot.com/