I made a trip down to the cities for a baby shower, and ended up seeing a whole bunch of my friends in the process.
I was very excited to see one of my oldest best friends for some quality girl time, partially because she's going to have a little boy attached to her hip in a few months!
It was really crazy to hear about all her pregnancy stories- problems, happy parts, weird parts, and the "you really don't want to know this, but I'm going to tell you anyway" parts. :) The picture above shows a moment that I was pretty excited about. She had a large enough belly to be able to hold things up on it. BAM! Awesome mama-to-be right there. :)
As a celebration, I knit her (and her baby and husband) Milo Armadillo, to go along with a book I found!
Sarah is a HUGE armadillo fan. It's surprisingly difficult to find armadillo "things", so when I found a book about a knit armadillo, I knew that it was perfect. I had to get the book, as well as knit the Milo that went along with it.
If you noticed in previous posts, I was really gunning for the deadline. I definitely drove down to the cities on Friday night with an unfinished Milo, intending on finishing his arms and legs in the guest bedroom in the dead of night, since the shower wasn't until Sunday.
My excitement, however, got the better of me, and I showed Sarah the almost-finished Milo on Friday night. She freaked, exclaimed that she loved it, and proceeded to laugh over Milo's ridiculously good looks. So instead of knitting deep into the night, I was able to knit while watching stupid girl movies and laughing along with my very-pregnant friend. When she opened it at the shower, she let it be known that she had seen me knitting the legs, which made it even better to know the work and love (and a few swear words) that had gone in to it.
Pattern: Milo Armadillo by Jan Fearnley
Yarn: The main blue body was knit with Debbie Bliss Eco Baby, a soft 100% cotton yarn just in case baby boy is allergic to wool. The shell was knit with mostly leftover Cascade 220 from other projects.
Timeframe: September 14th-November 16th.
Needles: Bamboo size 3
Modifications: A LOT. The entire pattern was written up to have everything knit flat, then seamed, stuffed, and assembled together after all the limbs were finished. I really don't like seaming, and I know for a fact that babies like to pull on things, so after knitting the head flat (very much did NOT enjoy), I picked up all the rest of the limbs straight off the body. That meant that I had to turn some of the directions around, which wormed all right. Check the Ravelry page for Milo to get all of my notes and modifications.
Worst Part: Trying to figure out how to convert the entire pattern to picking up the stitches, and the time crunch. I definitely knit other things when I should have been knitting Milo... oops...
Best Part: Seeing Sarah's face when she saw the completed Milo for the first time. Worth all of the converting and figuring stuff out on the go, FOR SURE.
I'm so glad Milo is finished. This means I only have a few major Christmas knits left, and most of them have been at least started. One only needs a little glue and it's done. I'll update later on that.
I also promised a certain guy to have his sweater finished by Thanksgiving, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen at this point. Maybe Christmas?
This week is going to be crazy full. Over the next three days, I'm collecting 125 papers from my students for their third round of long assignments to grade. In order to stay sane and not spend my entire Thanksgiving break grading, I'm going to grade at least 10-15 per day to stay on schedule. This is on top of daily work, quizzes, tests, and conferences.
Hmmm..
I might go take a nap. Gotta be well-rested to focus, right? :)
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