Puerperium Cardigan and Hat

I finished up another little baby sweater that I want to share with you.

It’s called the Puerperium Cardigan.  The designer states in the pattern that it is designed to be easy for new parents to dress their baby,  thus the side buttons from top to bottom of the sweater.  That idea sold the sweater for me, as I have tried dressing my nephews and found it to be a bit of a challenge.  In fact, it may have taken me a half hour, give or take a few minutes. 

It is designed for the first 6 weeks post birth – or a 6-8 lb baby.  My baby will probably be bigger than that when he is born, so I cast on 8 extra stitches.   I love how easy it is to adjust the size on top-down raglan style sweaters!

I made the sweater to go with this little football hat.

The football hat can be found in the Itty Bitty Hats book by Susan Anderson.  You can click here to see other cute projects from the book.

The yarn is Rowan Purelife Organic DK.  It’s probably not the best yarn for a hat, as it doesn’t stretch much, but it worked just fine for the sweater.

Now I just hope the hat and the sweater fit him at the same time!  Both were fun projects to make and are now in the diaper bag awaiting a trip to the hospital.  (Only 11 more days to my due date!)

(Ravelry links for the sweater and the hat.)

Photo Shoot Bloopers

I may have mentioned in the past, that taking the photos for my books can be a bit of an adventure.  Part of the problem, is I don’t know what I am doing.  The other part is that sometimes things just happen.  I shoot many of my photos on hand-made backdrops that I lean against our garage doors. 

Most of the time, it works fairly well.  The windy days can cause some problems and several times the backdrops have blown over.  Many props have been smashed to bits.  Two tripods have had broken legs, though luckily my camera wasn’t on the tripod at the time.  My trusty assistant is supposed to run to my rescue if he sees the backdrops falling.  Though he is quite professional (as you can see below), he isn’t always very quick and the wind sometimes wins the battle. 

Even though he isn’t quick, he is quite helpful at hauling the heavy backdrops, carrying all the furniture from the house out into the front yard, and running the power tools required to level the backdrops and the quilts.  So, if he forgives me for the above photo, I will still let him have the job as my trusty photography assistant.

Sometimes I use a quilt stand to hang my quilts, if I want a different background.  As you can see from this photo, that is a bit of a challenge too.  I have ropes tied from the side poles to the neighboring trees, just to try to keep the darn thing upright (much less keep the quilts hanging level).  I also have bags of sand that I tried to stabilize the stand with.  It still blew over several times.  And all this hassle just because I love natural light! 

My favorite photography bloopers have involved my nieces and nephews. 

Check out this photo shoot from my Bella Bag Pattern.  It was all going along fine until . . .

one of the “props” (my niece Bella) gave me a zerbert.

Sometimes the “props” eat the other props – like before you can even try to stop them – it happens so quickly!

Let me just clarify that I am not against eating the props – I just prefer to wait until after the photo shoot.

Our dog Daisy has also eaten props, though I wasn’t quick enough to get a photo of it.  Apparently, she likes chocolate chip cookies and tirimasu as much as I do.  Don’t let this innocent looking face fool you, the edible props are not safe around her.

At that same photo shoot, one of the “props”  made some awfully cute faces at us!  That was obviously before the props were eaten by Daisy.

Sometimes the “props” keep running out of the photo.   It starts with a smirk like this, and is followed by that “ready, set go” pose and about 5 photos with a blurry, running kid in them.  That is then followed by his mom chasing him down and me promising to be a little quicker this time!

I have tried to learn from these experience by having something for the kids to do while they are in the photo.  It works pretty well with 4-year olds.

Not so much with this little boy.  We tried bubbles, water squirting toys, cookies, etc.  He just kept crying and yelling “Done”. 

Not that I blame him.  We did put him outside in his swimming trunks in forty degree weather.  But he is so cute, that I had to try!  Plus, his outfit matched the “Here Fishy, Fishy” quilt so perfectly and he has the best dimples in town.

He did eventually quit crying, though he wouldn’t look at us or the camera.  He didn’t like my trusty assistant at all and would turn his head to the side and yell “Done,  I’m Done”  anytime Joel tried to talk to him.  I’m pretty sure that we have traumatized him enough not to want to come to our house again. 

We settled on this for our final shot:

So, if any of you have wondered about the empty chair or who belonged to those shoes, now you know the answer.

I have to say my favorite blooper of all times involved my nephew Gavin.  The photo shoot started out like this – All sweet, innocent and cute.

My last photo looks more like this.  It wasn’t until I loaded the pictures onto my camera that I realized the situation wasn’t so innocent anymore.  Check out the middle finger on his left hand.

Yes,  that little stinker is giving me the finger.  It makes me laugh every time I see it!

So, there you have it – my adventures in trying to be a quilt photographer.

Baby Bump Update – 37 weeks

Can you believe it?  Only 3 weeks left to go!  I am amazed at how quickly the time has gone, yet somehow as my due date gets closer, time seems to be slowing down a little.  I am a little panicked that I am not ready yet, yet I always feel like I am waiting – and time seems to drag when you are waiting!  It will be interesting to see how the next 3 weeks go.

We had another ultrasound last Thursday and the doctor said everything looked really good.  The baby had been on the large side, so my doctor wanted to check the baby’s size a little closer to my due date.  There was talk of inducing to avoid a ten pounder.  Yikes!  Luckily, the test showed a 7 pound baby, so that talk is now out the window – much to my relief.  The ultrasound also showed his mouth busy going (like his father), followed by him sticking out his tongue at us (a little like his mother).  I am not sure quite how to read that, but we thought it was funny.   The funny part being, that Joel is always talking and once, when I was five, I stuck out my tongue at my mother.  She had sent me up to my room, and as I got to the top of the stairs, I swung around and stuck out my tongue.  To my horror (yes, I still remember this part), Mom was still watching me and saw the whole thing.  The next part, I remember well too – a bar of soap being rubbed on my tongue, with a taste that lasted all day.  I have a feeling more soap might be in my future!

The ultrasound also showed the baby head down and “engaged”.  Another step closer . . .

One of the things I wanted to do when I was pregnant, was take some pictures of the bump and of us together.  I am usually behind the camera, so I hardly have any pictures of us together.  So far it hasn’t happened, so with time running out, I talked Joel into helping me set up the camera with a timer and take some pictures.

We set the camera up on a ladder, then I would focus the camera (or try to, this didn’t always work so well), then run and try to make it into the frame before the timer went off.  Watching me try to run was the funny part – thank goodness we are a little sheltered from our neighbors!

Now, one of me . .

And Joel with Daisy (though I couldn’t get Daisy to smile for the picture.  I imagine that this is good practice for photographing kids!)

In other baby news, I have finally started the nursery.  First up was the task of cleaning out the room and closet.  The closet was full of quilts, which are now in storage bins up in the shed.  It was a little sad to pack them away, but I felt better as I started filling it back up again.  Look at all those clothes!

Can you believe that I have only bought one outfit and two hats?  Honest!  Those are all hand-me downs from the previous 5 nephews in the family.  All the hanging clothes are 3 month size and the bin below is full of six month size clothes.  This boy has more clothes than his father does!  In addition to all these clothes, we are also inherited a swing, an exersaucer, a johny jump up, a floor gym, crib, car seat and other odds and ends.  We are so blessed!

The photo below shows the color scheme of the room – blue, orange, brown, green and grey.  Joel has requested the “Here Fishy, Fishy”  quilt for the room, but with extra fish and a few bobbers.  That isn’t done yet, but the car quilt gives you an idea of the colors.

I am in the process of painting the changing table orange too, though I ran out of paint.

Joel is at Home Depot right now getting some more paint and the wood to make some book ledges to hold kids books.  I love kids books, so I can’t wait to get that feature up in the room – Hopefully soon.

So, while all the other designers are posting pictures of their exciting time at Quilt Market this weekend, I am having a quiet weekend preparing.  It probably doesn’t make for a very exciting blog post, so I hope you don’t mind!  It will be fun for me to look back on it later  . . . . . .