President Hinckley

Well, President Hinckley died on Sunday. Very strange. I think a lot of us thought he would live forever. He was prophet for 13 years, we will miss him very much. However, I find it hard to be sad about it, because I can sort of picture the welcome he received on the other side. It must have been amazing, and I know he was ready to go. His wife had gone 4 years before, and he talked often about how he missed her and looked forward to seeing her again. But, the others who must have been waiting as well for him! All the previous prophets, I am sure. And Jesus...I can imagine him saying. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Go now to thy rest." How happy Pres. Hinckley must be up there, to know he did such a wonderful job with his stewardship. If the love of those left behind has any bearing on his salvation, he is sure to go straight to the highest glory.

Hello again.

Well, instead of doing two blogs, I am going to just mix up my needlecraft stuff with my personal/Lillian stuff. It's my blog, I can do what I want. So, I will post crafty crap first, and personal/Lillian stuff second. If you are reading this blog and care, just skip the part you don't want to read.
So, crafty crap...
Ever since I joined the lovely website Ravelry (bad for me) I have been knitting like crazy. It is absolutely inspiring as far as wanting to knit. I have finished more projects in the month or so I have been a member than I had in my whole life. I can knit a lot faster now.
I am mostly knitting stuff for Lilly, as I am very impatient and like projects to go fast. She is so wee, that I can knit something for her in a day or two. Since we cloth diaper her, I thought it would be nice to knit her some woolly soakers, which are diaper covers. Wool is naturally water-resistant, and when it is lanolinized, it is nearly waterproof. Much cuter than PUL covers, and nicer, because it breathes. Fortunately she is not allergic. I have knit 3 so far and am working on the fourth right now. I also want to knit her some capris and skirties, and really, it is so cold that I ought to do a couple of pairs of longies.
I also knit a great hat for myself, but my choice of yarn color (red) makes it look like I am wearing a pirate hat. Oh, well. I started knitting a lovely lace spencer, but it takes a lot of time, and Lilly needs the soakers, so that is on hold for the mo'.
In sewing news, I just made a costume for a girl for a masquerade ball. It turned out lovely, 16th century. I haven't made a costume like that for a few years, since I left the university.
Other than that, not much sewing getting done. Lilly doesn't let me sew much, but knitting is fine, as I can be down on the floor with her.
In other news. Lilly has cut two teeth. It was painful for both of us. Her, because it hurt, me because she was sooooo cranky! But they are finally through, so all is well.
She is participating in a vaccine study for meningicoccal bacteria, which is good. She gets the vaccine for free and I don't really want her to get meningitis again. Hopefully, everything will turn out. A little nervous, as it is a trial.
She crawls like crazy now, and I love it. Although she does get into everything and puts everything in her mouth, she is a much more content baby now she is mobile. She chases Mike around the wall that separates the bathroom hall from the front room, it is quite funny. Today at the doctors office, she took a couple of steps to grandma without realizing she did it, very nice. I will like it when she walks.
I had to have some tests done to try to figure out the cause of my headaches, turns out my thyroid is low. Who knew? This explains a lot of problems I have been having these past 3 months or so, fatigue, headaches, unable to get warm, dry skin and a host of other problems.. Hopefully the meds will fix it.
So, I think that is all for now!

Whoo hoo! Headache gone. It left me at about 1 this afternoon. Thank goodness.
Okay, well, here are some of my plans for this year.
As far as handwork goes, I am hoping to knit a Regency style dress for Lillian to wear next fall/winter. She will be old enough then that she can go to church and I would like something really fabulous for her to wear. I am thinking a nice lightweight blue wool. I am wanting to knit it in a sort of open lacey pattern. I hope it works. I should really get started now, because I think it is going to take a while, being such a fine yarn.
I am working away on my Anne Elliot shrug. It is coming along nicely. I thought I had made a giant mistake and was going to have to frog all the way back to the ribbing, but I didn't, I had just miscounted. Whew!
As for other things to knit, I don't know. I am wanting to knit lots of stuff for Lills.
I should make a bunch of clothes for me, but I am so not inspired whilst still carrying ten pounds of baby weight. So that is something I need to do this year as well. Exercise and drop the weight. I have a feeling that if I exercised more, I would get those headaches less, and likely be much less tired.
Lilly has her 9 month well baby appt. next week at which time I will find out if we can start phasing out the nighttime feedings. I am hoping we can. They make me very tired, even when Mike does them, I still wake up. He can fall right back to sleep, but if I wake up, it takes me some time to fall asleep again.
I am hoping to get rather more work this year. Last year I took a lot of time off, having had the baby and all, this year, I would like to earn enough money for us to go on a nice vacation. I need to get my studio redone with the hard floor, since Lil can crawl now, it isn't safe for her to be in their on the pin-laden carpet. I need a surface I can sweep up, as she eats things. We are going to put in a wood floor to match the nursery. I am very excited about this as I think it will look fabulous. I intend to knit a rug on my knitting machine for the room, for Lilly to play on.
Lilly loves our laptops, so last night, Mike hooked up an old monitor to his laptop and gave Lilly an old keyboard to play on. She was in heaven. She pounded on the keyboard and kept climbing up to the monitor and squealing at it. Adorable. He put a slide show of pictures of her on it. Being the vain child that she is, she loved it.
I put Lilly in her crib tonite. She has been sleeping with us, but I have not slept well lately, she is getting so big that she hogs the bed. If we had a king size, I wouldn't care, but we don't. So, we will see how this goes.
Well, I think that is all for now!

Pain in the head

Ugh, I have had a nasty headache today. So no knitting got done. Nothing got done for that matter. What fun. I hate headaches.

Ugh

I have been madly knitting a new sweater shrug from Ravelry and I have a very bad habit of basically wadding myself up into a little ball when I knit. So, now my knees hurt as I have been in this position for much of the day. I should get out and take a walk once in a while! But the sweater is coming along beautifully. It is looking a little smaller than I expected, but is very pretty. I suppose if it is too small, I will just give it to my niece.

Lilly has been a huge pain at night, lately. She doesn't sleep well, moans most of the night and wakes up howling without any kind of her usual preamble. It is hard on the nerves. I am not sure why she keeps waking up, nightmares, maybe? Do babies have nightmares? I don't know.
She has learned to cheese at people, which is hysterical. It is the goofiest fake smile, I love it. Grandma cheeses at her all the time, I am sure that is where she learned it.

Back to Blogging

Okay, so I haven't done this for a while. The holidays were very busy what with trying to finish projects and presents and cleaning the house.
So, small update on Lillian, she learned to crawl a couple of days ago! It is so cute. She is so teeny and her head is so big, that she wobbles a lot when she goes. And if she gets excited and tries to crawl too fast, she invariably tips over. It is hysterical. She still isn't quite realizing that this makes her mobile, so she doesn't always take off after me like I expected.
She also figured out the day after that she can try to put her pants on herself. Now that is funny. She sat and tried to get her foot into the leg of her pants for about 10 minutes and I just watched and laughed. I wish I had had my camera with me, I should have videoed it.
She is growing like a weed. I put a couple of outfits on her today that she wore just a couple of weeks ago and they didn't fit. Not only were they too short (she is very tall) but they were too tight. So, I am glad of that. She needs to put on weight. Her doctor will be happy as well.
She has had an insatiable appetite today, eating non-stop, I feel a growth spurt coming on.
Ah, she is the light of my life. She is just adorable.
In other news, I just joined a new website called Ravelry, and I can tell it is going to be very bad for my sewing. All I want to do now is knit. There are so many beautiful things that people are making and so many gorgeous patterns that I never even thought of.
I will post pics of my projects as I do them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yippee! Thanksgiving! We had family over here for Thanksgiving. It was fun, rowdy and loud. We had a ton of good food and Lilly really enjoyed having all of her cousins around, though she is completely worn out. She went to bed, I hope she will stay asleep for a good while tonight, she didn't sleep much last night and wore Dad out!
The other day we were over at my mom's and she was doing laundry. She had dumped the towels on the floor where Lilly was and started folding. There was one towel that had gotten bleached and was falling apart, so my mom started to rip it into rags. Lilly had a towel in her lap, and she started yanking on it and grunting. I wasn't paying much attention, except to notice that she seemed a little irritated. Finally, she lets out a yell and throws the towel. My mom looked at her and said, what is wrong with her. I watched her for a moment and then realized that she was frustrated because she couldn't rip her towel! So funny! She isn't very old, I didn't think she could understand things like that. My mom laughed and then picked her up and set her in her lap and started to rip a towel for her, then gave it to Lilly to rip. She was as happy as a clam. Made me giggle. Smart little beggar.
Lilly's has a cousin who is 5 months younger than she is, but weighs the same. It was funny to see. Lilly is so tall and very thin and Eilee is just short and fat. Her waist is 4 inches bigger than Lilly's.
There was something else I was going to put on this, but I don't remember any more. Oh, well.
My house is delightfully clean. My mom and I cleaned all week, then today Mike cleaned the kitchen multiple times today, and his mom cleaned up the dining room, so once again, my house is clean!!! Love that.
So, I guess that is all for today. I need to remember more things to write. I need to keep up with what is going on with Lilly, she learns so fast.
Oh yes, she is absolutely learning to copy people, it is so cute!