Grr Eclipse

Red Guitar – Old Vine Temparanillo Gamacha Navarra 2007 – our house wine
Inniskillin – Varietal Series – Pinot Noir – 2008 – tasty
Strewn – Rouge’s Lot – Cabernet Franc Cabernet Sauvignon – 2007 – this wine is not too good, we will probably use the rest of the bottle for cooking

I am trying to get Eclipse settled on my laptop so I can work on my thesis. This is day three. Eclipse is fantastic when you use it every day so you remember what you’re supposed to do and you handle updates incrementally. If you use Eclipse once ever 6 months, it is poison. I am breaking out in hives.

At least it doesn’t throw up on me like some little guy I know.

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Film – Young Victoria

Today might not be the first day of spring, but it felt like it was. Owen and I went for a nice walk. He is getting very heavy, this was probably the last time I will carry him in the sling for a longer period of time.

I just realised the next week is the Canada Reads panel on CBC. I managed to get through two of the books and am half way through the third one. I really hoped to have read all the books but I just was not in the mood lately. I finished “Good to a Fault” and “Jade Peony”. Both were pretty good. I am now reading “Nikolski” which is promising as well. I don’t think I will get to the other two, but I will try. Last year I was hoping to save the podcast for until I am done with the novels, but with radio and internet, I ended up seeing/hearing who won before I was ready.

Taking a break from movies

No movies today, the choice of films was not to our liking so we took a walk today. It was wet snow day but it was so nice to be out in the air.

I’m adapting well to double motherhood, I have got a good mix of activities and doing nothing. I am getting to know my children a bit better, or really, I am learning how to take care of them better. I spend more time thinking about how to take care of them anyway.

Are you a Mother?

Your baby spits up on your good shirt. You:

a) Eww! Carefully remove the shirt, immediately do the laundry and take a shower
b) Survey the damage and dump the shirt in the laundry room, you’ll wash it when you can. Run a wet towel over your shoulder and back
c) Put a sweater on to contain the spill, continue to the hallway to clean up toddler pee

Film – When In Rome

My free ride is over. It has been nine weeks since Owen was born and the last grandparent on duty has finished his shift. It’s swim or sink now. While the grandparents were here I managed to finish up and do a few crafts. It is not so much that I had the time to do them (I didn’t) it is more that I had to do them to keep my sanity.

The first craft I started late last year. I wanted to make a couple of pairs of gloves. Here is the recipe I decided works best:


Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Fingering
Needles: 2.25mm dpn
Size M

Cast on 58 sts
Ribbing (k2p2)* to the top of the wrist
In the last row of ribbing increase the number of stitches to 70 by adding a knitted sts k2 in 2k. (or something, don’t feel like looking up terminology now)
2 rows of k
3rd row k2 m1 (slant backwards) k m1 (slant forwards) k* (this row reverse for the other hand)
2 rows of k
6th row k4 m1 (slant backwards) k m1 (slant forwards) k* (this row reverse for the other hand)

last increase row k20 m1 (slant backwards) k m1 (slant forwards) k* (this row reverse for the other hand)
2 rows of k
then put the thumb gusset stitches on the waste thread , cast on seven stitches and continue for two rows in k then decrease the seven stitches with ssk k3 k2tog, two more rows of k, then ssk k1 k2tog, two rows of k, slip1, k2tog, psso. Similar decrease is done on the thumb.

For fingers, knit until you get to the bottom of finger, knit the finger then knit the remaining fingers together until you get to the finger separation. I don’t have a good strategy for fingers yet.

This has been heavily borrowed from Knotty Gloves on Ravelry. I don’t think this is plagiarizing since the pattern used in here does not seem to be too original and I have made enough modifications to make the look and feel of the glove different.

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My mom modeling the fancy red gloves

A lesson I learned is to not mess with the yarn. I got a different yarn for my sister’s gloves and the result was disastrous. I still gave her the gloves since I did not have the time to make new ones, but I will never, ever, make such drastic substitutions ever again. Sorry Barbara, I’ll make you something nicer later.

The second craft was a travel bag for my dad. This isn’t really my craft since my dad did all the design and cutting. All I did was sew on the line.
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My dad and Trevor testing out the travel bag

This bag is the perfect airplane bag as long as you don’t mind your belongings being banged around. It is the largest allowed size and it weighs next to nothing allowing for maximum capacity. It is also made of sturdy recycled pre-faded fabric. The toddler does not come with it.

The last craft is my needle case (etui for you crosswords solvers). It is smaller version of this pattern except I did not sew the top fold because it would make the cow’s face look funny. I might add some clips to keep it folded properly though.

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Next challenge: socks.

Film – Leap Year and Sherlock Holmes

I am a sucker for romantic comedies, so I was really glad to see this film though it is entirely forgettable. I was going to write more about it, but then I had to go take care of the children, and it has been over a week since I started this post with some profound thoughts I had about rom coms in general and this particular instance of it but it just doesn’t sound as interesting now as it did then. I also went to see Sherlock Holmes yesterday and it was nice too.

Chris brought an article about sleep and crying babies to my attention. It is very true. More so, even when Owen isn’t crying I am listening to the noises. It was like that with Trevor too. In fact, until Trevor was big enough to get out of his bed and walk over and wake me up, I was always listening for him in my sleep.

Even though I am not going to have a good night sleep for another two years, I am really enjoying spending time with my kids. We went to the pool this morning and Trevor loved it. I spent some alone time with Owen in a failed attempt to go to a thesis defense a girl in my lab was doing. Both boys are asleep now and I miss them though I am exhausted.