my first baby blanket and other crafty bits...

i am pregnant with my third and, most likely, my last child.

another boy, so i'm told.

and since i had not the courage last time i was pregnant to knit this gorgeous, pinwheel blanket, i've decided to give it a go this time around.

to commemorate this final passage of mine through pregnancy and childbirth.

i figure i'm halfway through this gestational period, so i have plenty of time to complete the blanket. i had a rough start with it, despite being somewhat of a self-professed "experienced knitter" and i blame pregnancy brain. i had to undo the thing and start over several times. more than ten, to be as exact as possible without being terribly embarrassed. i'm not even sure what the problems were but not reading the pattern correctly was one of them. anyhow, finally off to a great start and it's fast knitting, but i cannot sit for long periods of time thanks to what i call, and have googled, "severe butt thigh hip pain in pregnancy." that particular search led me to this particular website and i am so relieved to read through these experiences of other women and know that i am not alone. not crazy. not dying of some horrible disease. i'm just pregnant, with misaligned hips and back problems probably exacerbated by my improperly balanced pelvis. the stories from the women that can hardly move in bed, take 10 minutes to get out of bed and make it to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and often end up in tears? yeah, i could have written them. the point being that sitting for an extended period of time, or even ten minutes, can be excruciating but i refuse to knit standing up. so, under normal, non-pregnant circumstances, i'd expect to finish a project of this magnitude in a month's time but right now i'm not planning on being done until my last twenty weeks are almost over.

it will probably even take precedence over knitting diaper covers because we're pretty set on newborn sizes and i can always knit away the soakers once the baby is enjoying life outside the womb.

part of me feels a little guilty that i didn't knit one for my toddler or my almost-teenager. but knitting was probably the furthest thing from my mind when i was pregnant the first time. and when i was pregnant a few years ago, i was only learning to knit and more often than not, whatever i was working on ended up being thrown across the room after a few choice swear words escaped my lips. i remember my fiance looked at me one night and said, "i thought knitting was supposed to be relaxing." it is, i assured him, once you know what you're doing.

so when he told me to put the blanket down the other night, walk away from it, and start over later, i glared at him. a knitter, especially a frustrated one, will not give up. i worked continuously until dinner was ready and i was confident that no more mistakes would be made.

it is coming along beautifully, in a gorgeous organic cotton that was supposed to turn into a scarf for my father last christmas that i never got around to making. oops.

today my crafting included pulling out some stockmar modeling beeswax that i found while looking for something else in my craft closet. i didn't realize i had two boxes of the beeswax so i decided to test it out as i'd not yet played with it. i gave my almost-teenager a little piece to see if he could warm it up enough to make pliable because it seemed stiff enough to be impossible. i was trying the same thing but soon passed over that responsibility to my toddler who was absolutely delighted.

he pressed and pressed until i gave in and gave him a bit more. than a bit of another color. and another. and another. so we had before us the first layer, or four pieces of beeswax, that come in the stockmar box of 16 assorted colors. i was feeling like i lacked sincere creativity, my toddler was having fun making blueberries and ta-may-mays (also known as tomatoes), and my almost-teenager was making a lovely pregnant lady sculpture and then, later, a fairy for me.

that was one of those moments where i let anything happen, reminding myself that i can't hoard my expensive art supplies simply because they're pretty to look at in their own right. it feels good every time i can do that and i suspect that my studies of buddhism have really helped me be less uptight about stuff like that, but eventually i grew bored because, like i said, i feel like i'm lacking in a certain department. so i let the boys continue their projects until dinner was almost ready.

when it came time to clean up, i realized why so many people prefer their crayola and play-doh brand sculpting materials. it eventually came off of our tiled table with some yummy smelling, cherry scrub from shaklee but i much prefer water and towel clean-ups. i'm not sure what alternative surface i will require the beeswax play to occur on next time, but i figure it will be a long while before i bring it out again.