Our First Aniversary

1 year ago today...

From Super-Duper Wedding Album (click link if you want LOTS more wedding memories!)

We got married! It was such a fun day, such a wonderful celebration, so special to have our many good friends and our amazing families came together for a terrific party. The weather was perfect, the food was great, the band rocked, and everything just came together like clockwork. And you could say more or less the same about our first (married) year together too. Life is good! :)

Tonight we are celebrating by going out to dinner at Nimbus in Bellingham. I've never been (I ate at a previous restaurant in the same location, years ago, but lots has changed) and I'm really looking forward to it. It's at the top of one of the tallest buildings in town, and I timed our reservation so we will get to enjoy the sunset during our dinner. How romantical!

Pocket Blankie

I made this little blankie with a pocket and a stuffed kitty for Christian & Fish's baby, who is due Sept 27th. The baby shower was yesterday, it sure was a fun gathering.
It's made from scraps of different yarns from my collection, I think it turned out really nice. The dark navy blue is a super soft, silky & fuzzy yarn, fun to work with.
I hope baby Lopez will like it. :)

First Diaper

I made my first cloth baby diaper yesterday! It turned out really well. I spent a lot of time looking at patterns and reading about materials and styles and stuff so by the time I sat down to sew I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. Even so, I'm impressed at how quickly and easily it came together. Also, it's really tiny and cute, I cant wait to have a little baby butt to put in it. :)

Here it is with one of the wing/tabs open, you can see the little scoop in the front - that is to keep the tummy pannel from coming up over the umbilical stub while it's healing. The pattern I used is called "Shar's Newborn with Umbilical Scoop Pocket" and it was a free downloadable pattern.

Here it is completely open, the elastic at the top is the opening for the pocket. For those of you who haven't been obsessibly researching cloth diapers for the last month (and why not? you have something better to do?), a pocket diaper has two layers - an outer water resistant or waterproof one, and an inner wicking one, with an opening so you can stuff an absorbant insert in between the two - aka the pocket. In this case, both the inner layer and the outer layer are polar fleece, but strangely enough some fleece lets water through and other fleece doesnt. I had quite a time going through my fabric bin pouring water on various fleeces to figure out which kind was which, it is not obvious from the thickness or fuzziness of the fleece at all. So, how does it work? In the interest of science, I tested the finished diaper (even though I had already tested the fleece before sewing) by stuffing the pocket with scrap material and placing the whole thing on top of a t-shirt before pouring about a half-cup of H2O onto it.
The result? It worked perfectly. The insert soaked up all the water, the inner wicking layer of fleece felt only slightly damp to the touch, and the outside of the diaper and the T-shirt beneath it were perfectly dry. I'm sure in real life some accidents may happen, but this diaper design really seems to work well!
After my initial diaper-making success, I decided I should try my hand at making the absorbant inserts. It took a bit of trial and error, but once I got a system worked out they went really fast and I made up a baker's dozen of them. The winning combination was two layers of flannel or jersey (from an old t-shirt) and an inner layer made from a retirement-aged bath towel. I top-stitched the edges and the center to (hopefully) keep all the layers in place without any fraying through wash after wash.
I also cut out a bunch more fabric for more diapers, including some PUL (polyurethane laminate - basically plastic-backed fabric) to use for the outer layer on some truly waterproof ones. The PUL is kind of expensive, so I wanted to make sure I did up some fleece ones to practice before I got into it. I figure I'll make about twenty of these newborn-sized ones with the scoop front, and then switch into a slightly larger newborn/small, maybe from a different pattern. This is fun, and it's really going to work! I'm so glad I decided to give sewing my own diapers a try.

Jelly & Pickles

I went out in the morning yesterday and picked wild himalaya blackberries from the patch in our field. The rain all last week was hard on them, many were so soft they disintigrated at even the gentlest touch. I was still able to pick about 6 quarts of ripe juicy berries, enough to fill my biggest pot halfway up, in just over an hour. The berries aren't as sweet as they would have been with a bit more sun, but they sure are extra juicy. Perfect for Jelly!
I got about 3 quarts of juice out, enough to make 14 jars (the jars vary in size from cups to pints) of yummy jelly. With a little left over for a couple peices of test toast. :)
I also made a batch of crosscut dill pickles, 7 pints. This is my second batch of pickles this year.

Unfortunately my first batch (bread & butter pickles) came out short on the liquid so we won't be putting them up for winter, the seal is good but the top couple inches of pickles will dry out. Instead we are using them up as fast as we can... there are worse problems to have than lots of delicious pickles that need to be eaten though!

Moina Corn! Moina do it!

The Ericsons came up for a visit and had dinner with us last night. Moina* - er, I mean Moira - a was very excited about the corn we picked from the garden, in fact after we had picked it she insisted on carrying an ear with her on our pre-dinner walk. So cute! After our walk she helped me "open" the corn.
This is the first corn I've harvested from the garden this year, we will probably have just one more picking - I only put in one short row. But it sure was tasty! Moira wanted to eat it before we cooked it, it took quite a bit of convincing to get her to let me have ALL the corn for the cooking pot. A couple ears got nibbled raw, but they cooked up nicely just the same.

Everyone agreed the corn was delicious, you just can't beat it fresh from the garden, young & tender. Moira ate two ears!

*Moina is how Moira pronounces her own name these days. More than once I found myself slipping into using her pronounciation. :)

Baby Barbarian Hat

I finished the baby barbarian hat for little Conan. Here it is, modeled by Sprout:
I had to roll up the brim so that it would fit Sprout, but even so this hat is so tiny! I hope it fits little Conan for at least a little while after he's born... I might have to make another one, in a larger size so he can actually wear it when he's bigger.

Little Yellow Wagon

I have a new toy! A steel flat-bed garden cart, the sides can fold down for moving large things, or locked up as needed. Especially now that I'm pregnant, moving things in the wheelbarrow isn't a good idea. It's really nice to have, way better than a wheelbarrow for moving furniture! This dresser is being moved out to the freshly cleaned shop to get a nice new coat of paint before it moves back into Baby Conan's room.
That's right, we cleaned the shop! We moved most of the stuff out into the driveway, then swept, vaccummed, and mopped the floor. Then of course we moved the stuff back in, but we sifted out the junk and organized the rest of it so it all fits neatly inside. A new shelving unit really helped too. It's incredible how much open space there is now! Of course, we still have a couple of piles of things that need to be taken to goodwill or the ReStore, but all in all it feels like a major accomplishment. It was a huge job... but now we can move on to other projects, like painting baby furniture. :)