Not much

It feels like not much gets done around here anymore...

It's hard to clean up the house with a little baby.

Today, I ate several big salads, visited two friends, picked up our CSA veggie box, and finally trimmed and filed Elliott's killer fingernails.

I should have found time to edit and upload mushroom sequences to GenBank...I have to do it before tomorrow, so I guess I'll work on it in the middle of the night while breastfeeding.

I wish I had been sewing and knitting. I need to make more time for my creative hobbies - they make me so happy.

We have been busy having fun around here. Adam is on Paternity leave and we've tried to make the most of his time off. We've camped twice and are leaving for another camping trip tomorrow. We also bought a car! a 1995 Toyota 4 Runner from Craigslist :)

Kicking and marching

Elliott is constantly kicking and marching - he is rarely still. Here are some cute videos of the wiggle worm:

real canning

This year, I finally tackled real water bath canning. I had never had enough fruit to merit learning how to properly bottle it, but this year, I joined a home canning email group that orders bulk fruit from local growers. It was very fun (and addicting) to order boxes of fruit, pick them up at farms, and then figure out what to do with it all!

This year, I ordered:

2 flats of blueberries (ate fresh, froze 2 bags, made blueberry jam and syrup)

2 boxes of Rosa and New Haven peaches, 50 lbs (ate fresh, froze 2 bags, canned 6 quarts)

2 boxes of Red Gold nectarines (ate fresh)

1 flat of raspberries (ate within 2 days)

1 box Red Bartlett pears (ate fresh, canned 7 quarts)

2 boxes Ginger Gold apples (ate fresh, dried 5 bags, canned 3 quarts applesauce)

1 box Roma tomatoes (ate fresh, canned 7 quarts)

It has been a productive summer. I am very proud of myself; this is satisfying - and tasty - work.

Baby Jacuzzi

Elliott's 2nd favorite pass-time. (1st is showering with Adam).

camping with Elliott

We are back from a successful, spur-of-the-moment, family camping trip.

We went somewhere (Ingall's Lake) where we had been before. Here's our photos from last year.

Here is a quick run-down of events:

-left around 7 pm...in the rain

-Ate about 1/2 pound of Jelly Bellies while delayed in rock blasting traffic at Snoqualmie Pass.

-missed our exit by 25 miles because we were playing a modified version of 2 person D & D :)

-set up tent at midnight

-Elliott peed through his clothes into the sleeping bag on first night.

-Ate fish tacos for breakfast! Delicious!

-Hiked to Ingalls Lake with a beautiful view of Mt. Stuart. (Adam continued further to climb around on Ingalls Peaks)

Here is Elliott laughing during a breastfeeding break in the meadow:

-Elliott's feet pooled with blood from hanging upright in the Baby Bjorn carrier during the hike. It was very sad when we held him sideways to massage his feet to get the blood circulating.He cried - probably from that bad, tingly feeling.

-Made Vietnamese-style noodle salad with beef, vegetables, and lime dressing; definitely one of our best camp meals.

-Made bacon and hash brown potatoes for breakfast before packing up to drive home.

This is our river and wading pool, but it was too cold to swim. I can't believe it's mid-September. The summer disappeared while I was recovering on the couch for 5+ weeks....

We are glad Elliott enjoyed camping. We'll keep him.

Seed Stitch Cable Hat

My sister, Briana, had this yarn in her stash (which I inherited) so I decided to use it to knit a hat for our sister, Candice. Candice just started Fall semester, so, I think of this hat as a ‘back to school’ hat :)

I followed this free pattern using Manos del Uruguay wool clasica.

It looked like my yarn was thinner than the yarn suggested and the hat looked longer than I wanted, so I made a few changes: -CO 4 extra stitches, 64 total in rib section -2 additional stitches in the cable section, 14 stitch cable. -cables are 13 rows tall instead of 12; only made two actual cross-overs, the third ‘crossover’ is from decreasing rapidly.

Began decreases in seed stitch as follows: -row 39 (k2tog, p2tog, k1,p1,k1,p1 - repeat) -k1, p1 for 2 rows -p1, k2tog, p1, k2tog for 2 rows -pull yarn through remaining stitches and pull tight.

back to work!

I am back to work...sort of.

I'm not going back to work for any specific number of hours, but I did go into the lab today - with Elliott - to work on revisions of our current manuscript. We ended up being gone for over 10 hours, 8 hours in the lab and the other 2 1/2 commuting by bus. It was Elliott's first of many bus rides!

Here is a cute video of Elliott in the morning. He is always very happy and active in the morning.