beer craving + pregnancy = grumpy pregnant lady

I started my third trimester a few weeks ago (I'm in my 30th week now), and with it came a new craving: beer.

Now, before you get all high-and-mighty on me and start the lecturing and know-it-all diatribe about alcohol consumption during pregnancy and fetal-alcohol syndrome, yada yada yada that people LOVE to lecture on (in a total asshole sort of way), let me preface this with the fact that I am not running out and drinking a bunch of beer. But I crave it like nothing else.

During my first trimester, when I stopped drinking after finding out I was pregnant, I did miss alcohol and not having a cocktail when we went out to dinner. But I got used to it and replaced it with ice cream.

But summer has arrived and nothing sounds better than an ice cold beer, a bag of barbeque chips, and a hot dog with spicey mustard and sauerkraut.

But wait, you say, you can have the non-alcoholic beer! Problem solved! ...solved, my ass...urm, have you ever tried non-alcoholic beer? It tastes like sweaty dog-ass. Really, I have tried a lot of brands and they are all awful. I even tried non-alcoholic wine, and it tasted exactly like sparkling apple cider without the bubbles. Flat, sugary, and disgusting. Might as well drink some juice.

So a few times a week, I have been indulging myself and having half a beer. Do I feel guilty about it? No. I don't think ANY doctor would yell at me for having half a beer on a full stomach, in the course of drinking my half-gallon of water a day. And if you give me any grief about it, I will delete your comment and think badly of you. self-righteous bastard.

By the way, Pyramid's Apricot beer is my favorite. Can't wait to give birth and actually enjoy more than a little of it at a time!

2 months to go!

Toys for kids

Thought I would post a few pics of little stuffed animals I've made over the past year. They all go into a toy box until the kid is born (4.5 months and counting). Our dog always seems VERY interested in these, so we will have to be on guard for toy-chewing.

Below: raccoon sewn out of a pair of old corduroy pants. I saw something similar in Stuffed Magazine, so I attempted to copy it as best I could. This was just drawn freehand and sewn up and stuffed, then extra bits were embroidered on.



Bunny Crochet: my own design. His head is too big to really stay up on its own, however.

Crocheted Raccoon: from a pattern I bought on Etsy. Too cute:

Carrot scarves and cupcakes

As a way to save money, I've started using the library again. You know, that place that has books you can borrow? I remember having a hard time finding new or hard-to-find titles when I was younger and living in a much smaller town, so I was pleasantly surprised by the public libraries in Sacramento. The on-line search and hold service is frickin' awesome. My latest find:

Twinkie Chan (http://www.twinkiechan.com) makes some adorable crocheted scarves and other accessories. From the few I've made, the patterns are really simple too. After seeing the carrot scarf, I had to make it. But I only had half a skein of orange left, so I made a kiddie-version:

I am working on making the cupcakes (see scarf below), but they seem to turning out smaller than in the picture (too small of crochet hook?). So I've altered the pattern, and am thinking of making a cupcake-banner for the kitchen. The husband will have to deal with the girly-ness of it. Yes, it is pink and yellow. Maybe if I make him the bacon-and-eggs scarf he will be happy?

Back to blogging!

Sorry for the long absence. The combination of starting a new job that I actually like (yay!), trying to get pregnant again (it worked!), and deciding to not continue my pursuit of a graduate degree made it a little difficult to find time to work on the ol' blog. Since it has been a long time, we'll start with some updates:

1. I am about 4 months pregnant, and things seem to be progressing "like normal." I'm even showing just a bit. My husband has been taking pictures of the growing belly, so I will try to post some of those soon. Right now, I just look like I have a wicked beer belly. It jiggles a little too. Just to warn you, many of these future posts will be pregnancy-related, and then baby-related. It was not my intention to write a "mommy blog," so I will try to include as much crafty-goodness as possible, as well as cooking and gardening and home-remodeling.

2. Last June I started my new job as an Environmental Scientist, a job I had spent about a year applying and trying to get an interview for. I hated my last job sooooo much, so the day I got "the phonecall" from my new employer was one of the greatest days. Ever. I don't think I stopped smiling all day. Especially coming right after that awful miscarraige and realizing that my last job was such a dead-end shit-hole. I had to make sure to keep the glee tamped down so that my co-workers wouldn't kill me during those last two weeks.

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Okay, so down to crafting. Over the past several months, I was bitten by the craft-bug (hormone side-effect??), so I need to catch you all up with that. First, I started, and completed, my first knitted sweater. Not a sweater for myself, mind you, but a baby sweater (insert "aww" here). After blocking, it seems like it turned out okay. I am going to ignore all of the imperfections and badly-sewed seams for the time being. It is too big for a newborn, but my due date is mid-July, so it may be perfect for a 5-6 month old this coming-fall/winter. This baby-sweater pattern is from LionBrand.com, and I made it in Lion's Cotton-ease. If you want to know the exact pattern name, just send me a message or comment and I can find it for you.

I also attempted to free-form crochet some baby booties. However, I didn't have a baby around to size them on, so I don't know if they will actually fit a baby. They turned out pretty adorable-looking, though.

Marzipan cupcake experiment

For Easter, I finally tried to make some marzipan animals to top cupcakes. I purchased the pre-made marzipan in the baking aisle at the grocery store and used liquid food coloring to create the colors. Some came out better than others. Below is a turtle:

Bunny heads:


An overhead shot of toadstools, a turtle, and some chocolate-hershey-kiss-boobie cupcakes (after I ran out of marzipan shapes).

And my new cupcake carrier (excitement!):

Personally, I didn't really enjoy working with the marzipan. I forgot to dust my hands with powdered sugar so the marzipan mostly stuck to my fingers, it was hard to get individual pieces (likes ears) to stick to other pieces, and the taste was gross. I guess I am not a huge fan of almond extract. They were a big hit at the barbeque I brought them to, though.

As a side note, has anyone noticed how swollen Val Kilmer has gotten???? I just saw the preview for the SNL skit-that-should-have-stayed-a-skit "movie" MacGruber, and Val Kilmer looks like he has been playing Kathleen Turner in a new bio-pic.

More crafty goodness and gardening (when it was sunny)

In our "backyard" is located a huge fan for our HVAC system, and it does not exactly "go" with our gardening scheme in our very very small yard. Jay got all man-crafty after it was installed and made this trellis-enclosure for it. It is two-sided, sealed, and attached to the fence with just a couple of small screws, in case we need to access it. Then we spent a day de-weeding and covering the ground with white rock. The plants on the outside of the enclosure include some ground cover (creeping jenny), two ornamental kales, geraniums, yellow daisies, and in the green pot is an asparagus fern. In the back corner (far right in the above photo), I planted three different rhizomes, including some larger ferns, and two others that I can't remember at the moment. Hmmm....I remember one is an ornamental tropical-looking leafy plant, and the other starts with A....astiridae? Anyways, it's pink. When they finally emerge, I will put some photos up. It is a little exciting waiting for them to peek out. And yes, gardening can be exciting!


Super-cute ceramic mushrooms for the garden, found at Target.


Close-up of geraniums.




Crafty-goodness:

A while ago I bought two pillow-forms at IKEA to cover at a later date. Procrastination set in, as it does with all of my crafty-intentions, and they sat, untouched, for about six months. In a craze of "I am going to finally finish all of my WIPs!", I made two envelope pillow-cases, using the pattern found on Chez Larsson's craft blog. It is one of the easiest pillow cases to sew: straight lines, some light ironing, and ta da!






Of course, as soon as I finished works-in-progress (eggplant, crocheted rag-rug, pillows), I had to start some new ones! A short list of projects I am now working on:

1. Knit amigurumi lamb
2. Knit amigurumi tomato (to keep the eggplant company)
3. Crocheted chevron baby-blanket
4. Bought a Knit Pick kit to knit flowers/floral motifs
5. Finally rolled my wool skeins into balls to start the owl sweater from Ravelry, then realized I didn't have the correct size of circular needles

Next post: cupcake experimentation

Craft-tacular!

In my last post, I mentioned starting a crocheted rag rug. Well, here it is, all finished! It turned out a little smaller than I had anticipated, but the colors turned out great. The pictures don't really do it justice, so you will either have to see it if you come over or just trust me.

I used a simple circular crochet pattern that has increases each row, keeping it flat. It is the same starting pattern for most amigurumi patterns (row 1: 6sts; row 2: 12sts; row 3: 18sts....etc.). The last three rows, I used a double-thickness of Lion Brand Thick 'n Quick and added a shell pattern.

The dog was occupied with trying to smell underneath the rug. Not sure why....

Also, I finished (yay!) my first knit amigurumi project. I am not a very strong knitter, so I started with an easy pattern: eggplant.

Ta da! EGGPLANT:

Now, what do I do with a knitted eggplant? Ya got me... There are other veggie patterns in the same book (Amigurumi Knits, by Hansi Singh), but I'm not too excited about knitting another vegetable. I suppose they could sit together in a bowl and look clever. Perhaps I could knit up some insects that could be attacking the veggies....there is also a pattern for ants that would be cute.