They tell you it’s amazing how the time slips by when there’s a new baby in the house and you’re its prime source of food and solace. It’s true. While I’ve been home much more than usual with plenty of time to spend at the computer, the rate of blogging has not increased correspondingly. This is partly because I do most of my typing with one hand while feeding my daughter (actual nap time when two hands are available has to be used for working and, when my brain is too fried to be reliable for editing, for knitting) and partly because I’m constantly discovering new ways to botch the infant care and waste time fixing my mistakes. The prize-winner thus far is the day I filled out a bunch of forms as if I were the baby (this I was supposed to do) and then capped it by signing her social security card (this I was not supposed to do). It’s really just unfeeling of our government to send an important document to the home of a new parent with instructions that read, “Adults: sign immediately in ink.” Those of us with brains not running on premium aren’t too good at reading on to the next line that explains how children should not sign until reaching age 18 or until their first employment, and then inferring that the instructions are written as if Ada could read them herself. So now I’ve made one trip to the social security office for a new card and have been told to return with a letter from the pediatrician affirming that the tiny baby I’m trying to keep quiet by breastfeeding in their waiting room is actually who I say she is. (Her birth certificate, a carbon copy of the form from the hospital requesting her original social security card, and the spoiled card itself are somehow insufficient proof, and it’s going to be a while until she has a driver’s license or a passport.)

And just now I’ve blown twenty minutes picking green fuzz out from between her fingers, toes, and chins. You may have seen the impossibly soft and fluffy bamboo blankets they’re making these days. Don’t be fooled into thinking they’d make a scrumptious cozy towel for after a bath when the baby’s actual soft towel is in the laundry hamper, okay? They lint like you wouldn’t believe in the face of dampness and rubbing. Yes, I muppetized a baby. She is clean and fresh smelling, but she looks and feels like the love child of Kermit the Frog and a chinchilla. Or maybe The Hulk was fuzzy when he was a wee bairn?

Anyway, before I was spending my time in these intriguing kinds of ways, I took pictures of the finished Oliver + S Sandbox Pants to show off here. Ada won’t be able to wear them for another year or so, but I’m pretty pleased with myself them. You know how to click for bigger.

The darker patches are where I removed the pockets from Mr. G’s old shorts. There are grass stains, too… I think my beloved played some ultimate frisbee in these one summer at college. Here are the secret polka dot pockets:

… and the buttonhole elastic I substituted for the drawstring:

Best of all, I think she’ll be able to wear them just about the time she grows into this adorable owl vest, knitted by my lovely friend Katherine. Mmmm, tweed:

This outfit is going to be so ridiculously cute I’m going to want to gobble her up. Oh wait, I already do that. The green fuzz kind of sticks to the roof of your mouth, though.

We’re having fitful, tempestuous, Wuthering Heights weather: pelting rain and hail, tree-thrashing gusts of wind, bursts of silvery sunshine dazzling every bead of water on the leaves and raising clouds of steam from the roofs, then another front blustering through to lash the branches and fling rain at the windows again.

I’d like to be curled in a comfortable chair with a bottomless mug of decaf Earl Grey, stirring in a spoonful of fresh cream from the top of the glass bottle of Noris Dairy milk that’s delivered weekly to our neighbors’ front porch. (Three families are now collaborating on this milk order, and it’s so good I’m not sure we can ever go back. It’s quite the little collective we’re developing: I bring the eggs for four families from the farmer who’s a parent at our school; our immediate neighbors orchestrate the milk order and grow vegetables on our sunny side of the shared driveway; the neighbors across the street go halvies with us on a CSA share of more vegetables. I never imagined city life would be like this.) I’d have a great book in my lap, ideally a world mythology compilation illustrated by Alice & Martin Provensen back in the late ’50s. (My friend and librarian Maureen has kindled in my soul a hot desire to trawl the internet for ex-library copies of children’s classics long out of print. I am determined that Minnow should know and cherish ancient tales of heroism and love and dastardly deeds and outrageous godly scandal. And the Provensen illustrations are unsurpassable. I’m not sure what it says about my promise as a mother that I’m chiefly concerned that my child should have plenty of handknit sweaters and a library worth devouring. Is it weird that I’m more interested in shopping for musty old books than for adorable outfits and nursery decorations?) And of course I’d be knitting. Since this is fantasy, I’d be making a cabled sweater in a toddler size out of undyed Saxon Merino from the Catskill Merino Sheep Farm. (I have only just read about this yarn in today’s Knitter’s Review, but it’s calling to me strongly. That the yarn comes from sheep tended by a man with a love of Proust and a sheepdog named Poem is, I’ll admit, a significant contributor to the weakness in my knees. I have thus far resisted the urge to buysomerightnow, but it has occurred to me that I could hunt this yarn down at the Union Square Greenmarket in just a few weeks’ time.) This sweater would also bear a motif of stylized red foxes around the hem, because I’m in the mood for foxes.

This is all in my daydreams, see, because I actually need to polish off about five baby sweaters before I could start anything like that. But look who finished a quilt top:

Where would you like to be?

I sewed my way through the NBC coverage of the Kentucky Derby this afternoon and have a new frock to show for it. Wanna see?

I used this tutorial from the gals at Presser Foot (read the March archives for the full instructions) and I’m pretty pleased with the results. All the sewing was easy enough for a beginner like me, and there were no hiccups except for that minor roadblock with Signy Husqvarna’s stitch width limitation.

Whoops, should’ve tied that belt a little tighter.

And this is what almost 26 weeks of Minnow looks like, for the record. It made me a little goggle-eyed to realize the other day that if 26 + x = 40, x must be equal to 14. That’s 14 weeks left of just me + Mr. Garter. Not very many at all, and Minnow could even come early. So we seized the day, lit a fire under our own derrieres, and went out to dinner at Toro Bravo, a tasty Spanish-influenced restaurant that our neighbors have been raving about for a year. (It’s right near the hospital where we’ll be delivering, actually. My thoughtful husband offered to trot over and fetch take-out if either of us should feel peckish at a critical moment. Maybe after the baby’s out, honey.) Anyway, I think I could eat bread fried in garlicky olive oil and topped with fromage blanc and sautéed nettles every day.

But I digress. Back to the frock:

I bought this nice linen at Bolt — it felt so soft and cool and summery. But what I really liked about it was its unexpected pretty blue selvage. I know you’re supposed to cut off and discard the selvage, but I couldn’t bear to do this. So I purposely left my selvages a four-inch margin with the idea of using them in the belt and ruffles. Linen already has a bit of a rustic, homespun look, and I thought I’d just play this up by exposing the raw edges. And I’m jolly pleased it worked out as I’d imagined.

I built in some room to grow so I can keep wearing this little number for the next month or six weeks at least, I hope. Maybe the weather will even get warm enough that I can wear it without jeans and a shirt underneath…

There are six blocks to my little quilt for the nieceling. Three of them have large trees, like this:

As I described in the last post, the circular part is pieced in. I sewed the trunk to the bottom of the tree before I set it in and just poked it through to the front, then sewed it down as a last step to finish the block. From the back, it looks like this:

I’ve been on kind of a sewing binge. I hope after the weekend I’ll have a finished dress/tunic to show you. My binge may also have included some fabric purchases. I may have discovered the rabbit hole that is Glorious Color. (Why yes, I do covet the Liberty assortments. Do you think I could register for one, you know, for the baby?) But with spring busting out all over, how could I resist these?

Hmm, Wordpress has once again managed to desaturate my photos. Imagine these brighter!

Some of these, at least, are going to become ducky little Oliver + S garments. If my sewing skills hold up, that is. (I had a small tantrum over the fact that my sewing machine has a maximum stitch width of 5mm and is therefore unable to sew a zigzag stitch over (but not into) a piece of quarter-inch elastic. I called the sewing machine store to find out if there was some magical way to sew a longer zigzag that I was missing, but there wasn’t. I actually tried manually shifting the whole piece back and forth between every stitch, but this was too ludicrous for words. Finally I pulled up my socks, thought through the problem, and used the other kind of zigzag that makes several stitches on each pass, having carefully stretched and pinned the elastic ahead of the needle. It turned out fine.)