baby contest!

I've mentioned a million times here that I'm pregnant, and a few weeks ago posted a picture of my gigantic belly, so you might have guessed that I'm due soon. Lorne and I decided to copy Nate and Miranda's baby contest* idea. Lorne and I will get a child**, and one*** lucky guesser will win a fabulous prize!

Here is how it works: guess the day and time of Will's arrival. The closest to his actual debut will receive a fabulous prize (to be named later). Also guess a weight to serve as a tie-breaker. We'll stop taking entries on Friday at 4:30 (when my maternity leave starts!) or until labor begins (whichever comes first), and keep all guesses secret until then. Doesn't that sound like fun?

So, if you'd like a shot at a fabulous prize...
Send an e-mail to whenwillwillarrive@gmail.com (not a comment on this post) containing:
- Your guess at the date and time (to the nearest hour)
- Your guess at Will's weight (for tie-breaking purposes)

Here are some details to level the playing field:
- Will's due date is 6/8
- He's technically "full term" now, so if I went into labor now, they would not try to stop me
- If he doesn't arrive by two-weeks post-due date (6/22), they'll probably start to think seriously about inducing labor
- Will looked like this about 18 weeks ago, if that helps you somehow:



*If you already received an email from Lorney, this is the same contest.
**The prize is not a baby, unless there is a hidden twin in there.
***There is only one fabulous prize! GET OFF OUR BACKS, WE AREN'T MADE OF MONEY.

too pregnant and lazy to write much

Just a short post. This is for JoAnn, who I made wait for awhile to get a bag. I thank her for her patience. Here are some pictures of her large tote bag. =)









I'll try to post something more interesting soon. Lorne painted a toy box with the Twins logo and I painted a rocking chair with the Washington W.

Eight is Great

I made Lori a knit clutch almost a year ago (which you can see here, just in case you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything I've ever made). She emailed me a few months ago to find out if I'd be able to make some of the smaller tote bags for her. Seven for her bridesmaids and one for her. I feel that this blog entry will be super picture-heavy.



I finished up with the last two bags today, and here they all are, lounging on the chaise in the baby's room. Lori gave me free reign to do pretty much whatever I wanted, though she did ask if I could make a few that were similar to ones she'd seen on the blog already (if you read the blog often, you may see some familiar-looking faces in the group shot above).

Here are closer-up shots of all the outers:


Blue/black dot tote and brown/teal flowery tote.


Blueish/greenish/orangeish paisley bag and light blue/brown dot bag.


Pink and black swirly bag and pink/brown geometric bag.


Rose bag and brown/cream flowery bag.

And here are some shots that show some of the innards:


Innards of the light blue w/brown dots bag and blueish/greenish paisley looking bag.


Innards of the pink/brown geometric bag and the brown flowery bag.


Innards of the brown/teal bag and the blue/black dot bag.


Innards of the pink swirly bag and the rose bag.

I hope Lori and her bridesmaids like them all!

Happy Birthday Margie!

My little sister turned 19 yesterday. I failed to finish her present in time to send it up to arrive on her birthday. In fact, I failed to finish it until today. Anyway, I made her a little tote bag that looks suspiciously similar to the green tote I made myself a few months back.

Lorney took these pictures after I finished up with the sewing so I could go sit in a cold bathtub for awhile - it's been ridiculously hot here the last few days. The tote is on the chaise lounge thingy we stuck in the baby's room. The stripes on the chaise are dark blue, but the bag is dark purple. Just in case you were confused.



Margie is in her first year of college at UW. I mentioned how smart she is last year when I made her this pillow for her graduation. Well last quarter she 4.0'd all her classes. So she's still a nerd, and I'm super proud of her.



If my remembory serves me right, Margie is a fan of polka dots. I used purple vinyl because (1) I liked how it looked and (2) it's one of her school colors. Go Dawgs.

Margie rules, and I hope she had a really great birthday yesterday.

wall letters

This weekend Lorne and I finished painting the wood letters we bought to put on the wall of William's room. We went to Michael's a few weeks ago and picked the letters out and bought some paint. Lorne and I don't consider ourselves to be particularly good at drawing or painting, so we're really happy with how they turned out.


(Edited to add: now that I've published the blog, I realize that the picture Lorne sent me is too big to fit in the stupid blog window, so here's a link: wall letters.)

I think my favorite letter is the L with the giraffe, which Lorney drew and painted. He's a happy little giraffe. So cute. =) We also got a new camera a few days ago, which allowed Lorne to take the nice picture above in the poor lighting conditions of our apartment. Fancy new camera accurately depicts the colors of the letters.

New camera also took this picture, me on our deck, 36 weeks pregnant:



And this picture of George:



And this picture of Gracie (who still hates you):

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

We had a potluck at work today to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I offered to make some sort of dessert, then remembered it was supposed to be Mexican-themed, then frantically went searching for some sort of Mexican dessert to make. Flan is the only thing I could think of, but I'm not a big flan fan, so I poked through my trusty friend Google and found this recipe for Mexican almond cookies. The recipe is from some Frida Kahlo cookbook, so I figured it was authentic enough to bring for a work party.

Basically, it's egg, butter, sugar, cornmeal, flour, and mushed up almonds. I like all those things, so I figured I'd try it out.



The cookies flattened out a lot in the oven and looked kind of like corn cakes. They tasted pretty good though. The outer edges were nice and crispy. The recipe has an option of adding meringue topping, though it says nothing about cooking the meringue after you add it. This bothered me a little bit. I actually like my co-workers and would rather not poison them all with salmonella. So I pulled out my kitchen torch!



Okay, I'll be honest with you. As soon as I saw that this recipe had meringue that I could torch at the end, I decided to make it - I didn't just randomly think last night, "Oh hey, maybe I should use my torch." It was all a set up for me to use the torch.

The cookies were pretty good - they tasted kind of like cornmeal shortbread - but once I topped them with the meringue and let them sit overnight, they became a little mushy. Everyone at the potluck liked them, they just had to eat them with a knife and fork.

productive weekend

Aside from the diaper bag and the large tote I'll talk about in just a moment, this weekend I also made homemade strawberry ice cream with Lorney, baked some cookies for a Cinco de Mayo potluck at work tomorrow, and sewed up a billion straps and the outers of a bunch of small and large totes. Lots of new vinyl colors and fabrics for the outers! Fun times. I'll post some pictures later this week.

On to today's tote bag!



Mary was looking for something to drag all her stuff around over the weekend of her July wedding and asked if I could make her a large tote. One of her wedding colors is turquoise. I found that the color turquoise is interpreted differently by pretty much everyone that makes fabric in the color turquoise. For example, both the vinyl and the fabric for Mary's tote are called turquoise, though they're obviously different colors.



Here are the innards. I liked the light blue stripe (or maybe that's also turquoise?) and brown with the outer fabric. I didn't have anything in my stash that really went with the outer fabric in either of her other wedding colors (dark purple, kelly green).



Another picture of the outside of the bag. The first picture was taken from our deck during the day, then the batteries on the camera died. After they'd sufficiently recharged, this is what it looked like inside. What a difference lighting makes, eh?

and now for something completely different

Okay, I lied. It's just a little bit different. I made a knit clutch for Nicole oh so long ago, and she contacted me a little while ago asking if I could come up with a diaper bag she could give to her pregnant friend. Seeing as how I am also pregnant, and would also need such a bag, I said yes. I had some ideas.


This is the front.

As you can see, it's about the same size as the large tote bags I've been making. I dropped the amount of vinyl down on the front because Nicole's friend was excited about the paisley fabric - I wanted to make sure you could actually see a significant amount of it.


This is the back.

I added an outside pocket to the standard tote bag pattern. That big tall chunk of vinyl going up the back is a nice sturdy flap with a magnetic snap. I imagine it being used to hold a changing pad and one of those little flat packs of diaper wipes...or something. Though, I don't dictate what all the pockets are for - Nicole's friend can use it however she wants.


The open outside pocket.

I lined the outside pocket with the same paisley fabric. I liked how that looked. I would have been done with this last Sunday, except that I couldn't get the straps to turn right-side-out. I spent two hours on one and got maybe an inch turned before my hand cramped up painfully, then I quit. Lorne usually does the strap-turning for me, and he was out of town until last Wednesday night. So I tried again on Monday and Tuesday and failed miserably both days. Then I gave up. My trusty husband turned them (and about 16 other straps) on Thursday night. Lorney rules.


Innards, part the first.

I'm not a parent just yet, but I will be soon. I've spent a fair amount of time around parents - at my mom's daycare, my brother, my brother- and sister-in-law, other relatives - and my observation is that babies come with a lot of crap, and they need a lot of crap to come with them wherever they go. There are lots of little toys and extra socks and bottles and pacifiers that are needed to keep babies happy. So I made a strip of pockets to hold some of the stuff - a few little enclosed pockets, and then two pouches that can hold bottles upright.


Innards, part the second.

Then I included the pockets I usually put in the big tote bags. Perhaps Nicole's friend would like to not carry around a purse and a diaper bag, and wants a place set aside for her wallet, keys, and cell phone. Or perhaps her baby will just have a whole lot of stuff and more pockets will help her stay more organized. Whatever, as I said earlier, I'm not a pocket nazi.


The side of the bag...because I always have some sort of angled picture.

I still need to make a bag for Lorne and me to use. I'm thinking I might make one pretty much like this, except all vinyl on the outside, with a cut out of some sort of baseball-related thingy. Lorne and I just have to fight out* whether the cut out will be Twin-, Mariner-, or Dodger-related.

*By "fight out" I mean with brass knuckles, sticks, and partner cats. I call dibs on Gracie - she may be smaller, but she's meaner.


Gracie hates you.