All things baby...

This past Saturday was the baby shower for one of my college roommates. Besides the three hour car ride there and back, it was actually a lot of fun. I know baby showers can sometimes be tedious (especially when the mother-to-be opens a million and one presents and everyone has to ooo and aahh over them) but this one was really nice.

We only played one game in which I did terrible. I think I got the least answers correct out of everyone. I'm actually pretty happy about that and let me tell you why. The game was to name as many children from certain TV shows as you can (ie, the Brady Bunch, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, etc) and I could barely name any. I don't watch TV and even as a kid when these shows were on I obviously didn't pay too much attention to them!

We did have to sit through the present opening but luckily there weren't too many presents. Mine was the first to illicit the "aaaaaawwww" out of everyone!I think mine was the first handmade present she opened. There were a couple of other things that were handmade, mainly blankets that were sewn. I swear that baby is going to overheat with all the blankets that were made for it (I think somewhere in the vicinity of 5 or 6 blankets) The funny thing is they live in Virginia!

I think the thing I liked best about the shower was reconnecting with friends I haven't seen in awhile. After all, it's the connections with people that matter most, right?Me and the mommy-to-be

We have bread!

So after about a month and a half of thinking about baking some bread, I finally got around to doing it today. I used a really simple, easy recipe for whole wheat bread.

Let me put this into perspective here. I did try one other time to bake some bread, but my yeast was dead. I tried proofing it and nothing happened, no foaming, nothing but a bad yeasty smell. Poo. So I gave up for a little while.

I finally realized today that I have a day off and nothing planned, why not bake some bread? I got some new (alive) yeast and I started my first ever loaf of bread. I'm sure some people wouldn't appreciate hand kneading the bread, but I was so excited that the dough actually looked right that I was all about kneading it!

Then there was the rising. I can't believe how much bigger it gets! I knew it was suppose to, but actually seeing it was another thing entirely.

So I'm gonna skip right to the part where I took it out of the oven.It looks gorgeous right? The picture doesn't, however, show the fact that it weighs about 20 pounds! It's just about the densest bread I've ever come across. Sure, it tastes fine, but this one reminds me of the movie "About a Boy" where the kid throws this loaf of bread in a duck pond and kills a duck. Yeah, it's that heavy!

I'm thinking I'm going to modify the recipe next time. Maybe mix the whole wheat flour with some lighter flour. Who knows, I know with bread, the possibilities are endless and it takes a certain amount of practice right?

Niagara Falls

I actually don't have any knitting projects to show at the moment. I started a baby hat (which looks more like a hat that could easily fit my head) but I think I have to re-knit it and the deadline is looming. I have a week. No big deal right? Well, there's work thrown in there, not to mention the cotton/acrylic that I picked out makes my arms hurt if I knit on it too long. I'll get it done though.

A week ago, my friends and I went to Niagara Falls for the day, just as a lets-get-off-our-butts-and-have-a-road-trip sort of thing. It was a gorgeous day, and by gorgeous I mean the sun was out and we hadn't seen it in a long, long time. It was still cold, but the sun totally made up for that.

I've never seen Niagara Falls in the winter. It's actually really beautiful.The mist coming up made this thin, icy layer over everything... including us after awhile! We really didn't wear very appropriate clothes for being "rained" on. So we took a few pictures and headed out.Here's the boy and I (totally blinded by that thing known as the sun.)

We all decided to be complete tourists and went over to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch....Where we sat by Elton John's Pharaoh suit and Madonna's tasseled bustier. They really set the mood!

On our way home we stopped by RockVentures in Rochester. It's the largest rock climbing gym in the Northeast, and let me just say, I've totally missed rock climbing!Though a gym is nothing like real rock, it's still a lot of fun.

I was so exhausted by the end of the day, but it was worth it. Winter seems to get us stuck it a rut of always wanting to stay in and avoid the cold (at least it does for me) but it's good to get out there and enjoy it!

More FO's

Guess what folks? I have another couple of finished projects to show you. There's the socks for the boy for his birthday, all finished (and when I say finished, I mean the knitted part is done, I never seem to sew in the ends until right before I gift them.)I'm glad I finished these early because, it turns out I now have a baby shower to go to at the end of the month that I'd like to knit something for. Apparently I've entered the part of my life where my friends from college start having babies. Funny how life sneaks up on you like that!

Just this morning I finished up the yoga mat bag. It's perfect timing too since I have my yoga class this afternoon.This pattern was really fun. There were some design features that I really liked. For instance, the I-cord bind off on the bottom of the bag...It makes such a clean edge for the bottom. There's also the folded edge at the top which is pretty...It's funny, but I'm really excited to go to yoga tonight just so I can use my bag!

Knitting update.

Just a quick post here kiddos. I'm not dead. It seems that finding time to blog is not tops on my list of priorities at the moment (we all go through slumps, right?) I don't want to totally leave everyone in the dark though.

I've been working on a couple of projects recently. Both have been taking equal amounts of my knitting time. One because it's interesting and I've been wanting to knit it ever since I started yoga and the other because it's a birthday present and it has to be finished by the end of March.

Here's the yoga related project...It will eventually be the lacy yoga mat bag from Interweave knits. The pattern is simple and you'd think that by now I would have memorized it, but I haven't because I've been knitting it while watching episodes of The Office (I never knew I could laugh that hard!)

The other project is a pair of socks for the boy for his birthday.This pictures makes these socks look purple but I assure you they're not. It's a twist of brown and navy blue. I know he'll love them because he almost never takes off the scarf I made him for Christmas. What a good guy! I know he knows I'm making him something because the package arrived from Knit Picks while he was over and he was a bit suspicious of the fact that I didn't tear right into it the minute it came into my hands.

And just because I haven't in a long time, here's a picture of my baby, Ludo, in his typical relaxing postition...He always looks so fed up with my taking pictures of him, but I'm pretty sure it's because he's reacting to the flash... at least, that's what I like to tell myself!