Birth by iPhone - 10:00 Update

I could call this one "10 at 10" because I'm almost 10 cm already! GOSH!! Water broke, all good. Calling the doctor now! Next stop = new baby!!

Birth by iPhone - 9:00 update

As is my natural way of birthing babies, apparently, once I start, things progress fairly quickly (no baby, yet, though, don't worry!!).

What I meant by that was that I went from 1 cm to 5 cm in about 30 minutes, and I. WAS. FEELING. IT!! Through the epidural.  YOUCHIE!!!

I told the nurse, and we gave me one top-up shot, which offered no relief to my abdomen, then another 30 minutes later. Still no relief to my abdomen. I mean, really. What good is it if my toes are numb? They aren't birthing anything!! 

So she called the anesthesiologist back, and he came up and gave me a bolus/extra B-I-G shot, and all is well again. :o)

I will say, though, that Birth Day blogging isn't as easy as some women make it out to be! I like to type sitting up, using both hands. :o)  But, I'm certainly glad we have wireless in the room and I can blog regardless!

Dave has been chilling out, even napping a bit, and is now playing a trivia game. :o) Good to know he is enjoying himself!!

Birth by iPhone - 8:00 am update

So here we are, in the hospital, working on bringing Sprout into the harsh, outside world. I'm posting a lot on Facebook, but I want to keep this updated, too, for memory keeping. :-)

We arrived at the hospital about 5:15 am, and Nurse Marlene got me started with the lovely gown, the 4,679 questions, the IV, and the Pitocin with the promise that I was first on the anesthesiologist's agenda for the day, and then she left.

Within 15 minutes I was having painful contractions every 2 minutes, squeezing Dave's hand, trying to do my special breathing, saying lots of "doggones" and "wows" and "holy cows.". I put up with that for about 15 minutes, and called Marlene to ask if we could stop the Pitocin till I could get my epidural. No use in feeling pain if I didn't have to, right? :-). She asked me how I would rate my pain, and Dave said "8!" but I didn't cuss, so it couldn't have been an 8! :-)

As it turns out, even though I was first on the list, the anestesiologists were having a meeting so she thought I'd have to wait. ("No waiting! I neeeeed that epidural!!"). Thankfully, she made a call and they released an anesthesiologist to come up and get me all squared away. Yippee!! He came in, talked me through everything, and I was good to go. Thank goodness!

By then it was 7:00, and my day nurse, Crystal, came in to take care of me through labor and delivery. We got the Pitocin back on, and everything set up for the baby, so NOW I was ready.

Instead of Blogging

I've been being VERY crafty lately.

Which could be a valid excuse for not blogging. :o)

But then again, that's a pretty lame excuse considering the amount of time I spend on the computer each day...but let's just forget about that part, okay?

I'm part of a virtual quilting bee (see button to the right), and the first block we have to make is a Spiderweb block. With corners and points that have to match. And I. AM. SCARED.

I can sew straight lines kinda okay, but I don't know anything about joining points and corners! Especially for someone else, you know?

Like, I can sew a pretty good project for someone who is a friend and will love me whether I sew a straight line and match the points or not. But to make a block for someone I don't really know? And expect her to like it?  Again, I. AM. SCARED.



So I made this block as a sample using scraps from fabric I already had (or bought so I could put it in the samples I'm going to make from all the virtual bee blocks.)

Honestly, I can do "wonky", and I can do "improvisational", but I don't think I can do "unintentional".

To my little brain, unintentional = chaotic.  (And the top of my sewing room (dining room!) table is VERY chaotic right now! Scraps are EVERYWHERE. It hurts my eyes.)

But, my eyes are soothed when I look at this finished block! :o)  I learned a few things, and hope to put them in place when I use Abi's lovely fabrics to make the block I will actually send to her.



So, excuse me while I'm off doing new things and wallowing in chaos.

Oh, and actually working to try to finish The Baby Quilt. For which I did NOT beat the baby. (Jack was born on March 15th!)

I've still got some work to do, but the blocks are done, and I made a computerized mock-up to see what the tan sashing would really look like before I committed to it.



I need to finish the sashing, and make the backing, then quilt (or send it off)

I need to get off the computer and fire up the sewing machine...I hope you have a great, and crafty weekend!

Let Me Be Your Etsy!

A few weeks ago, I agreed to go along with the crowd, and make a removable camera strap cover for my new fancy-pants camera.  Tinkerellen thought we'd all want to be like her and make some, too, (she was right), so she set up a kind of a craft-along and said that if we wanted to be super cool (and avoid her crafty wrath), we needed to complete our camera straps by March 31st, and blog about them by April 1st.

I was "do I have to commit to a deadline???" and my neighbor-friend, Kelly, was "in????" so we asked another friend, Emily, to join us for a sew-along at my house one day. Kelly brought (and used) her camera, and took some fun pictures (and one awful one of an unfortunate pregnant lady sitting near my daughter in front of a sewing machine, ahem). There were 3 toddlers, 1 baby, 3 mamas, and approximately 1,349,832 toys in the front room of our house. One sewing machine had never BEEN turned on (and, thus, the user didn't even know how to THREAD her machine!), one machine had some significant bobbin issues, and one sewing machine didn't have electricity run through it at all that day.

Oddly, the newby sewist (Emily) completed her goal (she scrapped the idea of making a camera strap and went with the much simpler bean-bag option) (which was not part of Tink's craft-along, but heck, she'd never even threaded her machine, so we can't fault her, right?).

And after our other neighbor-friend, Angie, fixed Kelly's bobbin malfunction, she was able to go home and complete her camera strap that afternoon (yay for naptime!).

Me? Well, I at least laid out my fabric that day! :o) And then I finished mine a few days later. Even though I followed the instructions (OH - here: removable camera strap tutorial), and I tried really really hard to keep my seam allowance at 1/4", somehow, my camera strap was REALLY snug.

It fits, hallelujah, but it doesn't feel very (tug, tug, shove, shove) "removable"!! :o)

I love love love the color combination of red and aqua, but I don't really love how the colors were combined here. I wish I'd added more reds to the patchwork side. Ah, well, lessons learned, right? Good thing it's removable, because, for all I know, next week I'll want one with blues and yellows! :o)

Honestly, it was a REALLY simple, and VERY completable craft. If I could sew quickly, I probably would have completed it (the sewing part, at least!) in an hour. :o) I know camera strap covers are the latest trend, and if you're looking to buy one on Etsy, but have your own sewing machine, you can TOTALLY make your own! And save about $23!!

Or you can give ME the $25 and I'll make you one!  Let me be your Etsy, Baby! :o)

Seeing Red

Not that I DESERVE one, but I've been coveting an Epiphanie! camera bag since I first saw one on someone's blog (can't remember who).  If I came across enough spare coinage, I might splurge and buy one. But for now, I just covet.

See, they are LOVELY, and BEAUTIFUL, and NOT AT ALL camera bag-like. (you'll have to click on the link to see a picture). The designer, Maile Wilson, is a professional photographer who would take her camera and "traditional" camera bag to photo shoots, but very rarely with her on personal outings, resulting in a shameful few family photos. She just hated carrying her camera bag! Feeling guilty about so few personal pictures, she started looking around, but just couldn't find a bag that would protect her camera while still looking like a hot handbag.

So she set about to design her own. Three bags (and a few in the hopper) later, and they are hotter than the tarmac at Hartsfield in August!

As I said above, I don't deserve one of these lovely bags -- I barely ever take my camera off Auto, for Pete's sake! 

...BUuuuT...

Beyond Snapshots is having a contest and giving away one Lola Epiphanie bag. It's the red one. That looks so soft. And supple. And fashionable. And hip. And trendy. Mmmmm.....yummmy....

The contest is to post a photo that represents "red" to me.  Well, I do love red. I enjoy red. I would like to decorate certain rooms in my house with red. (someday).

But for now, whenever I think of "red" I think of THIS shade of red:

The contest runs through April 2nd, with the winner announced April 3rd. And while I would SO totally love to win the bag for myself (thus, hesitating to tell you all about the contest, lest you win instead of me!), I decided to be a good girl and tell you about it, so you can hurry up and enter, too, and maybe someone I know will win the bag! Which would be almost as stupendous as winning it for myself. :o)

What's "red" to you?

'Fess Up Fridays - Beat The Babies (Wk 9)

Two more blocks done.

Mookie fixing the block...milliseconds before she wadded it up again. :o)

AND...I went to the LA Modern Quilt Guild meeting on Monday night. WHAT A TREAT!!!

On a side note, I saw a picture of myself on their website... I think I hear Stacy and Clinton coming up the walk to hand me my tail on a platter because I am clearly a candidate for the next episode of 'What Not To Wear'...and if there was a show called 'What Not To Do With Your Hair' I'm sure I'd be on that one, too. I need to put down the quilt blocks and hurry myself down to the nearest salon and have them work some magic!

Wait. Three blocks done. I forgot about the one I made yesterday.

Back to the MQG. The meeting was really inspirational, and motivating, and intimidating, and fun. :o)  I've decided to join a virtual quilting bee (I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds fun!). And we're/they're making a quilt for a raffle for a fundraiser, and I volunteered to make a quilt block for that, too. I think I can do one block for them! If they wanted volunteers to make whole quilts, I'd be slithering out the back door quick-like, but a block? I think I can do that. :o)

Sadly, I'm not sure I'll be able to go to too many more meetings. Dave has an incredibly important meeting the day after each monthly meeting, so he has to work late. And the MQG meetings are WAY up in LA, and I have to leave before Mookie goes to bed and I'm not sure who would take care of her and put her to bed, etc. :-( 

Being a mama is all about sacrifices.

Speaking of being a mama...we had another ultrasound this week, and the conversation was all about the alien. It pretty much shadowed every possible good picture of Sprout's little face. :-(  Mean alien.

I think that's a hand over there on the left of the shadow. And I think that's her little head on the right. Who knows. Well, the doctor knows. That's why we go to him...because he knows! :o) 

And speaking of babies, Angela is still gestating her little one. So I've still got more time to finish the quilt! (Yeah, right! Hallucinate much, Mama?)

Oh, speaking of the QUILT...the whole point of this series...I am definitely enjoying making it. I am definitely loving the process (and I am generally NOT a lover-of-the-process, NOT a lover-of-the-journey...I'm an end-result girl).  But this is fun! Really! There's no tedium, no boredom, no routine, no predictability...each block is purposely different from the rest, and we (the quilt and me) are just meandering our way to the finish line. Unfortunately, I do feel that it's important to complete the quilt, you know, eventually, so we can't meander too much! :o)

I hope you all have a great, productive, sunshiney weekend!