…Stefanie Japel Knits…

Today I told someone who REALLY doesn’t care about a bodily function, and saw immediately on her face that…I’ve become one of these pregnant ladies who talk about being pregnant.

I’m just so amazed by every little thing! I can’t help it!

I’ll try to keep the blog free of the gory details…but I can’t promise anything.

It’s really taking up amazingly large amounts of brain space. Daydreaming, “what-if”-ing, planning, writing on the calendar…

I keep thinking about how great this baby will be for reducing my yarn stash! All the old eBay 4-ball lot purchases! All the precious things that there just isn’t enough of for a whole BIG thing! All of the 1-ball TNNA samples! OMG, this is so awesome. I’m picturing sweaters, hats, socks, blankets, toys.

The problem, though, is that it doesn’t really get that yarn out of my HOUSE.

I’m turning the yarn room into the baby’s room…so it sort of re-purposes both the space *and* the clutter that currently fills the space…

Am I just trying to get out of getting rid of yarn!?

OH! You may have seen this, but check out all of the knitting books on Amazon that are around $5 right now!!

I’ve checked “Knit 2 Together” out of the library, and it’s worth the $5. That’s the only one of those that I have, though.

A couple of weeks ago, she graduated from law school. Here she is in her cap:

Here we are at knitting night on Wednesday:

(Marjorie, Becky, Me, Mom, Tonya.)

It’s extra nice to have her here RIGHT NOW. Nate and I found out that we’re having a baby!! And having my whole family together right now is SO COOL. We’ve been knitting a lot together (Tonnie crochets) and talking about baby stuff. It’s amazing.

She leaves on Tuesday already, and I can’t believe her trip is almost over!!

Hell-OOoooOoooOooooOOOOooo out there!

Gasp-gasp!

You know the old addage, “when it rains, it pours?” More and more I believe it. I don’t understand why it is that the cosmic forces always line up so that every-darn-thing happens at one time, but they DO!
I’m smack in the middle of book deadlines, my boss goes out of town next week so this week is meeting-heavy and finish-this-up-heavy, AND…my sister’s in town!! All of this is great stuff…the book deadline means we’re nearing the first photoshoot!!

I love-love the first photoshoot, because I get to see how they’re going to style the book and the mood that will be set for the cover and the fonts and colors for the inside and all that stuff that makes a book feel REAL in the early stages. I’m also excited to see how the garments look on real people and in interesting settings, rather than on my white cloth-covered mannequin in the corner of the living room.

Meetings at work mean input from supervisors and progress on languishing projects and moving forward. Moving forward is GOOD. Intense periods of work and progress can be really invigorating.

And OF COURSE I’m THRILLED to have Tonya here!! My parents live here in town, too, so she’s staying with them. We’ve been hanging out in the evenings and yesterday we got on a plant-planting kick. I decided to grow sweetpeas this summer (the flower). We live in a town that for some reason made great use of cement blocks back in the 40s when our house was built. The house is stucco-covered cement blocks, the fence is cement blocks, and all the houses and fences in the neighborhood are cement blocks.

This isn’t our house, but it’s a good example of creative cement block fence building:

This is our side yard. Look at all that cement! The sweetpeas will grow all along this wall:

Anyway, I’m growing the flowers not to necessarily cover up the concrete, but just to enhance it. Make it look a little homier. I’m not sure if they’ll grow in this volcanic ash/sand/red clay that we’ve got for a yard…but I’ll keep you posted.

I almost just answered this one yesterday withOUT being tagged…so I was really happy today to see that Sherri actually DID tag me!

Random things:

1) My favorite color is red, but I’ve been knitting with a LOT of purple lately. And on Knitty Gritty, I wore a purple sweater, my glasses are purple, and the sweater I was working on was purple.

2) I LOVE ginger. Candied ginger, ginger in tea, lotions that smell like ginger, and my favorite BPAL is a ginger scent. (Gingerbread Poppet)

3) I keep reading Crime and Punishment only up to the crime. I love Raskolnikov so much that I can’t stand to think of him in jail.

4) I have two 14 year-old cats who are still happy and loving life.

5) I’m thinking more and more about actually going to my 20th high school reunion. Whenever I sign a copy of Fitted Knits for someone, it reminds me of signing yearbooks at the end of the school year.

6) When I knit sweaters from other peoples’ patterns, they never look quite right. I’m still not a very good seamer or direction-follower.

7) When I was about 22, I was ‘discovered’ by a modeling agency at a grunge club in Des Moines, IA. (I did some modeling for fashion students at school, but decided to be an academic, rather than a model.)

The rules are :List 7 random things about yourself
Tag 7 others, direct them to your site to get the rules.

OK, now to tag people.

Well, maybe not the NEWS, but Glampyre Knits has been getting some press lately!

Firstly, I picked up the newest issue of Adorn Magazine over the weekend, and Fitted Knits is given a very warm review!

Secondly, Yahaira (who is for some reason /wink-wink/ scoping out the bride websites) pointed out that the Minisweater was April’s featured project on DIY bride.

This explains why a few people have emailed me about knitting wedding dresses! I was thinking, “I know it’s spring, but this is sure a lot of wedding dress emails.”

PS: My Knitty Gritty episode will be airing again on June 19 at 2pm Eastern.