Blankie

Steve and I went to see little baby Jackson over the weekend.  He was two weeks and two days old when we saw him and, sweet Jesus, is he cute.  He doesn't really do a lot.  He squirms quite a bit.  Makes funny faces.  Sleeps.  That's about it.  He pooped every time I held him.  He's a little, tiny baby and about one third of everything he does is poop so I tried not to take it personally.  He's also exceptionally cute so I'm pretty sure I forgive him.

Which brings me to:

Baby feet!  Holy crap is that not the cutest freaking thing you've ever seen.  Little itty, bitty, tiny baby toes.  Damn, that's just adorable.

We got the chance to give him (well, his parents) his baby blanket.  My teddy bear, Sleepy Tired, has been kind of enough to model for me:

The blanket itself is about 4 feet by 5 feet (give or take, depending on pull and such) and made out of organic cotton yarn.  Specifically it's from the Lion Brand Nature's Choice collection in Almond and Blueberry.  (Sounds like a tasty cereal combination.)  Note:  I have not been paid to promote Lion Brand Yarn, it's products, or knitting in any way.  Their yarn is readily available in most craft stores which makes it easy to gauge the weight, texture and color of the yarn and therefore decide if you want to use it.  I've used a number of their yarns over the years, some of them are great, some of them are terrible, some of them are so-so.  The yarn I used for this project is VERY soft, very easy to work with, and while it's pretty light overall it makes for a very cuddly blanket.  I would absolutely recommend this yarn if you're looking for a warm, cuddly project for fall/winter.  

Okay so that was me geeking out about yarn.  Yeah... I'm not without my... well let's just settle on I'm an odd duck okay?  Odd duck it is.

I used a five to two ratio for the stripes and an over-all diamond pattern to give the blanket just a little more texture and interest.  Here is a close-up:

And here's a wider shot that really shows the diamond pattern nicely.  

Jon and Kelly seemed to like it a lot, which is awesome.  (It may have been suggested at one point that it will end up being Kelly's blanket, that's cool too.)  Jackson kind of looked at it a little bit, which is really all you ask for from an infant.  I know the comfort a good blankie myself so I hope it'll be a good one form him.  And it was really a fun blanket to make.

Sometimes... Things Just Suck.

So here's a list of things that suck.

1) Work.
2) Driving more than 20 damn miles to get to work well before 7 in the morning.
3) Mornings.
4) EARLY mornings.
5) Absolutely every fucking thing that happened yesterday.  (Except for the steak Steve made me for dinner, that was awesome and so is he.)
6) Finally deciding what movie you want to watch when you go to bed and then realizing you can't watch it in the bedroom (this one may be specific to me.)
7) The Great Black Tablecloth Debacle of 2010, Parts 1 and 2.  (Pretty much going to have to trust me.)
8) Microsoft Exchange.
9) Every damn day this week.
10) Yesterday's Vikings game.
11) Today's Twins game
12) The fact that both of those teams have confusing esses at the end of their names that make me not believe I have apostrophes correctly placed.
13) Attempting to grill chicken in the dark while it's raining.  (though the results were still tasty)
14) Headaches.
15) Being blamed for not knowing something that literally NO ONE actually knows.
16) Having to be the bigger person when you are so not the asshole in the situation.

You've probably caught on but it's been a pretty crappy couple of days.  The primary cause of this, I won't lie, is work.  It would have been an exceptionally hard week this week even if we had all five days.  It was no doubt at least 7 days worth of work this week packed into 4 and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to do a fair deal work this weekend.  It's all a lot of stressful stuff that, even when I have gotten done working for the night, I continue to think about, worry about and, indeed, dream about.  This makes me crabby which makes me write lists of things that suck.

There is one thing that completely and totally does not suck in any way whatsoever.

Hurray!  Congratulations to the parents (you guys rock) and welcome to the world, Jackson!  I totally dig that your first birthday is going to be 09/10/11.  That's super cool.  I will totally get you a present.  I'm very excited to meet you and I hope you don't think I'm scary.  And just because you decided to make your appearance today I'm going to put aside my crabbiness for a bit and show you a couple things that don't totally suck about the world.  Pay attention, I might test you later.  ... When you've grown and learned to do things like sit up, and talk and read.  So you've got some prep time anyway.

There are only two things that suck about that.  One is that is was taken from the parking lot at my work.  Really that doesn't suck, it's just kind of sad.  The other is that it was taken around 6:15 am.  That sucks. Big time.

Gotta tell you, though, it's awfully hard to remember the parts that suck when you're looking at that picture.  

Some day a long, long time from now I'll tell you all about whiskey sours with two cherries.  Because, believe me there is absolutely nothing about those that sucks.