Inga Update

It's slow, I know. It's something, I guess. I did enjoy making the braids and went ahead with making two like Hello Yarn. Hope to finish it soon. We'll see.

$150 Delicious

So, here it is: The infamous rocking chair. It's AWESOME! Sorry, I can't put it any other way.
It looked a little short once out of the box and assembled but you forget about all that once seated. I think that explains why most online nursery stores only show pictures of kids sitting in it. Besides being a good looking chair, it's most definitely functional. The past couple of night time feedings have calmed my fears of it being uncomfortable. I may not have shoulder support but I do get the appropriate mid to lower back support. Even Jason has warmed up to it, kind of.

I love TV

Also, can someone please explain why "community organizer" is now a bad word?

Labor Day Weekend Plans

This labor day weekend Jason will be going to Gainesville to meet Dylan for the first time (wish I could go too) since it's his turn to go on vacation. I went to Barney's Joy and he goes to Gainesville -- somehow that worked out the way it did.
Since Stella was born I haven't had the time to knit anything. I've started a few projects here and there but nothing worth mentioning and really nothing I've managed to finish. Although I'd rather hold her, I do miss having needles and yarn in hand. I also miss that feeling of excitement when you're about to start and later finish a project. This weekend I'm going to try my hardest to really start and commit to something. I figure I'll start small with the little inga hat and work up the courage for the Shetland Shorty.
Wish me luck. Maybe I'll even have time to update my ravelry. Maybe it's all wishful thinking.

In other very sad news, my favorite cupcake blog - Cupcake Bakeshop - was closed and I didn't find out until this week when I thought of possibly baking over the break. It was a great inspiration while it lasted. Chockylit will be sorely missed.

To Eames or Not To Eames

I'm a bit overwhelmed with how one little thing, like a desire for a rocking chair for Stella's nursery, keeps unfolding into more and more options. Choices are great, don't get me wrong, but they make me a bit dizzy.
I tried out and fell in love with the orange Monte Alto Rocker at GENES in Center City but then died when told that it goes for $795. It was such a comfortable and good looking glider.

Alia used some of her spare time, now that she's in Philly, and found us an Eames-like (I guess the manufacturer doesn't have license to the name) RAR (rocker-armchair-rod) that's very nice on the pocket book and even nicer on the eye. Even though, Jason hates it - clearly, he has no taste - he encouraged me to buy it if it's what I really want.
So, that got me thinking on form vs. function. I was curious to know how other parents faired with this cool but maybe not so comfortable option. I find that the biggest complaint out there is that it provides no support for your shoulders (something you might appreciate during night time feeding) but overall everyone is happy with their choice. I felt though, that a lot of opinions rested more on the fact that this is a design darling and concerns lied more on whether or not to go for the new fiberglass (as it was originally made), the new licensed polypropylene manufactured by Herman Miller, or the vintage.

I conclude that:
1) As nice as it would be, I'm not a purist/collector, or at least my budget doesn't allow it
2) My head hurts
3) I blame Alia for her contagious fixation of all things mid-century-modern

The future is now!

Josh and Alia are going to be here tomorrow! It takes a while but soon you'll learn to like Philly. I promise. Besides, it'll be so much easier when you have something like this to look forward to:

What will they think of next?

I was scrolling through the babies r us website and came across the premium furniture collection. I had never seen this section before so I curiously clicked into it and found these.
For a mere $350-700 you can start training your kid to have an eye for mod furniture.
Too much! I don't even have furniture that nice. Playing house just got a little too cool for me.

Week One Down!

Went back to work and survived. Although, I felt like dying by Friday. It helped a lot that my grandmother is here and I don't have to worry about dropping off and picking up Stella from anywhere. Pumping has also been interesting -- My boss' office, the supply closet...It's amazing what we do for our kids.
Although I have to say, it's been really sweet to come home and have her smiling and even laughing. Any stress or worry of the day, no matter how beat up I feel, just melts away.
In other news, I cut my hair today. It was meant to look like this (by the way, I'm dying to make that cardigan). I would say it's not quite there but it'll do. I can't expect too much when I pay $16 to a student.

It's Official!

I've been priced out!
I've always wondered why so many women are not taking care of their reproductive issues. Turns out that although some can hack it up to sheer laziness and/or ignorance, others are just tired of all the incredible hoops they must jump through to get anything done.

Now that Stella is here and we don't intend to have another baby for some years, I was considering an IUD. We figured it would be less hassle, just as effective, and more "cost" effective than the pill (or the minipill in my case since I'm breast feeding). Oh yeah, and I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting. It's a pretty routine procedure and I was all for it. Well, thanks to my doctor who warned me about health insurance coverage, I went on a hunt for information before we scheduled the visit. I seriously spoke to more than ten people in different departments and at first I got no straight answers. Today I got the harsh reality. The facts are that the actual implant is covered partly by my prescription plan (a copay of about $150, not bad) but the procedure is not covered by my health insurance plan. Why? Because: 1) the prescription plan would have to be via the health insurance company and I guess to cut cost my employer decided to go elsewhere, and 2) my employer decided not to cover contraception under the women's health clause for what I can only guess is a cost issue. Why be redundant?
How much would the procedure cost anyway? I called my doctor's office and it's but a mere $875.
Not so cost effective in the end. I know that there are other ways and really I won't be irresponsible but I feel a bit underwhelmed by this whole medical coverage system. Especially one set up by what one would think is a progressive academic institution. If it wouldn't have been for my physician I would have just gone ahead full steam. I guess he sees a lot of cases like mine. That was pretty honest of him. I wouldn't be surprised if some doctors just play dumb.

More hormones for me please. Oh well, lets just stare at this gratuitous picture of Stella with big eyes:

What's Taken Me So Long

I'm sure there have been many things for me to blog about in the past three months but none have been important enough to keep me away from this little one:

Too cute! I can't believe she's already more than 2 months old and I have to go back to work in less than two weeks. Now that I think about it, I haven't been away from her for more than 2hrs since she was born (let alone conceived). I just might have a break down. At least I'll have the reassurance that she's well taken care of by my Grandmother for the first couple of months.
Here's hoping for a seamless transition...

You Try and You Hope

but it doesn't seem to be enough sometimes.

I wanted to donate my/her/our umbilical cord blood to the National Marrow Donor Program and thought it would be a fairly easy process. Turns out just finding the information on how to go about donating it is daunting onto itself. It's a bit sad that you're constantly bombarded in your doctor's office and in baby books about keeping the stem cells for yourself and the ways, or companies I should say, that you have at your disposal. Nobody is talking about the public cord blood banks that supply lukemia patients or research labs.

We decided not to store ours privately not just because of cost (an initial fee of $1200-$1800 and a yearly fee of $125-200) and because neither of us has a history of any genetic/cancerous diseases but also because we feel that there is no clear understanding of what can actually be done in the future and whether those applications will be available considering the method in which the cells are collected and stored today. We also felt it would be better to put them to use now, to provide them to someone that has a need for them now in ways that have been shown to make a difference.

So, it turns out there's a lot of legal and cost issues that make donation almost impossible. The first hurdle is that the public registries only work with certain hospitals. The list is depressingly short and did not include my hospital. Once you find a public registry, like Cryobanks International, you have to fill out a slew of forms and have your doctor fill out a slew of forms and have all that mailed to them before the end of your 34th week of pregnancy. Here is where the process stopped for me since I'm well past that. So, unless you know that you want to donate from the moment you find out your pregnant don't even think about donating. In the process of being pregnant and figuring out all the different things you have to figure out for the changes that occur to you and the changes that are about to occur once the baby is here you're so overwhelmed that you fear you're forgetting something. In my case it turned out to be this issue and I'm pretty heart broken about it.

I also had the somewhat foolish assumption that it was standard procedure for the hospital to ask you if you wanted to donate or discard. I was especially surprised that a hospital linked to an academic institution such as Penn doesn't have this option for it's patients. It would be great. You have all these births occuring in your hospital, you have a core set up for storage and profiling (like you would do with blood, screen for malignancies such as HIV), provide them to patients in your hospital system (i.e. CHOP) who are waiting for a transplant, and give some to researchers in your vast medical research departments. But this is a way of thinking that is way too simple and way too optimistic. Again, cost and legal issues have made it far from standard. Being in the research world, apparently a bubble of a place, I keep forgetting that the current administration has made stem cell research a "red tape" area and that money still runs the world. Then there must be a few ethical issues I'm forgetting or shrugging off as not a big deal such as patient privacy rights (but I thought that was what HIPPA was for) or who do the stem cells ultimately belong to (If it's the baby's wouldn't the parent be considered negligent for not storing them in the first place? Could they sue a parent once 18?).

Even if I had made it in time to donate to the NMDP I would have been disuaded to do so since I would still have to cover the doctor/hospital fees involved in the collection -- an amount that again I can't afford and the public banks can't afford to reimburse me on.

And then I wonder why I'm so cynical about most things...

So Cool

I got this pleasant little surprise in my email today:

So ask away! We invite you to email your knitting and fiber-related questions to YouAskedIt@knittingdailytv.com. We'll choose a handful of the ones submitted to be answered on our new public television show, Knitting Daily TV, which will begin airing on PBS this July. Watch for the regular show segment titled "You Asked It!" and see if one of the hosts (maybe even Eunny Jang, editor of Interweave Knits!) answers your questions.

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Been looking forward to this

Finally! Tickets for the Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art are officially on sale. It's only $20 ($17 for students) and will be featuring 40 of her paintings as well as photographs of her. It will be here from February 20th to May 18th and then move on to San Francisco. If it's anything like the Dali exhibit a few years ago, it will be more than worth it.

Mystery Knitting

So, I've been knitting.
Thing is, it's all for other people. Although I want to write about it, I don't want them to know what it is until I'm finished and have given it to them.
Here are a few sneak peaks of what I've been working on:

1)This is an accessory I just finished making. It's the first time I attempt to make something like this and am often puzzled why so many in the knitting community love to make this. I've decided that, although it was enjoyable and would make it again, I'm not that kind of knitter.


2)This is for a baby that is due two weeks before Stella. We don't know what gender it is, thus the neutral color. What cute little baby thing will it be?

3)This is for a baby that is due two weeks after Stella. Babies, Babies every where!!! Here we know it'll be a girl who's name is yet undetermined. Her parents affectionately call her CJ (long story). It's a pretty hot item on Ravelry. Everyone seems to be making this or at least they have it on their queue. I like the pattern because of it's simplicity which in turn lends itself to personalization. The possibilities are endless.

In other knitting news, I have the yarn for Stella's picot dress thanks to a generous Christmas gift certificate to Loop. One of the best gifts ever. I decided on a color that's between peach and melon. You'll see, I'll show you once I've started. I'd like to finish another one of the projects above before I get into making it though.

What I did this winter break

Here is the vibrant green hooded kaftan (Debbie Bliss, Special Knits) minus the embroidery that I managed to start and finish while in Miami for the holidays. It was nice to be at my grandma's with no particular itinerary and most of the morning to knit in peace and quiet. Of course, not having a car down there determined the pace. Miami is,well, unforgiving to those without their own means of transportation. I was ok with staying home to start a new project for Stella but poor Jason was starting to show signs of an animal in captivity after a few days, i.e. pacing back and forth in one spot. I'm still not sure if I even want to add the embroidery seeing that my sewing skills are not up to par with my knitting ones. We'll see, I guess I'll give it a try. Next I might give a try at the picot dress but in a different color. For those of you who have Ravelry I will post details on the pattern, yarn and so on. Just give me some time since apparently my blogging/internet pace is on snail mode lately.

So, besides knitting and relaxing, need I mention the enormous amounts of delicious Cuban food we had. Especially, my grandma's cooking. Oh, I paid for it in the end by being 3 pounds over my target weight.
The funniest thing while there was that because of the heat, it was in the mid 80's + humidity the whole of our vacation, I started to show major signs of edema in my hands, ankles, and nose. Funnier yet, is that it all went away as soon as I returned to the cold here in Philly. Believe me, edema does not help when you're already so self conscious of your body image.

The little bun in my oven has recently made me aware of how precious sleep is. For some reason I've had a real hard time staying asleep at night. Besides reading I've been taking advantage of this time to do some baking. I know it sounds crazy to be stooped over the oven at four or five in the morning but I imagine this is what they mean by baker's hours. I managed to make bagels from scratch on two separate occasions. Pictured here is my first attempt and it shows. I didn't knead the dough enough causing the final product to be far from a complete ring. The second time around was much better. They came out really crispy on the outside and nice and doughy on the inside. Now I just have to get better at making them smaller like the ones we had in Montreal. That dough is a little deceiving. Just when you think you've made them nice and small they blow up while poaching.
Besides bagels I also made a batch of cinnamon rolls from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess and a batch of Christmas tree cookies (Martha of course) pictured below.

These cookies look intimidating at first but are really not that hard to make. I think the hardest part was to crush the candy to pieces -- Jason had fun figuring that one out. The other hard part was finding a cookie cutter shaped like a tree in the middle of Christmas season -- Jason did not have fun figuring that one out. I never would have thought that mixing cookies with candy would have been a good idea. I'm still not sure if I agree with the whole thing. I mean, they were way too sweat for my taste but a lot of people liked them. It was funny that they were so amazed that you could get a cookie to taste like a jolly rancher when in fact that was what they were made of. I guess you get lost in the effect to associate the center with this candy. I would say that in the end they look pretty and would make great ornaments but would not recommend for ingesting unless you have an unimaginable sweet tooth.