Traitor Joe's

Alright, it's a lame pun, but they've pulled the old switcheroo again!

First it was Kettle Chips. They only had a few flavors of the real thing before, but now they only have TJ's brand and only Salt and Pepper and Lightly Salted.

Next it was Strauss yogurt. TJ's "European Style" yogurt is just not the same.

Now it's Niman Ranch bacon!!! Seeing as how this is pretty much the only meat (if you want to call bacon meat) we eat, this is a serious crisis! We haven't tried the TJ's replacement but I'm sure it can't be as good.

We do buy the TJ's imposters pretty often since we do most of our grocery shopping there, but when I'm at the regular grocery store, I make sure to stock up on the real thing. Our local grocery store doesn't carry Niman Ranch bacon yet, but I'll bet they'll give it a try if we mention to the manager that Traitor Joe's has let us down in the cured salty meat department :)

The last stand will be RitterSport candy bars. Mmmmm, quality in a quadrangle! I know they have these (and a way more awesome selection of flavors) at our local regular grocery store, so I won't have to panic when they disappear. Mmmmm, Qualitaet im Quadrat.

What We've Been Up To

It's tough to keep up the blog these days but here's what we've been up to lately:

- Went to the Computer History Museum: It's a really neat place with tons to see. We could have spent hours and hours there but we didn't want poor Bea to be stuck in the Baby Bjorn for too long so we sped through a few parts. It's only two miles away from our house and we'd never been before. I'd definitely recommend it if you're ever in Mountain View. I should take my students there on a field trip!

- We spent a three-day weekend at Yosemite: We were hankerin' to see some snow, and spring is quickly approaching so we went for it. All in all our first mini-vacation with the girl went pretty well. Daddy took care of the tire chains while mommy and Bea took care of the nursing in the nice warm car! We hung around in our cottage quite a bit - had time to watch the whole 3-hour version of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" in bits and pieces, and had great food at the Evergreen Lodge just outside the park where we stayed. We took some nice walks too. We had never taken the short walk out to see Yosemite Falls before, so we bundled Bea up and went to check it out. It was a pretty view and great to be out in the fresh air. The crowds are mostly gone in winter and the snow is so beautiful. No skiing or snowshoeing, I guess, this winter. Maybe next year :)

On the quilting front: things are progressing very slowly. When I get organized and sit down to work on it, it goes fast, but that doesn't happen too often. My friend Annie sent an AMAZING baby quilt for Bea so I have some fresh inspiration to keep working. I'll have to write about the baby quilt later - it deserves its own post!

Snippets of Free Time

Here's Beatrice now. She's so big!! Nice hair spike, Bea!

When Bea is sleeping and I decide to slack on the laundry, dishes, etc. I can catch an hour or two of time to work on this quilt I pieced while I was at Penn State (six or so years ago!?!?). Once the layers are all basted I plan to get a little table to set up in the office/baby room so I can work on quilting it without having to put it away each day and without taking up our little dining table in the living room. It's so huge I'm only able to pin half at a time and even then it takes up the whole floor of the office. Dude, it's using zillions of pins! The first/last quilt I did, I basted with needle and thread and I felt like it was not that sturdy. I'm getting the pinning done as fast as I can, which is not fast at all, so we can move the changing table and all sorts of other random stuff back into the office. We need the space!!

Ack! Beatrice is here!

Here she is on Monday, Dec. 13th: 0 days old.

8lb-10oz (whoa!). 20.5 inches long. Lots of brown hair! Hooray!

Done with Dots!

"What?" you say! Yes, Horst is still in there. Here we are at 40 weeks + 3 days.

Since I'm still just waiting around for her to show up, I had time to put the last few polka dots on the border of this quilt top. So it's done! I don't think I'll take up the quilting just yet, though. I don't feel quite mobile enough to set up the batting/backing sandwich; plus I have to think about the quilting pattern. That was a lot of applique!


Now I have two pretty big tops that need to be quilted plus a full-size quilt that's just tied that needs to have new batting and get quilted and bound too. I think that means I'm not allowed to start a new quilting project yet. Bummer.

Crafty

Sorry the photo is sideways! Here's the blanket I knitted. It's pretty uneven and the seams are ugly on the back. I'm just glad to be done with it. We can use it for whatever I guess, maybe in the stroller or on the floor.

I am more excited about finally learning to do quilt bindings properly. I took a class Tuesday night and here's my practice piece. I used a piece of practice hand-quilting and some leftover polka-dot fabric for the binding. Now what can I use this thing for?

Ready for Horst-Maria

My awesome mentor from my summer job at Lockheed Martin sent us these furry leopard Gap booties for Horst (temporary funny unborn baby name from Swiss-German book on pregnancy for expectant daddies...). I love them, they're so tiny and fun!

So now that we have these and the carseat is installed I guess we're ready! Time to take some brisk walks around the neighborhood to get things going :) Tuesdays and Thursdays are my usual swimming days - I think tomorrow will be my last swim. The due date is Dec. 8th, but I would feel just fine if she decided to come sooner!! Are you listening Horst?