I just got news from England that my best friend from home just gave birth to a baby boy weighing….

ELEVEN WHOLE POUNDS.

WOW

CONGRATULATIONS Liz and Richard!
Here’s to you and your house full of boys, I can’t wait to meet him when I’m home at Christmas.
xxx

***Edited to add***

Birthed in the ‘conventional fashion’ too and without any drugs! She’s my hero!

About halfway up the left front, I glanced down and saw THIS:

A knot in my yarn. I appreciate that not every ball of wool can be perfect, but I still find it annoying as it just means more ends to darn (not my favourite part of knitting). To date, the worst skein I’ve ever knitted with was a ball of Rowan Country that seemed to have a knot in it every 20 yards. It did make something nice though.

Up to now I’ve resited the urge to start any baby crafting projects, partly because I didn’t want to jinx anything, partly because it still doens’t feel entirely real yet, and partly because I don’t have any idea about what colour to knit. But in the past week I finally caved in and put wool to needle, choosing Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in a dusky duckegg blue. The pattern isn’t particularly challenging (what is it with moden baby patterns and the assumption that everything should be at beginner level??) but I chose it as like the colour, it’s suitable for either a boy or a girl. I’m also knitting it to fit a 6-9 month old, as it’s rather warm yarn and a cardigan like this might not come in very useful in the 90˚F heat of the Bay Area summer.

PS for anyone interested, the pattern is the cardigan with moss stitch edging from the Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Book 2.

So it turns out that this morning my ever-talented sister made the front page of Etsy! Thanks Kalurah for letting us know Of course I emailed Malph straight away to find out if she’d heard the news (which she hadn’t) but suddenly it all made sense why she had had to spend the whole day replying to message after message in her Etsy mail about all her pretty things. Clearly making the front page on Etsy is like striking gold in terms of attention seeking. Let’s just say that she’s got a busy couple of weeks ahead

All of this reminded me of the time that we went out a few weeks ago to have a try at taking some as-nice-as-we-could-get publicity photos for her little web shop. We had such a lovely time, driving all over the local English countryside finding nice backdrops. We ended up on a little village high up on the Berkshire Downs where we played around in a pretty farmyard complete with tractors, geese and even the odd donkey or two. We had such a nice time and the great thing about it being a photo day was that I have all the nice pictures to remember it by.

Here are some of the photos we managed to take (during the rain-free moments). If you’re interested to see more of her things, you can visit her shop (in GB £) or click on any of the pictures to be taken directly to her Etsy store (in US $). She also ships worldwide Shameless plug, I know, but what are sisters with blogs for?

I know, I know, first there’s a week when you hear nothing from me and then all out of nowhere I’m  bombarding you with multiple posts per day. But it helps distract me from the Big Move at the moment which is good medicine, and for every ten things I pack, I allow myself to look at another website. So far the incentive is working and I’m making good progress, but I’m beginning to wonder if I can get away with just two 32kg bags on the plane next week. Something tells me I will have to pay the $125 for a third piece of luggage as there are certain things that cannot be shipped, nor left behind…official documents, necessary items of clothing, computers, cameras, some work-related items and a couple of extra little things that will make me feel immediately at home (so important).

Anyway in my perusal of Google and the world wide interweb I came across THIS:

Are my eyes deceiving me? The Rowan website might harm my computer?? Either the Rowan website has sadly been infected with a spreadable virus, or there’s something going on over there that makes the browsers and search engines think there is a problem. Firefox is saying there’s a problem too as the only reason I ended up googling was because the direct link I entered into the browser came up with something similar so I ran a search to check that I had the right address.

Curious. I hope they sort it out soon, I want to look at the Winter 2008 yarn!

_____

PS Apologies in advance to Vanderkitten for posting a Google screenshot, but Yahoo! doesn’t warn you in the actual search results if a website is suspected to be malicious….*runs under a rock and hides* 

I don’t normally write about this sort of thing, but occasionally something happens that gets me a bit more than mildly excitied. This is one of those occasions (others include e.g. new Apple products, or when a super cool new scrapbooking tool is on the market, or an exciting new Rowan knitting book has been released to name but a few, hehe) :

The release of the new Leica D-lux 4 camera has just been formally announced over on the Leica website (coinciding with the big Photokina 2008 photography expo).

I’ve been waiting for this for MONTHS! I’ve wanted a nice SLR-quality pocket-sized camera since well before Christmas last year and was all set to ask for the D-Lux 3 for my birthday this summer when I heard rumours of the next model being on the cards. And *FINALLY* it’s here.

It won’t actually be available in the shops until October 2008 and even then it might be hard to find for the couple of months after that as it’s in such high demand. I had a little shop-floor play with the D-lux 3 at the beginning of the summer and homygoodness was that a beautiful camera if ever there was one. I can’t even begin to think how exciting the D-lux 4 is going to be. Gosh I hope it lives up to its expectations in field tests and gosh I hope I get to play with one at some point. Owning a piece of Leica is one of my dreams.

For those that are interested, here’s a bit more info taken straight from the Leica website:

The Small System Camera
The compact nature of the D-Lux 4 means it can be with you all the time. But despite its compact size, it offers top Leica quality and gives the photographer plenty of artistic freedom. The D-Lux 4 is ideal, whether for subjects composed with lots of forethought or for spontaneous reportage.

The high-aperture professional lens
The LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMICRON lens 1:2.0-2.8/5.1-12.8 ASPH is a high-aperture lens for digital compact cameras that allows the real enthusiast to work with an open shutter. Its high speed makes the LEICA D-LUX 4 ideal for available light exposures. Whether in poor light or for selective use of field depth, the lens of the LEICA D-LUX 4 gives the photographer scope for highly individual picture composition. The aspherical zoom lens with a focusing range of 24-60 mm opens up new creative options in reportage photography.

The lens design consists of eight elements, of which four are aspherical. These are matched individually to the camera sensor, working in harmony with the electronics and software, to produce stunningly brilliant pictures in true-to-life colours.

Powerful sensor
At a standard resolution of 10.1 megapixels, the overlarge size of the 1/1.63″ CCD image sensor increases image quality distinctly. The smallest details of the subject are reproduced exactly. The D-Lux 4 can take photos in all three formats (4:3/3:2/16:9) to suit the particular recording or playback situation. On the 3″ LCD monitor with a resolution of 460,000 pixels, pictures can be viewed and assessed in excellent quality before and after they are taken. Leica Camera AG has developed its own unique colour matching, contrast and picture definition profile which produces digital characteristics complimentary to Leica M film photography.

More creative possibilities
The ergonomic layout of controls and intuitive operating system make it a pleasure to handle the D-Lux 4. Focus, shutter speed, stops and exposure override can all be set manually with the joystick giving the real enthusiast scope for highly individual picture composition. Of course you can also use the intelligent automatic mode: Depending on the subject and photographic situation, the camera automatically selects the best mode from Scene Select, either macro, landscape, portrait, night portrait, or night scene. The professional software Capture One 4 (RAW data converter) makes sure that the RAW data supplied by the CCD sensor is “processed” in optimum quality. Data recording can be in Fine, Standard, RAW or combinations. The D-Lux 4 is also prepared for photos in HDTV format with a HD port for TV connection.

Expandable, just like a small system camera
The D-Lux 4 is a real Leica, not just in its design, its looks, and its performance, but also its being the first digital compact camera that can be used with an extensive range of accessories – just like a system camera.

That means even more photographic possibilities with the camera that can claim to be
“son of M8″