Visiting the Blue Lagoon with a Baby

When we were planning our trip, I had this “I really want to go to Iceland” thing going on. No reason, as I’d done basically zero research. Still, I thought it would be fun and it’s traveling, so let’s GO! Jason asked around and one of his coworkers had some great advice – visit the Blue Lagoon as a transition from your flight to your stay in Iceland.

Our flight landed in Iceland around 7am. Our ride to the Blue Lagoon wasn’t going to leave until 9:30am, as they open at 10am. It was a little suck-y to have to kill 2 hours in an airport after a 5 hour long overnight flight as we’d had basically no sleep. But the airport has free wifi, so we ate some breakfast and dorked around online to kill time.

The bus ride itself was pretty awesome, as the landscape is so beautiful and alien all at the same time. 

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From the Blue Lagoon wikipedia article: “Superheated water is vented from the ground near a lava flow and used to run turbines that generate electricity. After going through the turbines, the steam and hot water passes through a heat exchanger to provide heat for a municipal water heating system. Then the water is fed into the lagoon for recreational and medicinal users to bathe in.” So not only is it an awesome spa and tourist attraction, it’s also a renewable energy source. How totally neat.

And then we arrived at the Blue Lagoon and immediately knew that being that tired was so totally, totally worth it. I mean, look at the view at the entrance way to the spa!!

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It was drizzling and a little chilly when we were there, and while the photos we took weren’t the best (because of the gray day), it totally made the experience even better. Soaking in warm water with a gentle mist of cool rain, creating steam around us. Seriously people, it was an hour of heaven.

Oh, and SILAS LOVED IT. He immediately was splashing around, giggling and smiling. They are totally child friendly there. There were high chairs / bumbo chairs in the showers so that you could safely put your child somewhere so that both of you could shower.

They also had staff members with android tablets offering to take photos for you free of charge! And they immediately emailed them to you, while making sure that you understood that email addresses were not being collected and wouldn’t be used for spam. Seriously, this level of customer service and thoughtfulness blew my mind.

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I’m very glad that we have a photo of the three of us (and with Silas looking so happy) so that we can remember our time there.

We felt so refreshed and rejuvenated after our stint at the Blue Lagoon. And it was almost perfect timing to head on into Reykjavik to check into our hotel. So yes, you should definitely go visit the Blue Lagoon.

Steeking Class at the Knit Cafe

Last night I took a steeking class at the Knit Cafe. Steeking is where you cut your knitting. Let me repeat that, you knit up a beautiful piece of fabric and then CUT IT. For a whole host of good reasons – it can make colour work way easier, you can add a neck or an arm hole, or keep stripey colours cohesive across a v-neck. But still guys – cutting my knitting!!

I totally could have read and watched tutorials online to figure this out, but some things are so seemingly scary that it’s nicer to have someone walk you through it in person. Plus it was the ever lovely Robbie teaching and how could I pass those good times up?

I knit up a giant swatch (seriously, mine was 12″ which was longer than I needed. Better safe than sorry?). I did, however, use up some odds and ends of cascade that were sitting in the stash.

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First up we practiced a crochet reinforced steek. I have to say that I loved, loved, loved this steek. It looked so finished and I can see how easy it would be to quickly baste down the steek. Easy AND nice looking finishing is a huge win in my books!!

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Those two mustard-y yellow lines are my reinforced steek edges. Then comes the scary part – cutting your knitting apart. Eeep! Tiny, very shap scissors make this part much easier.

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All done! I have to admit, once I made that first little cut and realized how easy it is I’m wondering why I waited so long to learn. Oh right, because it’s easier to be afraid and hide then it is to grow and learn. Thank you humble little yarn for teaching this mama.

3750590197 Steeking Class at the Knit CafeNext up we practiced a raw steek. No reinforcement, no sewing, no nothing. Just cutting right into the knitting!!! I was expecting mine to unravel a whole lot more, but it still looks quite clean. This was a little harder to do as I didn’t have the easy to see crochet reinforcement to guide my cutting (aka it would have been much easier to accidentally snip a stitch!).

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Last part of the class was learning how to pick up stitches between the main piece of the knitting and the steek stitches, so that you could theoretically add a button band, sleeves, facing, etc.

I was being a sillyhead, but Robbie persevered and got me to practice picking up stitches. I totally picked mine up going the wrong way – you can see a hint of the blue yarn running parallel to the live stitches on the needle – yeah, those should be on the other side of the knitting. Whoops!

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If this was a final piece, I would have ripped back and done them the right way. But, it’s a swatch and it was getting a little late. I was away from my nursling and my breasts were telling me that it was time to head home to nurse (apologies for running out early!). So I left it, haha.

But guys, I can steek! Now my dreams of a stripe-y raglan v-neck are one step closer to completion.

Theory of Parenting

Here is my scientifically developed, tried and tested Theory of Parenting *(tongue in  cheek, 6 months and a single child does not a theory make!).

 Theory of Parenting

 

My Theory of Parenting is that you are doing it right when your reach that sweet spot between a super happy as possible baby and parents that are as sane (and happy) as possible. That’s it.

It’ll look different for each baby and every set of parents. It’ll look different between parents. It’s flexible and fluid. Best of all, there’s no guilt because you’re ‘doing it wrong’.

As more friends become parents this acts as a reminder for me. There is a balance between being respectful of other people’s parenting decisions and tactfully sharing information that you’ve found helpful. I’m still working on it and to my soon to be parent friends, I apologize for the toes I’m going to step on as I hopefully get better at this!

Hello Yarn Handspun Knits for our UK Trip

We’re leaving for a two week trip to Iceland and the UK next Friday and even though there is still a lot to do to be ready to go I had a compulsion to knit myself things. Knitters will understand. Hello Yarn fiber lovers will also understand.

Silas has a hand spun and knit sweater for the trip and I wanted to show off things that I’ve made myself as well. Even though I already have 8 bazillion cowls, I don’t have any hand spun ones (what?!? how did that happen!!).

So I spun some yarn, a quick and dirty n-ply from Hello Yarn’s Prism fiber club.

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Which I then knit into a super squish-tastic Honey Cowl. I knit this up on US 10 / 6.0mm needles, which is larger than the pattern calls for however the yarn was also a bit bulkier. It was a good decision as the fabric is SQUISHY.

When I was spinning this yarn up, I was 100% convinced that it was ALL OF THE BROWN. And then I knit it up and realized that it totally had lots of purple and pink and blues and greens. So take that brain.

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I also knit myself a pair of Camp Out Fingerless Mitts. I’m not 100% sure what the weather will be like when we’re travelling, so I thought that I’d bring along a pair of fingerless mitts just in case. These took me three days to knit in moments of spare time – I’m thinking that this pattern will make the perfect easy gift for the ladies at the day care little man will be starting at later this year (and yes I’m already thinking about that!).

These are knit up out of the leftovers from a sweater that I knit for little man. There is still a little leftover, which might get incorporated into a leftover-busting advent calendar (maybe? if I ever get around to it…).

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And then a glamour shot of the two together! I’m looking forward to getting to wear these while traveling.

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I’m looking forward to traveling as well, but there’s an undercurrent of being nervous about traveling with a little one. Any advice or trips and tricks for us?

Combo Spinning

There’s a combo spin-a-long happening on Ravelry until the end of the month (details can be found here, if you happen to be interested). I really wanted to stretch my creative brain and combine some colours, but was feeling way stressed out about the likelihood of getting something done by the end of the month.

As usual, the stress was totally self inflicted as I was thinking about spinning 3 braids of fiber (so 12 oz total) for a 3-ply. If I break the problem down though, into a smaller amount it’s totally doable. So I split each of the 3 braids into thirds and am spinning 1/3 of each, for a total of 4oz total.

Below are my choices!

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Top is Hello Yarn’s Bristling on Shetland. Bottom right is Hello Yarn’s Prism on Polwarth. Bottom left is Hello Yarn’s Burrows on Rambo. And yes, I do have a rather large amount of Hello Yarn in my fiber stash.

I’ve started the fiber bobbin, with Burrows, and am loving the cool blues and warm yellows and dark browns.

I can’t wait to see this little sample 3-ply come together! Even more so, because I have 8oz of each colour so if this experiment goes well I’ll be able to spin up 24oz (or 1.5lbs!!) of it.