Cabled Cowl

Cabled Cowl

Yarn: Bulky Yarn

Catalina Yarns Baby Alpaca Chunky, 109 yards (100 meters)

Needles: US 10 ½ (6.5 MM) and US 6 (4 MM)

Gauge: 12 stitches per 4 inches (Gauge is not crucial for this project).

Cable Pattern

Row 1: k15

Row 2: p15

Row 3: sl next 5 sts onto cable needle leaving needle in front of work ,k5, k 5 sts from cable needle, k5.

Row 4: Repeat second row.

Row 5: Repeat first row.

Row 6: Repeat second row.

Row 7: k5, sl next 5 sts onto cable needle leaving cable needle in back of work, k5, K5 sts from cable needle.

Row 8: Repeat second row

Pattern

With smaller needles cast on 49 stitches.

Knit 8 rows in garter stitch (knit every row).

Change to larger needles.

Row 1: K15, p2, K15, P2, K15

Row 2: P15, K2, P15, K2, P15

Row 3: Row 1

Row 4: Row 2

Start cable pattern- there are 3 cables in this pattern.

Knit until 2 inches shorter of desired length. (This could be knit very loose or tight depending on the desire of the person wearing it.)

Change to smaller needles.

Knit 3 rows of garter stitch.

Knit 5 sts, cast off 5 sts, Knit 12 sts , Cast of 5 sts, Knit 12 sts , Cast off 5 sts, knit 5 sts.

Knit 5 sts, cast on 5 sts, knit 12 sts, cast on 5 stts, knit 12 sts, cast on 5 sts, knit 5 sts.

Knit 3 more rows of garter sts.

that old familiar place

I hate someone one I work with. 

This is a place I've been in again and again and again. I work under someone who is to put it nicely is stupid. Not stupid in that she isn't an accomplished well respected professional on paper but she lacks the common sense to get out of a paper bag. 

Some of the problems: I've questioned her. She did like that. She isn't accustom to people questioning her. She really isn't used to someone questioning her because she hasn't been for 40 years. Had this been 5 years ago I would have called her out in a meeting or said something very awful to her in front of a bunch of people. Given that I've learned that isn't a very good approach I've attempted to be more diplomatic in this situation. Until today I thought I was doing pretty well. 

I had bumped heads a couple of times but I thought it was going all well. Today she told me she was the boss. The thing is that policy says she isn't. My supervisors is backing me up.  But I work in a system that likes to throw people under the buss. Slowly she will see that things have changed and need to continue to change but there is going be a lot of resistance. 

I don't understand why I have to be the one to to always push things. I also don't want to get labeled as that "pushy" social worker. Hopefully this will get easier as I get older and wiser. 

This is just to say

I stole the idea of happier ever after.

Forgive me but we still have to death do us part.

I am ending the waiting game
and staking a claim at happy in this moment.



I am unable to pick my underwear up off the bathroom floor, close the cabinets and the microwave or keep your side of the bed clean.

You must forgive me and accept me as absent minded as I am.

I admit I have been far to busy as your wife and as his mother.

We still can opt for for forever and ever.

This is just to say

That I am sorry I pulled the rug out form underneath you, turned on the light
and nocked out that wall.

I am sure you will forgive me in due time.

The hardwood floor underneath it just looked so nice and the light coming in the window is just right.

I know that you liked things how they were but in truth something had to give.

The gift only a mother can give

My wish is that organizations like the United States Breastfeeding Committee and La Leche League would focus some of their energy into publicizing the fact that some women have a low supply that can't be fixed and facilitating milk shares. When in the fix of struggling with my milk supply I turned to LLL and was given hope but in the end felt like I was failing because my story doesn't end with a nice ribbon on the end like this one and this one which appear under the section for milk supply issues.

When I was finally able to realize that I had a low supply, I had given it a hell of a try to fix it and it didn't mean I was a bad mother I begun talking about my issues with other women. Magically in the past 3 weeks I have been offered donated breast milk from 2 mothers. This is a gift that makes me happier than I could ever put words to but at the same time I wish I would have figure this out earlier and not waisted so much time and energy attempting to up a supply that wasn't going to ever meet my sons demands.

Breast-feeding and Formula; What's a Mom to do?

I am coming out of a 4 month blog hiatus to address the issue of breast feeding. This topic has been fermenting in my brain from about the time my son was born but this article gave me the nudge I needed to actually put these thoughts on paper.
While pregnant I had some sense that I would not be able to breastfeed exclusively. I don’t know why this was, my mother had no issues with it. Prior to giving birth I learned everything I could about how to get breastfeeding off to a good start in an attempt to make sure I did everything “right”. My son was put on my chest within seconds of being born and breastfeed within the first hour of birth. I remember thinking in the hospital that I had done everything right, thus we ought to be able to breastfeed with out a problem.
When my son was 5 days old he had lost 14 percent of his body weight and was pissed. After visiting a lactation consultant we found out he was getting less than .25 of an ounce of breast milk at each feeding. The lactation consultant strongly suggested supplementing my son with formula. With my permission she gave him an ounce of it right then and there. With an incredible amount of disappointment I watched him eating it like he was being given crack and feeling like I had absolutely failed as a mother. Had I not been indoctrinated in what I refer to as the “cult of natural motherhood” I might have noticed that formula made my son happy. I might have realized that me not having enough milk wasn’t from any failure on my part of lack of trying.
On that day I sucked up and decided that we had had a bad start but with work I could get him back to only breastfeeding. I started and maintained a ridiculous pumping schedule, ate oatmeal, drank Gatorade and chased it with fenugreek like it was going out of style. After my son regained his birth weight I worked with another lactation consultant that suggested I cut my son off of formula cold turkey. She reasoned that with a couple of days of constant nursing my supply should catch up to what he needed. I was desperate but I think I new this wasn’t going to work so I attempted to wean him from formula.
My attempts seemed like they had worked when he was about a month old. I was giving him a 2 or 4 ounces a day and he didn’t seem that interested in the formula. I felt like I had won. He seemed okay in that he was peeing and pooping enough and was awake and alert all while making his milestones. He was fussy during 4 to 8 but so was every other baby I knew.
His weight gain slowed dramatically to the point where the doctor wanted to do medical test to make sure there wasn’t some underline problem causing the weight gain. In the back of my mind I felt like the issue was likely my milk. When all of his medical test came back normal I decided to push the formula again. He had a hard time with a bottle and would often be upset after because he seemed to be forced to drink to quickly. I switched bottles to ones that seemed to be closer to breast and switched formula to a lactose sensitive and he went from 2 to 4 ounces a day to about 14.
Magically he was no longer fussy between 4 to 8 and started gaining weight at a normal rate. I took about 2 weeks to morn my inability and decided that I need to move on. The figurative smack that I needed was when my husband said, “its not likely that he is going to be in college and blame you for poor grades because you weren’t able to breastfeed him for ever.”
The problem that I have with the “breast is best” message is the covert message is “formula bad.” The history of formula and childbirth is sorted and plainly awful, but the reaction has swung so far in reverse that its gone to far. Women have clearly decided to take back the power of childbirth and childrearing but in doing so they have ignored the progress that has been made medically in the area.
I was given lots of crap from people in my life about my choice to have my son in a hospital because “medicine messed up birth”. This was true in the past but I was able to have the kind of birth I had hopped for with the reassurance that if it was needed all the medicine in the world was right there. During a heated conversation with my mother about how the lactation consultant figure out how much breast milk my son was getting she said, “they didn’t used to have scales and babies were fine.” But that wasn’t true, babies were fine but a lot of them died and there is a reason why wet nurses came into being.
I hope that the pendulum will start to swing a bit back into the middle and there will be support for women like me.