Zatera Ul

Our birth supply order arrived today–our midwife has a birthkit list set up at Birthwithlove, so ordering was pretty easy. There’s a few other things we have to get, but they’re more commonly available items. The big question on my mind now is where we are going to put our midwife’s birth tub (for labor only, probably not for water birth). The basement would be most practical, except that it’s two steep flights of stairs away from the bedroom, where the baby will probably be born. Upstairs, it would have to be right in our bedroom, for lack of space elsewhere. We’ll probably end up putting the tub in the kitchen or dining room.

As big as I’m getting in the tummy, my hip measurement is still keeping ahead of my waist measurement somehow. I’ll be a pear forever, I guess. Kind of handy having a low center of mass and a built-in seat cushion, though. (I used to always wonder why boys were so fidgety in class, then I lost weight and noticed how much harder the chairs were.)

I’ve started making a few soakers (wool diaper covers), some from yarn and some from old sweaters. The sweaters I felted first–two of them felted nicely, and the other one just shed a lot. Following one pattern I found, I cut equilateral triangles from the sweaters, with the side length equal to the desired baby hip measurement. The next step will be to flip up the lower corner of the triangle, fold the other two around to meet it, and sew the edges together to make a diapery shape with two leg holes.

I had enough big pieces of sweater left over to make two pairs of mittens–I lost my thickest knitted pair last winter. For the pattern, I traced my hand, added some to account for the thickness and movement of the hand, then added some more for a seam allowance. I’ve cut them out, but I haven’t sewn them yet. I’ve done this with old wool sweaters before, but not with felted ones–the higher density should make them warmer.

Another thing I did with the smaller scraps was to cut a few small squares to put on the legs of an old oak chair to keep it from scratching the floor any more than it already has. I just attached them with some double-sided tape left over from covering our windows with plastic last winter. The wool will probably take off some of the finish too, but it should be more of a buffing than a scratching.

I have an old pattern from MFH’s mom for crocheting soakers. Annoyingly, it gives only the hook size and number of stitches for the width, not a gauge or an actual measurement–insufficient data for scaling the number of stitches to the hook and yarn that I’m actually using. (Especially when I’m planning on felting it afterward, and have to allow some percentage for shrinkage!!) At least the length is in inches. I did find a pattern online that gave actual dimensions for the different soaker sizes.