Hot Fun in the Summertime

Summer Fun 1: Knitting

Having finished the adorable baby bell bottoms, I found myself baby-project-less! I quickly ordered some more yarn to remedy that situation, and in the meantime took up a project I had begun in late spring and set aside: a sweater for Andy. Unfortunately, this happened just as the Twin Cities hit a week of 90-degree-plus weather, and we really haven't had much relief since. So I have been knitting a large man-sized sweater with bulky wool yarn in a hot non-air-conditioned house--don't I have great timing? Luckily, due to all the work I've been avoiding, I got a lot of it done in that week and a half or so between baby projects. Here's the bulk of the body of the sweater--I've since started a sleeve, too.

The color isn't very accurate in this photo--it's really a dark navy blue. It's going to be a cardigan with a zipper, so this is actually the entire width of the sweater (but it stretches WAY out due to the 4x4 ribbing)

A few days after taking this photo, yarn for the next baby project arrived, so Andy's sweater has once again been temporarily shelved. Once we move in two weeks, though, we'll have central air--so I'm thinking it will much more tolerable to work on it in that non-oven-like setting!

Summer Fun 2: Reading

Recently we've spent many hours sitting at home reading Harry Potter together--Andy reading aloud, while I knit. It's probably been the most productive spurt of knitting I've had in a year, at least, thanks to the addictive nature of the book (and the 750+ pages translated into quite a few hours, especially when reading out loud)--and we just finished it last night! Our pregnancy books tell us that around week 18 is when the fetus' hearing comes online--we we were just in time to introduce the little Nelson baby both to its Daddy's voice and to its first bedtime story, Harry Potter (which we're pretty sure it won't be allowed to actually read until its at least a pre-teen, due to the violence and difficulty level of the books--at least the later ones in the series).

Summer Fun 3: Canoeing

We own an awesome canoe...which we, as a couple, have only used a handful of times. Despite living within 10 miles of at least a dozen lakes, having the necessary equipment to mount the canoe on top of our car, and finally having a garage to safely store the canoe in, we just never seem to think to turn lazy weekend days into fabulous canoeing adventures. But having baby on the way has been an inspiration in this regard--now when we think of something fun we could do, we also think "this time next year, when we have a baby, would we be able to just pick up and go?"...whether a movie at the cheap theater or a picnic lunch in the canoe, the answer is often no. So we've been trying to take advantage of baby's current in-utero status to have some fun time as a couple. Here are a few photos from last weekend, when we finally took the canoe out for a romp around a local lake: