In which there are small sandwiches

 I love baby showers. 

This is not an entirely true statement. It turns out that I love several things to do with baby showers, but maybe not baby showers themselves, entirely.  I’m hopelessly shy, so the whole thing makes me nervous, but I love getting to see the mum to be, and I love watching her be the centre of attention, even though if it was me, I would rather go lie in the path of a bus.  (This may or may not be related to my fear that someone will make a hat out of all the bows and ribbons from the packages, and make me wear it – which has never happened, but I see pictures, and I live in fear. We didn’t make Robyn wear a hat.)

I love seeing all the presents being opened, and at this shower, I loved that there was a plethora of knitted stuff. There was a little hat,

and some bootees, and Kelly made a sweater (I don’t know the pattern, but it was super cute)

and a very sweet version of Pebble. (That was good thinking. I wish I’d done it.)  My niece Kamilah even knit a pair of socks and a little hat while she was with her parents this summer.

We were all very impressed, since Meek hasn’t really been called to the needles before, but all was explained when she said that she’d been a little bored. (Oh, knitting – you get all the teenagers when they have no internet.) 

I love cupcakes – sort of, I mean, I don’t eat them, but I sure do like the way they look, and I even love the strange little tea sandwiches that we all made. 

I love the way that you can eat seven of them without admitting you’ve eaten practically two sandwiches. It’s like they stop being real sandwiches as soon as you take off the crusts.  (I made those ones.  Radish with lemon butter, and avocado and cucumber with dill and mint.  I heard cucumber is mandatory.  I also made cheddar with fig, and a killer Roquefort and Red Pear that was spectacular. Thank you Martha Stewart. You let me fake posh when it really matters. You should bookmark the radish one in case you ever have a tea sandwich emergency. I made it to 45 without it coming up, but you never know.) 

I love the little things we all had to do, like write wishes for the baby on tiny paper onsies,

or stringing beads along with dreams onto a string for the nursery and I wish desperately I thought of things like that – but I didn’t. My big nursery tip is that the crib holds a lot of laundry, once you give up on keeping the baby in it.  (What can I tell you. I nursed my babies in part so that I didn’t have to stand up at night. I’m that kind of mother.) 

It was a lovely affair, a beautifully brilliant shower, and not at all silly, and I totally finished the little layette for our new wee one on the way.

There’s no pattern, because I’m still writing it up, but I was entirely thrilled with how it came out.

The little bootees, the tiny hat…

and yeah, in the end I went with the taupe cotton ribbon, and the little buttons that looked like stone. The look seems so classic to me, and I think Robyn liked them a lot.

It turned out that I sort of messed up the whole shower thing a little though.  On Friday night I was desperately knitting and sewing and making tiny sandwiches and generally losing my mind, when my Mother- in -law pointed out that the shower was Sunday, not Saturday, and after I ate all the tiny sandwiches in a wave of devastation (and planned to go buy more radishes the next day) I realized that the good thing about the shower being a day later was that it meant I had one more day to knit – so I did.  One little tiny thing, just a little token… just a little something that says that no matter what kind of baby arrives, I’ll be a thrilled auntie, and that it doesn’t matter, Girl, boy….

I have no preference.

Maybe just a wish. 

(Pattern, Pink set with hearts, yarn Simply Sock Yarn in peach.)

I know there’s someone good in there, and I can’t wait to meet them.
I better go knit a blanket.