Wow, its been a little while since I posted. Lets see, I finished my Swallowtail Shawl and a Darkside cowl. I don’t have pictures of the Darkside cowl yet, but I have a bunch of my shawl. I’m actually not sure that I like my Darkside cowl, I think it’s the yarn/pattern combo that is bugging me. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. My shawl is awesome though. It was a beast to photograph because the yarn is so dark, and I was trying to take pictures at night. But Mike helped me and we got some good ones. Oh, and blocking while you are pregnant is really uncomfortable, just an FYI.

My Thanksgiving was nice. I woke up sick (a cold…again) on Thanksgiving day, and stayed sick until Sunday. But I still had a nice time and lots of yummy food. This past week was crazy busy. We had work, two maternity classes, and our company Christmas party. I’m getting really excited about the baby, I know I don’t talk about it much (on my blog) but I’m getting excited. We registered for baby stuff, we’ve started our maternity classes, and I’m getting huge. February is going to be here in no time. I’m actually a little bit nervous about it, but I think that’s normal.

My Masdevallia infracta self combusted. It seemed to be doing fine, and then one day all the leaves started falling off. They didn’t turn brown or anything, they just fell off. In a matter of days, all the leaves were gone. Thanks to the help of everyone at the Orchid Board, I figured out that the problem was overwatering, or rather that the moss it was planted in was old and holding too much water. So, lesson learned, and hopefully I won’t repeat that mistake.

Anyway, that’s about it.

So, the new camera arrived. And it arrived in time for me to get photos of some of my blooming orchids. I took these Wednesday night (the day the camera arrived). They are still blooming, so I took some more pictures today, but I have not downloaded them yet. I’ll save those for another day.

Phrag Tickled Pink

Masdevallia Exquisite Mary

I’ve also made a couple of more plant purchases. I ordered one of these. I’m so very excited about it, its so tiny. I also ordered one of these, only mine is a miniature variety. I ordered both of those from New World Orchids, which is a really good supplier of Japanese orchids. I then ordered one of these along with some growing supplies. So…um….I’ve gone a little plant crazy. This seems to be how I am. I will go for months without ordering a single plant and then one day I just order a ton. Pretty soon I will stop, and it will be another 6 months before I even think about ordering a plant.

I also took a picture of some spinning I am working on. The fiber is the June installment from the Spunky Club. It’s a Merino/Mohair blend in the Flowering Weeds colorway. I’m trying for a two ply fingering weight.

Here’s a few pictures of my Stacked Eyelet Cowl. I absolutely love it. I’ve worn it everyday this week and I have plans to make tons of them. It’s great, it keeps my neck warm and its out of the way. Most of the time I forget I have it on.

Anyway, that’s about all. Expect more pictures soon.

Well, I would love to show you pictures of things like knitting and flowers, but our camera is dead. Anytime you try to take a picture it says Error 99, which in Canon land is the generic error message that basically means your screwed. We’ve narrowed it down to the camera body, so we will have to send it in to the service center. Yay! *sarcasm* We’ve looked into this problem a bit, and it seems this is something that happens to a lot of Canon cameras (no matter what model) within the first year or two of its life. That’s really shitty considering you are paying a lot of money for these cameras. But there is good news that comes with this, since Mike uses the camera for work too, we are ordering a “back-up” camera that will probably end up being better than our current one. Yay! So, you will just have to bear with me on the lack of photos for a little bit.

On to better subjects, I’ve gotten a lot done this week. I had a cold for the first part of the week and ended up calling in sick on Monday and Tuesday. While having a cold really sucks (especially while pregnant), getting to sit around and knit all day (well at least the parts that I was awake for) was really nice. I got a lot done. I finished up my Baby Surprise Jacket. All I need to do is get buttons for it and block it. Then I knit a Stacked Eyelet Cowl. Actually I ended up knitting it twice because the first time it was huge. Its such a fast and satisfying knit, I plan on making a lot more of them. It was cold yesterday, so I wore it out to dinner with friends, and I really liked it. There weren’t any ends to get in the way like on scarves and shawls, but it was still warm. And of course the best part is that it knits up so fast. On a weekend, you could literally knit it in one day. So, I’ve caught the cowl bug, and my Ravelry queue has exploded in cowls. Friday night I cast on for a Swallowtail Shawl and I’ve been working on that diligently this weekend. I’m using Malabrigo lace in Vaa for it. Its actually coming along pretty fast considering it’s knit in laceweight yarn.

The orchids I was eagerly awaiting arrived this week. Guess what, the Masdevallia Exquisite Mary was in bloom! One of the blooms looked like it opened up in the box, so it was a little wonky looking, but the rest of the spikes are opening up now. Its so pretty, I’m in love. But of course…no pictures. Hopefully we will have a new camera before all the buds open up.

Anyway, back to knitting.

Remember that Dracula lotax I just bought? Remember how I said it had two flower spikes on it? Well, I lost one of the spikes (meaning it shriveled up, turned brown, and died), so now I am down to one flower spike. (By the way, flower spike = flower bud = future flower) I know this is common and actually something to be expected with more sensitive plants when you first get them, but I’m still sad about it. I don’t necessarily think it was something I did, the poor plant has been through a lot. It was being happily grown in a greenhouse in California, then I bought it, so it got packed very nicely into a box and shipped all the way to Louisiana. It was second day shipping, but still, it went two days without sun, God only knows how the box was handled during shipping, and it had to endure temperature changes from CA to here. Then, I happily unpacked it, left it on my kitchen counter for a day (taking them straight from a dark box to the sun is bad), and then found it a nice home in front of one of my windows. Now it just has to acclimate to windowsill living rather than greenhouse living. So, if plants could talk, it would probably be screaming right now. It will adjust, it just might drop any flowers it was thinking about making. On the bright side the plant over all is doing well, and the other spike is happy and green. So hopefully I will still get a flower off of that one.

Oh, and I have completely lost my mind and bought two more orchids:
Dracula orientalis
Masdevallia Exquisite Mary
You see, I bought two books that dealt with Dracula and Masdevallia culture, and after reading through them, I decided that I will do fine with these types of orchids. So, I threw caution to the wind and bought two more. Oh well, now I have 4 to experiment on. The sad thing is, I have two more that I know I definitely want….

I wanted to write more about my previously mentioned orchid, the Dracula lotax. Dracula orchids have fascinated me since the very moment I first saw a picture of one (it was the Dracula lotax). They are actually part of what began my downward spiral into orchid obsession. What enchants me about them? The fact that all of the flowers look like little faces. What increases my enchantment 1000 fold? The fact that they are completely and totally out of my reach. Like all humans, I want what I can’t have. You see, unfortunately, Draculas are highland orchids, meaning that they live in higher altitudes. This means they like less humidity (oops, I was wrong, they like high humidity) and cooler temperatures. Their temperature range is typically a minimum of 55 degrees (sometimes 45 degrees) and a max of 85 degrees. And they like their temps to drop in the evening time to around their minimum. These temperature ranges just aren’t possible in Louisiana. The plants would survive in my conditions, but they probably would never bloom, and lets face it, they are orchids. While I love the plants, I want the blooms. I could spend lots of money on a cool temp terrarium for them, but I figured I would try out a warm tolerant Dracula first, which is what the lotax is. We shall see. In the mean time, I figured I would share the Dracula love with some pictures I found on flickr.

Since I can’t seem to actually get the pictures on my blog without saving them and then uploading them (which I don’t want to do since they aren’t my photos), here’s a list of links.

Dracula verticulosa
Dracula vampira
Dracula vampira
Dracula simia
Dracula roezlii
Dracula cordobae
Dracula lotax
Dracula saulii

You can find a bazillion more Dracula pictures by typing Dracula orchid in the flickr search box.

Enjoy!