I thought that having been properly dressed to go out twice in a week warranted an additional bump photo for this week. This is the ultimate department store outfit - jumper from Coles, shirt from Target and skirt from Target. I wish I had more vintage clothes that lent themselves to pregnancy wear, but a couple of basic things from department stores have been seeing me through.

My sister called today and gave me the play-by-play about the birth of her baby this week. It didn't sound so bad! After several days of contractions, no sleep and having to have her waters broken, the actual birth sounded okay. Just prior to the phone call, C had a moment where he was like "how are we supposed to take care of this tiny, fragile thing?! How are we meant to know what to do?! OMG! What have we done?!" (mostly in jest) which made me laugh.

Those happy good-times pregnancy hormones have placated my brain and have me convinced that everything will be fine and I'll just feed, soothe and change that little critter and hopefully everything else will work out alright. I wish I could bottle these happy pregnancy hormones and feed them to myself when I need to de-stress sans pregnancy! I do have to admit, there are lots of very irrational, miserable, tantrum-y pregnancy hormones floating around in there too - I don't think I'll bottle those ones (e.g. "why are you crying?" "because I saw a cute ad on TV for a van that delivers gourmet meat to people all around the state and I thought that was so nice and I felt sad for them and I don't know why and I can't get the meat delivered because I'm a vegetarian, maybe I should buy some for the cats, waaaah")

A few months ago I decided I wanted to make a rug out of felt balls for the nursery, after seeing one in a shop window. I researched how to make one and found very few tutorials, as it seemed to be a pretty enormous undertaking that few people had attempted. The rugs in stores all seem to have been either made exclusively by women in small workshops in Nepal, or at the very least, the felt balls were made in Nepal and then fastened together in Australia.



I decided I wanted to make mine from scratch and started rolling felt balls that would eventually be stitched together into a round shape. I knew it would take me a long time, but I figured, what the hey, I'm pregnant and about to finish work, I have loads of time on my hands! Each ball took me about five to ten minutes to roll and I would sit and roll them while I watched a lot of Twin Peaks. It was pretty fun but really gave my hands a work out and all that dish soap made my hands so dry - not to mention - wool roving is not very pleasantly scented! I would lay all of my balls out in front of me and Atticus would sneakily come along and bat them all off the table and onto the floor and then start ripping into them. Cheek! I ended up making one for him to play with.



The wool roving to make the balls was costing me a small fortune (I found some places that sell locally for about $7 for a 100g bag - each bag would make about 20 balls) and when I researched a bit, trying to find competitive prices for the wool roving, I found that buying the wool was more expensive than buying the balls pre-made (from Nepal). Then, when I compared the price of buying the pre-made felt balls with actually buying a rug completely made, well.... buying a rug was less expensive again.



After a few weeks of nightly felt ball rolling, I laid out my balls and saw I had about enough for a 50cm rug (sounds big, looks small). I did some calculations as to how many more I'd need for the 1m rug I was planning and realised I was a bit out of my depth (and would never get enough made before the baby is born!). Wanna see my working out? No? I'll show you anyway!

- Total rug area (100cm in diameter) : π x r2 = π x 50cm2 = 7854cm² (to nearest cm)
- Each individual ball (3cm in diameter) : π x r2 = π x 1.5cm2 = 7cm² (to nearest cm)
- Divide the total rug area by the individual ball area = 1122 balls (approx. not taking into account the small spaces between the balls).

(Take that grade 12 general maths!) 

I realised I could continue to roll my own balls, spending a fortune, buy them pre-made in bulk online (still fairly expensive) or just buy a rug outright.



So, I gave up. This has been a very long post to tell you I didn't make a rug. Haha.

I would really like to buy a rug and I have spotted some 1m rainbow ones on Etsy for around $200 including postage, but I'm hesitant to make such a splurge (even though I know how much time and effort goes into these things and it would totally be worth it!).



At the very least, this was an exercise in the nature of craft - often it is far more expensive and takes a lot more time and effort to make things yourself. Sometimes, those things will be really amazing and worth the time, effort and money and become something that you feel proud of and might one day pass on - and other times the task you've set yourself is too big an undertaking and you should support some crafty Nepalese women instead.

So, what to do with my 150 felt balls? Here are some ideas I toyed with:


1. Felt Craspedia 2. Christmas Wreath 3. Felt Ball Trivet 4. Felted Window Drapes 5. Felt Ball Necklace 6. Felt Ball Mobile

I've been feeling a bit indecisive so I decided to make a garland with them - that way if I somehow come into possession of another 900 balls to make the rug, or think up some other use, I can unthread them and use them again. I just used a large darning needle and some coloured embroidery thread. You can move the balls up and down the thread and there isn't too much movement when they're hung. Here's my garland (using about a third of the balls I made), hung up in a temporary spot:




Please do make me feel better about being a quitter by sharing an anecdote about something you got part way through and never finished! :D

Ps. Every time I see felt balls I think about Bob from Twin Peaks. Creeeepy.

I am now acknowledging that my belly could be categorised as huge and is exceptionally round. I have now reached the tights-as-pants stage of my pregnancy. By that, I mean comfort completely wins out over society's fashion rules. Who am I kidding, I don't prescribe to the notion that tights can't be worn as pants even when I'm not pregnant! The shirt in these photos belonged to my mum. I'm not sure in what decade she would have been wearing it (probably the nineties), but it says seventies pretty loudly to me. Its label is written beautifully in gold font on the tag; 'Gaylord'.

I finished up work last week (such a relief!) and have had a lot of pelvic and hip pain these past few days. Sleeping is a horribly uncomfortable exercise, but the end is near! I am going to spend the next eight weeks nesting and resting and crafting I hope.

My older sister had her baby this week. She and her boyfriend didn't know the sex before the birth (I am so not patient enough for that) and out popped a little boy they named Connor, a couple of days behind schedule. I am dying to see photos.

Ps. Apologies for iPhone quality photos! I need a new camera asap!

march 2013 from mushab00m on 8tracks Radio.

Some songs I've been listening to lately. I have been pretty much listening to these eight tracks over and over again for a few weeks and am in need of some new tunes. Care to recommend anything?
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