Never Shop Alone...

It's hard to shop when you are pregnant. At least it is for me. I might walk into a store feeling actually cute, but when the pants come off in the dressing room, and my thighs look like bloatation devices, I want to cry.

Today, I did three very, very stupid things: I went (1) shopping while pregnant, (2) for a funeral dress, (3) alone.

Never, ever shop for a funeral dress alone.

Just as importantly, NEVER DO IT alone while pregnant. I need to send a bouquet of flowers to the dressing room attendant at Nordstrom Rack who listened to me bawl and told me I looked good in the dress that I finally found. She never batted an eye despite my semi-hysterics.

Here's the dress (with a tie I found for my husband in the background):



I really love this dress. The flower/ruffles at the neckline make it dressy, and the box pleats at the empire waist make it fit over my belly. It's just to my knees (not easy to find since I'm 5'11") and doesn't cling anywhere. Perfect 3/4 length sleeves. Stttrreeeetchy. In a word, perfect.

It's really important to me to dress up VERY nicely for the funeral of my husband's mother--out of respect for Mary and for him. I feel like I owe her so much and it's going to be really hard to live up to her for my kids. Plus it sucks that she's dying so damn young. I want to show the world how much I respect her.

I also bought a tie for my husband. Some stupid brand that had cost 150 bucks (for a tie?!?!) and was marked down to 20:



I also bought this mounted photograph for my husband. This is a picture I took of Mary holding Adrian (my son) when he was just a few days old:



I love the professional print processing site mpix.com. It is WAY better than the dumb consumer sites. This is where wedding photographers and other pros go for their online photo processing. And they're really fast.

I love how the mounted photo came out. I'm going to hang it over Adrian's crib and tell him all the time how much his GrandMary loved to hold him.

And later, I'm going to tell Edward that GrandMary is holding Adrian in her arms and Edward in her heart.



And finally, here's a better picture of my Ginevra--I'm calling it Hospice. According to the OED, the word "hospice" used to refer to a home where travelers could stop to rest on their journeys. I really like thinking about the word that way.

I cast on for this sweater at Duke Hospice yesterday and knit all of this until late last night. It was so soothing to knit a simple top-down raglan. The Duke Hospice home is beautiful, by the way, and we really appreciate everything they've done for Mary and for us.

--Katie Rose