I'm Officially a Knitter!

So whenever I mention to my friends that we breastfeed, babywear, or are anti-vaccinations I get some weird looks, but none so weird as the looks I get when I say Lulu is in cloth diapers. "What?! They still make those?! Wow, that must be a lot of work! Don't they leak when she pees?" I can't remember all the comments, but they are usually accompanied by the person I'm talking to staring at me like I just freakishly sprouted an extra head and told them I am going back to my home planet. Seriously. The cloth diapers aren't a big deal, I say. Babies that are breastfed have really non-odorous poo, I say. It's better for the environment and Lulu's bottom, I say. Blah, blah, blah. It all falls on deaf ears and I continue to be the granola anomaly here in supposedly-progressive Silicon Valley. San Jose is just a hop away from Santa Cruz, after all, which is like Hippietown USA. And not far from SF. Anyone heard of the summer of love, people?! Just geographically speaking, I shouldn't feel so crunchy and alone in a town that apparently for all the hype, is super, super soggy.

So anyway, I have now added to my repertoire something else for people my age to bug their eyes out over, and without further ado.....I have officially become a knitter. Yup. A quick history lesson for people who have only been breathing for a couple of decades: back before there were disposable diapers made of plastic and filled with chemicals to pollute the earth and wreak havoc on babies' behinds, people used cloth diapers. Yes, cloth diapers by themselves get pretty wet when baby pees. That's where covers come in. If only we could find something to go over the cloth diaper which is absorbent, yet breathable, which lets mom and dad know that baby needs changing so that baby's bum doesn't sit around in a soggy dipe getting a nasty rash, but doesn't itself get wet and soggy. Oh wait, we have that already? It's called wool, which can absorb something like 30% of it's weight in liquid before it even feels wet, which has natural antibacterial properties, which is easy on the environment and doesn't even smell bad after baby pees in it. Wool, wonderful wool.

Wool soakers come in the form of covers, shorts, and longies, and they come at a premium if you don't knit them up yourself. I don't pay $100 bucks for MY pants, so you can naturally understand some reluctance on my part to pay that much for someone who will outgrow them faster than you can say "paycheck." With the help of the internet in the form of http://www.knittinghelp.com/, and the awesome books The Stitch and Bitch Book and Domiknitrix, I made my first pair of longies and saved myself about $50. Well, okay, I actually spent more when I factor in all the needles and other knitting accoutrements, but I will save money in the long run! I'm super proud of them and have shown them to everyone who has set foot in my house since they were in progress long enough to start looking like pants!