The knitting projects.

Okay, I think I've found the pattern I want to make for the baby girls. It is a little jumper/sleeveless dress that can be worn with a shirt in cooler weather or with one a onesie when it's warm. The yarn is fairly light weight, and is designed to make stripes all on it's own. Now all I have to do is choose the color pallet I want to use. Maybe you can help me? Here are m two favorites which one do you think would make the best little girl dress? I'm going to make them both in the 12 month size, I think.


This is the Purple, I hope you can see the colors better than they look on my computer right now. It has purple, gray and white and blue stripes.

This is the Spring colors selection. It has orange, gray and white, green and "hot" pink stripes. I'm leaning toward this one, but I'm not really sure I like the purple one too.

I was going to post a picture from the pattern, but for some reason I can't copy it from Adobe Reader. Oh well.

I was going to order the yarn from Lion Brand Yarn On-line, but Snowanna is going to be having a baby shower on June 2nd, so I'd probably better go find the yarn at a store here in town. I have a list of stores that stock Lion brand yarn so I'll call around and see if any of them have it in stock. If not I guess I'll just have to order it and get something else for the shower. Maybe some tights and a little blouse or something to go with the jumper when it's finished.

Naming babies.

With Snowanna being pregnant, and a few friends having or already had babies in the last couple of years I've been thinking about naming babies. Especially girls. I never got to name a girl baby, having all boys and all. I do have some ideas that I would at least suggest to Hubby if somehow we found ourselves expecting a girl. It's not very likely, and to tell the truth I'm happy with things the way they are right now, but it's nice to pretend and day dream.

I like names that have been around for awhile, names that have some history to them. But I also like names that sound pretty. I'm not totally stuck on the name having to be a "real" name for hundreds of years like some people are. If you are one of them, I think that's just fine for you and yours I don't mean it as a put down. For instance, I would look into words for beautiful and adored, and other things I'd like associated with my child, in a Celtic (Irish and/or Scottish) language dictionary and see if those words would make a good name for a girl in America. I'd also would look at the SSN web page for popular names a hundred or so years ago. I'd check on the popularity of name from my family. I'd look at genealogy records for my family and my Hubby's family and see if there are any that sound good.

There are names that may be beautiful but I'd never use them because of over use recently, a bad association with that name from my or Hubby's past, or it just wouldn't work well in Modern American society. (I can't think of any right off hand.)

A few names I like, but haven't checked with SSA yet to see how popular they are: Edited to add statictics and a few more names. Edits are in this color.

I used http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ to find the ranking for these names. I checked the last 100 years, these are the rankings as they appear in the top 1000.

Lilly (2005 - 180, 1906 - 284, many years not in the top 1000)
Lilah (Only in the top 1000 one year. 1913 - 992)
Miranda (2005 - 114, 1957 - 795 didn't appear before 1957)
Amanda (2005 - 80, 1906 - 190)
Judith (2005 - 541, 1906 - 550)
Elizabeth (2005 - 12, 1906 - 7 always in the top 25)
Cordelia (1950 - 987, 1906 - 454 didn't appear after 1950)
Jennifer (2005 - 42, 1938 - 987)
Nicole (2005 - 56, 1942 - 947)
Marie (2005 - 507, 1906 - 10)
Charlotte (2005 - 135, 1906 - 103)
Caroline (2005 - 83, 1906 - 144)

Abby (2005 - 198, 1952 - 966)
Lilian (2005 - 471, 1906 - 695)
Dorothy (2005 - 47?, 1906 - 6)
Catherine (2005 - 109, 1906 - 26)

Found these on http://www.babynamesofireland.com/.

Alanna (2005 - 494, 1971 - 997)
Derdre (1990 - 990, 1944 - 948)
Maeve or Maebh (2005 - 695, 1997 - 952)
Siobhan (1987 - 914, 1979 - 629)
Teagan (2005 - 478, 1999 - 819)

I know there are others that I like, I'm just not able to think of them right now. Maybe I'll go do some checking and do an update later with the ranking of these names and any others I happen to find. I love names, I think people need to lighten up on how and why others pick the names they do for their children, but I also think that people should think about the fact that their children will have to live with the name they are given their whole lives. Some people will manage just fine with a name like "Pilot Inspector" while others will hate their name, and feel emotionally abused by their parents for giving it to them.