Surpri--ARRRRGH

Hi all, thanks for checking out the blog again.
This post was supposed to be about the new sweater I'm working on, a Tunisian crochet variation on the Firefly/Wash sweater by Don Yarman. Original knitting pattern available here .

But NO, instead, this is going to be a little rant about babies and surprises. I like babies..a little. They usually like me. I'm big, warm, and fluffy, basically an ambulatory teddy bear, so the minute I pick up most babies they fall right asleep. Of course there are the evil ones that try to either take off my glasses ( almost all of them), bite me on the nose (my nephew) or both ( also, my nephew).

However, on the nature of Surprises... We HATES them, Preciousss. I can't stand suprises. At all. I'm JUST CDO enough (CDO is like OCD, but all the letters are in correct, alphabetical order) that when I plan and plot my day, I like it to go as close to plan as possible. I even show up places fifteen to twenty minutes early to allow a mental switching of gears for say "caffeine deprived neanderthal Josh" to "Happy shiny Office Monkey Josh" or " Opera Josh". I have been known to use every tool short of Force Powers to determine what people are getting me for my birthday. My exes are convinced I'm telepathic If the FBI were to call me and say that Fugitive Number One had a surprise Christmas present for me, I would have him located in under a week, and grill him until I found out the feds had planted a Keurig on him with my name on it.

Now how, you may be wondering, does this tie in to Babies? They are lovely miracles and it's certainly a pleasant surprise when I find out one of my relative or friends is enceinte. I'm genuinely thrilled for them, as long as I'm not expected to babysit or change a diaper. But then I ask the question most people ask :
"What are you having, boy or girl?"
and some people have the audacity to respond..:
"Oh we're not going to find out beforehand, we want to be surprised!".
.................
......................

Yeah. That's completely and totally unacceptable. It's heinously wrong. On SO many levels.
I have a folder of baby patterns I regularly use. I have all of the patterns on Ravelry,Caron,Lion Brand, et al at my fingertips. There are several trillion patterns suitable for baby girls.. there are ten suitable for baby boys.
Ten.

Now I know some of you are saying there are some gender neutral patterns. There are. They are to be made in pastel colors that make my eyes itch and my heart cry, or they're to be made in white. White. With a newborn. I don't have a LOT of experience with newborns (and thank all the gods that ever were I won't have firsthand experience with them EVER) but I'm pretty sure that for the first two years of their lives, babies exist basically to outdo BP in terms of toxic sewage output. Buying or making them anything in white is basically begging for the child to poo on it.

So, with these percentages stipulated, I have a vested interest in finding out the gender of your child. You can tell me, you can have your doctor tell me, or I can go Mission Impossible on your ass, and pull off a data-mining mission that puts Wikileaks to shame. And you don't want to see me in a wire harness, hanging from your OB-GYN's ceiling, wearing night vision goggles while you are getting your ultra sound now do you?