Blue Leaves Hat

This thing was so easy. She picked the yarn and asked for a hat, and I figured since she would probably wear it twice and then toss it somewhere, it couldn't hurt if it was something I could wear too, right?  I originally made 95% of one using this pattern. It did not go well. Too big, too floppy, just not right at all. So I pulled it out and started over. She was quite upset. She had been hovering and bugging me about when it would be done ("Is that my hat or your hat? It's my hat? Is it done yet?") and when she saw me frogging it she wailed "Mommy! Why are you pulling out my hat?! It's MY hat and I want to wear it right now!"

I gently explained that keeping the hat in its present form would make her look like some sort of smurfy pastry chef, or like a blue glob of goo was digesting her head.  She was undeterred and continued to whine. I gave up and started knitting the new one with the unused end of my 2nd skein, and let her wear what was left of the first hat until I needed the yarn. She eventually grew tired (and probably hot), and I found it under the dining table.

I picked a totally different pattern the second time around, with a little more attention to yarn weight and texture. This worked very well. It was my first time working off a chart, and I think I didn't screw it up too much. The hat looks okay, at any rate, and she is quite pleased with it. I made the "adult" size, and even though she's 4 and has a smallish head it fits her okay with the brim flipped up. It's a little big, but that means we should get some years out of it and unlike the first version, is not so huge it's falling over her eyes all the time. I can wear it too, which is  nice.

This yarn (Cascade Cotton Rich) is quite nice to work with - all the cool comfort of cotton with a little spring in its step. I really loved this pattern - so simple once I got going, and gets lovely results. I think it would be a great pattern for a yarn splurge, like some luxe wool-silk blend for winter. I love finding patterns like this, that look great and don't take up a lot of yarn, because I can spring for 1 or 2 skeins of something awesome and feel like I'm living the high life without spending $160 to make a sweater.

Pattern:  Lace-leaf hat by Sophy T. O'Donnell
Yarn: Cascade Cotton Rich
My Ravelry details are here.

P.S. The other hat in the above picture will be blogged soon. I have mixed feelings about it.

Simo Dress

So here's a project I actually did complete:

Bribe her with a sucker? Why, yes I did.

Pattern: Simo by Cirilia Rose
Yarn: Berroco Weekend (75% Acrylic, 25% Cotton; 205 yds, 100g)
Needles: Uhh...8 maybe? I finished this thing like two months ago, I'm a bit fuzzy...
My Ravelry page for it is here. 

This thing is so stinkin' CUTE. And it was pretty easy. I think it only took me 6 or 8 weeks, carrying it around and working on it here and there - at a birthday party, as she ran amok in the children's museum, or while yelling "DO NOT STAND ON TOP OF THE MONKEY BARS OH MY GOD PLEASE GET DOWN BEFORE I HAVE A HEART ATTACK" at the park.

It's not written to be worked in the round, weirdly enough, but I did it that way anyhow, because given the choice between all that purling and turning and then some awkward join-up of yoke and sleeves and THEN two huge seams to sew vs. barreling right through in the round, only one piece to keep track of, a much-less-awkward join up of yoke and sleeves, and only a couple ends to weave in...duh. Of course I took the easy way out. It did, however, take me four freaking days to figure out how to sew up the sleeves. The very last little bit of finishing, and I was so stuck. In the end it was pretty obvious (sew the tube to the armpit), and I smacked myself upside the head for not figuring it out sooner.

There is a scarf included in the pattern, which I made in a violently bright pink color specifically requested by Piper. She wanted the whole dress made in that Barbie-vomit shade, but I persuaded her that a pink scarf would be cooler. Unfortunately, it never seems to be near the dress when I have my camera. Hmm, now that I think about it, I haven't seen it in a couple of weeks, not since she was using it to tie up one of the cats.

This was a nice yarn to work with. It's cotton-acrylic, in that mutlti-strand way, so I had a problem here and there with snaggy loops when the yarn bunched up, but it wasn't too bad. I normally avoid acrylic, but I thought 100% cotton might be too heavy or stretchy, so I gave this a go. I finished this a couple days after Easter, and she's worn it a few times. It got quite a bit of use on our recent visit to Michigan, when I discovered I had packed for 90-degree weather but they had 65-degree weather.

It's really too hot to wear it these days, but that doesn't stop her. She LOVES it, which makes me unspeakably happy.

2 Projects Per Month: 2011 Halfway Tally

As an alternative to my usual lame New Year's resolutions, I vowed that this year, I would power through my backlog of knitting projects by completing two items per month. I had almost no rules - the projects could be totally new or polishing off a work-in-progress, there was no particular order other than that dictated by holidays, birthdays, or swap requirements. Now that we're halfway through the year, I decided to take stock.

The news is....not good. I am not even close to meeting my goal. Take a look:

January: Grandma's Hat, Yet Another Milo
February:
March:
April: Bunny Nuggets
May: Simo Dress & Scarf, Pink Poncho
June: Do the four things I've started and frogged count?

So, if I totally power-knit for the rest of the year and finish three projects per month...hmm, that idea is so ludicrous I'm just going to stop right there. Most of the projects I have managed to finish this year remain unblogged, because it's gotten difficult to find time to take the photos, upload them, then sit down to write about the finished object.

Part of the problem is that I have been pulling apart as much as I've knit lately, sending myself back to zero on a weekly basis. And despite the magic of Ravelry, I still feel like my to-knit list is super disorganized. I'm having trouble putting a pattern into my queue more than once, so even though I'm making multiple items with the same pattern I can't put all the projects into once computerized list. I think I am also falling into the trap of "too many things on the needles at the same time," splitting my focus and forgetting where I'm at with each project.

In other news, we've had exactly two showings of our house. The only feedback we got, from one showing, was that "the house showed well, but buyer decided she wanted a two-story home." Our realtor had an open house and not a single buyer came. It's sort of depressing.

Even though the neighborhood (and not-from-this-neighbhorhood) kids are out in full force now that school's done, thus making me a nervous wreck and thoroughly miserable most of the time that I'm home, for the moment it's okay if the house doesn't sell. My husband got a new job and will be doing training for the next few months, after which he'll be assigned to a permanent post. The likely locations for that post are on completely opposite ends of the city, and not near Piper's school, so we won't know the best location for us to move to until the fall anyway. Even that could change during the late winter/early spring, when we'll know where she will be going to kindergarten. We are not sending her to the neighborhood school here, and most of the other public schools in this district are not so great either. We will be making the rounds of lottery drawings for charter schools, or possibly finding a way to send her to a low-cost private school on the north end of town. Since the north end is where she goes to school now, and that's where all the parents with school-age kids I know are, I know almost nothing about the schools on the south end of town. If we have to move to that area I'll really be in a pickle.

Grandma's Hat

Back in January, when I heard my grandma was not doing well with her chemo, I decided to make her a hat. Something soft and fuzzy and WARM.

I was still working on the Torture Tomten (which remains unfinished and is so horribly screwed up that I think it will have to be frogged) so I had all this fuzzy pink acrylic stuff sitting around.

I used the Felicity pattern (also seen here), some slightly bigger needles to accomodate the bulky yarn, and after a few days I had a fuzzy pink hat.

Hello, welcome to my dimly-lit bathroom. 

Fuzzy and pink is not normally my thing, but it turned out pretty cute.

I sent it to her with a nice little letter and some of Piper's artwork from school.

My grandma passed away about five weeks after I sent this, but as far as I know she did get it. I hope it brought her at least a little comfort.

Whew!

So, it's May.

Summer is sneaking up on me again. And, as of today, my beautiful little girl has only one month left to be three years old! I have not planned a party. I have not planned a gift. I have neither designed nor started work on this year's birthday shirt. We haven't decided what we're going to do this year - usually on the day of, we take her out for breakfast (pancakes) and a day of fun. She's much better in the car now, so we have been thinking about daytripping out to one of the NC aquariums.

Piper and I spent most of her spring break with friends in Nashville. It's about a 7-hour drive, and she did very well. On the way there, she was a bit squirrely for the last hour, but here's the thing: she didn't sleep during the drive. At all. So I am perfectly willing to give her a hour of boredom and seat-kicking. We went to visit some friends who moved in the fall, friends who have a little boy about a year younger than Piper. The two kids were buddies before the move, and picked up right where they left off. There were a few squabbles over toys and cranky hours after missed naps, but on the whole they did very well together.

For my part, I tried to be as good a houseguest as possible. My friend has only made a few new friends since moving, and I know only too well how lonely it can be when you're alone with a kid all day in a strange place. So we talked. And talked. And talked. We played with the kids, she took me out to see the hipster district of Nashville (where we went shopping for vintage books and vintage clothes, eee!), we ate some kick-ass food from Cafe Rakka, and we talked some more. It was so nice to have company all day long, and her son is such a sweet little guy that I didn't have to worry about him whacking Piper over the head with things, or playing games involving guns and killing. Piper's sharing skills were not always up to par, and that is something we need to work on, but I think both kids had fun. She is already asking when we're going to visit again.

She's out of school in a few weeks, and after her birthday we will probably go visit relatives in Michigan for a while. We have to be back before the end of June because I've signed her up for some dance lessons this summer, which I am pretty excited about.

I am also excited about my almost-finished knitting projects. I am thisclose to finishing the dress I'd planned for Easter - only a week late, that's basically "on time" for me - and most of the way done on her sweater as well. The sweater was supposed to be a surprise, but she came out into the living room one night long after she was supposed to be asleep, saw me knitting away on it and asked "Mom! Is that for ME?" So much for the surprise. But she loves it anyway, and keeps asking if it's done yet. Soon, kiddo...I hope.

Chaos Can Be Redeeming

This is what our living room looked like a couple weeks ago. There was much sorting and boxing and throwing away. The carpets were cleaned and closets organized. I worked my ass off on that front yard.

Now it is done, the sign is in the yard, papers are signed, and I am checking my email every hour for news from our real estate agent. It's been over a week and we've only had one person call, no showings yet. I am trying to keep a positive attitude while I pick up every stray sock or toy and mop the kitchen floor ten times a day.

Now that it's done and clean, I just have to maintain it all, which is not bad (so far, anyhow). Come evening, after the kid is in bed, I find myself fully justified in plopping down on the couch with a homemade latte and a pile of knitting. I did not get the sweater or the dress I had planned as Easter gifts completed, but I did manage to make a couple Bunny Nuggets (one for P and one for her friend). I have so many projects that are almost done. I am forcing myself to complete all the tedious finishing work - picking up stitches for button bands, sewing seams, blocking and straightening.

Did I tell you I set myself a knitting goal for 2011? I told myself I was going to finish two projects per month. So far January is the only month where I actually managed to do that (another Milo for a little friend and a hat for my grandma). Hopefully I can complete all my works-in-progress and make May a real show-stopper.

Snapshots: Mid-March 2011

Working on:

Decluttering the house: Every single thing that we tossed aside thinking "oh, we'll deal with this later" or "I'll just shove it in here for now" has come due. Three years, four bedrooms, and 1500 square feet worth. Some days it seems easier to leave the house unlocked and hope somebody wanders away with it all.

Antointte and a few other friends have asked if we could rent the place for a year or two. I suppose we could (we could probably even make a tiny little amount of money doing it), but we don't want to. Things that are happening in and around the neighborhood right now make me think that it would be financially better for us to sell and get out ASAP. I'd be pretty wary of what sort of renters we would attract in this area and I just don't want to deal with being a landlord. I think we are also getting itchy feet again and might want to make another big move in the next few years, and who knows how long it will take to sell this house. It's kind of shame this didn't work out, because it's a cute house (I love the layout) with a nice big yard. It just turned out, for us, to be the wrong house in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong city. This was our first adventure with home ownership and honestly I'm not sure if we'll do it again. We've been looking at some nice apartments and I'm sort of psyched to think about not taking care of a lawn and having access to a pool for all those brutally hot summer days.

Knitting: Warm weather means the neighbors are loud and the teenagers are out until well past dark, so when my husband is working late (at least 4 nights a week), I put the kid to bed, tidy up the house, and force myself to relax by watching TV and barreling ahead with knitting projects. I try to justify the hours spent sitting on my ass by telling myself  "I'm using up yarn, this is part of the de-cluttering!" but it's not completely true. Really, the living room is where I'm least likely to be bothered by the noise outside. But this strategy is allowing me to make progress on a Simo and a Little Bubbles for the kid and prep for Easter with some bunny nuggets. I am also trying desperately to finish the projects I owe for a long-overdue swap. Sherrie probably thinks I have forgotten all about her (I haven't!) because I've owed her something for almost 18 months. The good news is, the knitting project I planned for her second baby will now fit her upcoming third.

Watching: Satsfaction and The Riches. Getting annoyed all over again that The Riches was canceled so abruptly. Really, REALLY annoyed that my favorite new show is probably getting the axe. I've sworn off any new tv shows next season. I just can't take the heartache, you know? 

Listening: I am pretty out of the loop musically these days, since I don't listen to commercial radio, we don't have satellite, and many of my favorite bands have split up or are on hiatus. We spend about two hours a day (minimum) in the car these days, and since our iPod has not been updated in over a year and I don't want to drag 100 cd's into the car, Piper and I pretty much listen to the same 10 things over and over. I have, however, been very much enjoying the free playlists offered by SPIN each  month. I have also been taking advantage of the free weekly downloads from Starbucks. Usually they have the cards with the redemption code sitting on the edge of the counter, you don't have to buy anything or even make chit-chat if you don't want to, you can snatch one and run before the delicious coffee smell sucks you into buying a $4 latte. I've also seen the cards at the mini-Starbucks stores located in the middle of the mall, inside Target, and in Barnes & Noble stores.

Wishing: I need to redesign this here blog - the header bugs me endlessly but I don't have time for the tinkering required to fix it, I hate the color scheme, I really just want to scrap my template and start over. I wish I could wave a magic wand and poof! have a spiffy blog. But that magic wand will probably be called "lots of books and prowling around on the Web" and I will not wave it so much as toil away late into the night for several weeks, cussing and sweating, only to achieve marginally better results. Sort of like most of my sewing projects. Hmmm.

PS. Advice needed: Any other iPhone users with a PC know how to get the photos off the darn thing? I have more than 2,000 photos on my phone which I would like to retrieve, and short of emailing them all to myself individually, I can't figure out how to get them onto my computer. 

The Santa Hat

A couple of days before Christmas, my child started asking me for "a Santa hat." After a few conversations, I sussed out that this meant any hat with a pom-pom, bonus points if it's pointy in some way. She requested red, and was quite adamant. We went to the yarn store and I let her pick out what she wanted (although I did have to steer her away from the $46-a-skein stuff ). She chose the brightest red we could find - some Cascade 220. I didn't finish it until a couple days after Christmas, but I think it's what she wanted.

This pattern is the "Vintage Pixie Cap" by Hadley Fierlinger from Vintage Knits for Modern Babies.
My Ravelry details are here.

More blurry, grainy camera phone pictures, hooray! 

I got most of the way done with the front ribbing and realized that it was going to be all loose and floppy and that I should've used needles 1-2 sizes smaller to make the ribbing tighter. I don't know why I didn't think of it, because that's what I always do with hat ribbing. So it's kind of loose. Oh, well. It will fit her for a while, I guess. I did the strap in seed stitch and made the end pointy, and it fastens with these two wee little rabbit buttons that she picked out herself. Maybe someday I will remember to get a picture of the nice seed stitch strap with its rabbit buttons, but for now you'll just have to take my word for it.

I can say that the bright red is very nice at the playground because she's always easy to spot.

Tomten...still.

This is the sweater on my lap while I am having breakfast at I kea, because I drag it EVERYWHERE  in hopes of finishing it sometime before next Christmas.

Still the Tomten. I am so sick of this thing. I am sick of the endless garter stitch, I am sick of the vague instructions, I am sick of trying to keep track of my rows to make the sleeve increases come out exactly the same on both sides. I am sick of the huge ball of ghastly pink acrylic yarn I had to buy to finish this thing (615 yards of the white only got me halfway). I am really, really sick of lugging around a huge tote bag with this monstrosity and its accompanying gigundo-size ball of yarn shoved inside. On the good side of things, I've tried it on the kid a couple of times and I think the fit will be about right. When I started it, I thought it would be huge, but I think that is not the case. I already had to take apart the hood and add more rows because it was not tall enough. When did my little girl get so BIG?!

Outdoor knitting

A Tomten in progress. I'm experiencing a bit of frustration with the pattern, both with the instructions and the amount of yardage it's taking. Someone gave me a ginormous ball of bulky-weight acrylic yarn, and I thought this would be a good way to use it up. The kid really needs a warm, trashable, washable sweater to wear to preschool, and I thought this soft, fuzzy stuff would not only be comfortable, but I wouldn't have a heart attack if she got paint on it (unlike, say, something made from this gorgeous yarn).

Except that I've still got the hood AND sleeves to do, and I'm more than halfway through my 615-yard ball of yarn. Which means I either need to forget the hood and proceed to the sleeves (and I still might not have enough), or go get another ginormous ball of acrylic (the only size this yarn comes in can best be described as "enough to get you through the Apocalypse"). I would definitely have enough yarn that way, but I'd also end up with a bunch of leftover fuzzy acrylic yarn, and probably find myself in this same position next year when I'm trying to use that up. This is actually my second attempt at a Tomten; the one I started last fall ground to a halt when I ran out of yarn, also some given-to-me stuff I was trying to use up and also right at the sleeve joins. Hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here.

I've probably made it too big. Maybe my measurements were off, or my math, or something. Oh, well, better too big than too small, I guess. I'll just roll up the sleeves and get a couple years' use out of it...provided I ever finish the damned thing, that is.

Purple Poncho in Action

I finally got a photo of it where she's not naked or blurry. I realize that the poncho itself is slightly blurry in this photo, but trust me, it's better this way. This is the only one where she wasn't making some really freaky face. Wait, I did find one where she was only making a face that was merely a little weird and not really freaky:

She is exactly like her father; every time I pull out the camera he starts making strange, freaky faces too. Trying to photograph the two of them together usually causes me to pull out my hair, kick things, or give up and buy myself a gigantic sugary latte instead of shooting pictures.

Punkinhead

When my best friend's little boy was three, I made him a hat. And he loved it. And loved it. AND LOVED IT. He wore it everywhere. He carried it around and picked at its edges. Some kid at his day care tried to steal it, and my friend snatched it right back from the thief (and the thief's mother, who was all "Oh, yeah, it's our hat, totally") with a "I know this isn't your hat, because my friend Steph made this for MY kid. See the frayed parts right there? That's where MY kid keeps picking at it, because it's HIS hat! So unless the universe is SUPER weird today and you have a friend who also kitted your son a hat in these exact colors and which he picked apart in exactly the same spots, we're taking our hat home now."

She can be pretty fierce when it comes to her kids and her hand-knits.

Anyway, her little boy loved it so much that he literally loved it to pieces, unraveling and picking at it until it was in shreds. It took me a couple of years, but I finally got around to making a replacement. I actually finished this in March or April sometime, I think, but then it got really hot and they were moving so I didn't mail it off. I came across it this week when I was "rearranging my stash" (i.e. taking all the yarns out of their containers and lining them up and touching them and dreaming up 10 projects for every skein).

It's orange, like the original (she called him "my little pumpkinhead" when he was a baby). It really is a nice, pumpkin-y orange, not the traffic-cone color it shows up as in these photos (and wow, does my camera hate to focus on oranges, reds, & yellows). I got the stripe a little too high on this one, but oh well. I hope he likes it. My friend said that not only did the little one love the original hat, but that her older son and her husband had all taken turns wearing it as well, so I'm thinking of making a few more to send to them. It's still pretty hot out, hardly wool-hat weather yet, and this pattern is super-fast, so I think I can manage two more by the time the snow flies.

And yeah, I know this yarn is mostly acrylic, which I usually try to avoid like the plague, but this is machine-washable and inexpensive. I'd rather give an inexpensive gift they will use (and is easily replaceable when some kid steals it or her husband gets it all greasy under the car) than a show-piece they're too afraid to wear. He loved this hat, and I can keep cranking these babies out until he goes to college, something I could not do with a more expensive or delicate yarn. Sometimes I gotta suck it up and make peace with the non-natural fibers, you know?

Pattern: Sparkling Pom-Pom Ski/Toboggan Hat (sorry, you have to log in to see LB's free patterns)
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick
Ravelry details are here. 

Purple Poncho

This took longer than I intended, what with our busy summer and near-constant company. It was supposed to take a couple of days and wound up taking over a month. But she really loves it, and it was easy. I was so afraid of sewing it up that I had the finished pieces done for almost a week before I seamed them together. I'm not sure if I did it exactly right, but it looks pretty good. This was a really inexpensive project. I used stash yarn, but this is discloth cotton, and it's less than $4 for two balls.

Pattern: Spice Girl by Candi Jensen, from Total Baby Knits
Yarn: Lily Sugar n' Cream Solids
Ravelry details are here.

She's worn it around the house a couple of times - she likes to put it on and dance around (to the Beatles, natch). She's worn it out of the house twice, which is pretty good considering it's still over 90 here every day. I'm hoping to put it on her and get her to sit still so I can snap a photo. Silly of me, I know.

A Fairly Rockin' Felicity

Due to ozone alerts, hot weather, my child's desire to be naked most of the time, company, and my own exhaustion, we've spent a lot of time indoors lately. I felt like I was in the grip of some heat-generated inertia, and my usual cure for that is to knit something. A small, fast project, something to shake off the funk and get my gears turning again.

Piper dug a ball of pink I-don't-know-where-it-came-from-but-I'm-assuming-it's-acrylic yarn out of my stash and asked for a hat. I was afraid I might not have enough, so I asked her if it was okay for me to add black stripes. She eyed the yarns critically for a moment and signed off on the project.

A few days later, I presented her with this:

She had hovered anxiously over me during the knitting process, inspecting it as my fingers worked as fast as I could go, asking "Is my hat done yet? Are you done knitting it yet?" at least three times a day. She actually wore it for an hour or two:

And miracle of miracles, I actually got her to sit still for a few pictures.

Pattern: Felicity by Wannet Clyde (Ravelink)
My Ravelry details are here.
And here's one more picture, since it will probably be October before it's cool enough to wear it for real and get some shots of it in action:

The Hat That Wouldn't Die

This was supposed to be an easy project.

A simple pattern, a ball of mill ends, a way to indulge my slouchy beret obsession, something to keep the chill off my head. Start at one end of the ball, work until I ran out of yarn, two ends to weave in. It was supposed to be finished while there was still a chill in the air.

Of course, it didn't work out that way.

It went pretty quickly...the first time around. 65% of the way done, I decided I didn't like how the ball of mill ends was arranging itself into super-thick stripes. I also noticed that because I started at the end with dark brown/black, and the increase lines were pretty visible, and the whole area was surrounded by a lighter brown, the hat looked like...well, frankly, it looked like a butt. I'm not talking about a two round, peachy cheeks butt. It looked like the other part of a butt.


Congratulations, I said to myself. You have knitted a butthole hat. This is sure to be the pinnacle of your crafting career: a knitted butthole.

I can't wait to see what sort of Google hits I get off that.

Anyway, I sighed and ripped it out. All the way out. Then I started from the other end of my ball, got 70% done, decided I hated the first color in the line-up, and frogged it again. Then I got 75% done with the next incarnation and ripped it back to 40%, because I had to break up the large blocks of color that were forming.

What you see here is the fourth version; I finally gave up and hacked into the ball in several spots to get the striping/color block effect I wanted. So much for only having two ends to weave in.

I made the ribbing part extra-long because I the ball of yarn just kept going and and going and it made me think it might be both cute and structurally helpful to make the ribbing long enough to fold backwards. It works pretty well. It's a little too big, and I might have to shore up the front with some elastic cord or else use 36 hairpins to keep it from sliding off. Or I could just un-flip the ribbing part and pull it over my forehead, which makes me look like a dork but means I don't have to fiddle with it every 30 seconds. Side note: do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of the side/back of one's own head? These were taken with my phone camera while my daughter wrapped herself around my legs and howled because we were out of strawberries. I'm lucky I managed to get any photos of the thing at all.

Ravelry details here.

Overall, this is a nice pattern (I used to to make a little hat for one of Piper's dolls* quite successfully) but I think this project was just cursed. It was my first experience working with mill ends, and I will do it again. The lure of so much nice yarn for such a cheap price is irresistible. I really dug this marled yarn, whatever the heck it is (I think it was in with the Lorna's Laces stuff in the shop, but I can't remember for sure). There's a scarf pattern in the Winter/Spring 2010 KnitScene written for marled/ragg yarns that would look cool in this sort of many-colored mixture; it might also make a smashing Milo (I know, I have a problem). I am keen to try other brands and types, because it was such an adventure and it's an inexpensive way to test a yarn. Next time, however, I will have to actually remember what I'm buying, instead of just going "Oooh, pretty!" and stuffing it into my shopping basket.

*Hey, did you know that a hat sized to fit a medium-ish doll will also fit nicely on the head of your average-size housecat?

Milo no. 3

As mentioned in a previous post, I made a third Milo. Cotton yarn this go-round, as a summertime experiment. A friend of mine is about to spend a week at the beach with her family, and I thought this blue/white/cream stuff (an entire 1-lb cone of Peaches n' Creme worsted that somebody gave me, so hurrah for free yarn) looked so beachy, I made this for her 19-month-old. I made it a little longer so he could get more wear out of it. I got him into it for a brief moment just to check the fit, but I was not fast enough to get a picture, so this is currently the only evidence I have of its existence, since I sent it to its new home without getting any other photos.

Ravlery details here. 

Working on : A project I have dubbed "The Hat That Wouldn't Die," scheming for sewing projects, a gauge swatch for a Little Bubbles Sweater which I am hoping will still fit Piper when I'm done, and a knitted polka-dot dress that may never get off the ground. Also much wishing that I had gotten it in gear for Spring Top Week 2010, but that is filed under "Not Gonna Happen, Lady."

Little Milo Green

Another one of these. I skipped the cable again, but did stripes.  I was trying to use up some old yarn that's been in my stash since I learned to knit 4 years ago, but I wound up going out and buying a whole 'nother ball of the green anyway.  Sigh. That's usually how it works, right? It's really a nice pattern, but something about it doesn't quite seem to fit her properly. They've both come out a little big in the shoulders, even though this one is a a size smaller than the the blue one. Project details on Ravelry are here.

She loves it anyway, and it's kept her warm during these not-quite-spring times.

She loves these mannequins. She calls them "my friends" which makes me smile at the same time it breaks my heart, for some reason. I think it's because she doesn't have any actual, human, recurring friends in her life. I just cannot seem to dig up consistent age-appropriate playmates for her.

Anyway, about the knitting: The stockinette body of this vest also came out crooked-looking, prompting me to try and figure out what the hell is wrong with my technique. I finally figured out that I've been doing a few things wrong the entire time I've been knitting. Things like, um...the purling...and the knitting. WRONG. For four years. I watched a lot of videos and mostly corrected myself, but then a friend asked me to teach her to knit and I decided it would be more fun to take a class together. I thought the class might well be a waste of $45 and four hours, but I am the sort of person who needs the reassurance of someone checking my work. It worked out well, because instead of being bored I learned to knit continental-style (working yarn coming in from the left, instead of the right as it does in English-style knitting) and was able to help other members of the class when they struggled. Sometimes the teacher didn't seem to explain things in a way that everyone could understand - I think it's the problem of teaching something that comes easily to you - and I was glad I had some previous experience or I might've been totally lost and felt really dumb and started crying in the middle of the yarn shop. I felt nice and useful, though, because I was able to translate his rapid-fire instructions into something that my classmates could more readily absorb.

Part 2 of our class is this week, and we will learn proper purling. Wish me luck!

Snapshots: Mid-February 2010

Last week I had an astonishing day of kitchen clumsiness that started with a case of the dropsies and ended with me accidentally dumping macaroni and cheese into a potted plant. No kidding.

It wasn't an entire pan of macaroni and cheese or anything, but still. A potted plant.

***
I am into the Olympics right now.  I sat raptly watching the opening ceremonies while my husband brought me snacks and told me the intensity of my joy made me "incredibly cute."  Piper woke up to go potty (oh, yeah, she wakes up and takes herself to the potty bathroom at night now, with little to no supervision) so we let her sit on the couch and watch for a while, until she got tired and asked to go back to bed. She was out cold before a lot of the really cool stuff (like the giant bear made of lights), but she was dancing right along with the First Nations dancers and making comments on all the flags during the Parade of the Nations. She was so delighted with the dancing and music, in fact, that I'm now hunting for video footage on YouTube and wishing this area had an annual pow-wow to take her to.  The town Ryan and I went to college in had a big one every year and I'd love to take Piper if one of our Michigan visits ever falls at the right time.

But back to the Olympics.  I've been watching a little of everything.  Ryan has been schlepping off to bed early, so I have the TV to myself for a couple hours each night, and I'll plop down with some knitting or the computer and a stack of paperwork and multi-task.  I find some of the interview bits hokey (Montage! We need a mon-tage!) and they seem to play "The Funeral" by Band of Horses under every piece, but I guess that's to be expected.

***
Text conversation with a friend on Sunday:
A: Ahh Valentine's Day.  The 15-year-old inside me gets her little hopes up every year.  And unfortunately gets disappointed almost every year.
Me: I am almost-ironically into the kitsch of it all now, mostly as an excuse to do silly craft projects with my kid. But I wouldn't say no to a hotel room, a hot tub, and champagne.
A: Exactly. It's hard to feel romantic in my dog-hair-covered bed, toys strewn all over the floor bedroom. Hmph.

I didn't "get my hopes up" this year.  I don't, about Valentine's Day, ever, really, because I don't like heart-shaped things and detest pink so it wasn't my holiday for a long time. Then I spent a number of years with someone whose birthday was February 14th and who hated chocolate in all its forms, so it wasn't like he was going to be going all-out on the day o' love. Ryan is a romantic but our budget is small and we are pretty easy to please - an awesome night for us is getting pizza delivered and watching as many DVD episodes of Mad Men as we can stay awake for. But this year I found myself making decorations, buying valentines to give to the kids in Piper's preschool class, creating a centerpiece for our table, and generally getting into the spirit of things.  A lot of holidays that sort of dropped off the radar are more fun with a kid, and I've started to remember all the silly things my mom used to do for Valentine's Day that we loved so much - heart-shaped pancakes, a small gift, class valentines, sewing us new outfits or putting out a dish of candies.  That kind of stuff is fun again, now that Piper is old enough to join in.

***
My Valentine's Day was vastly better than my mother's this year, from what I gathered.  She apparently worked on Sunday, and came home at 9:30 pm exhausted (she's a nurse) to find the first words out of my dad's mouth were not "How was your day?" or "Happy Valentine's Day!" but "You didn't bring home any food?" She replied that since he had been "sick" and lounging around the house all day, she should be asking that question of him. My dad, in true my-dad fashion, stopped at Costco the next day and bought a huge pork loin, an even bigger pork roast, and a ham.  "I brought you some food," he cheerfully as he set them in front of my mom. It's true; he basically bought her a giant pork roast for Valentine's Day.

***

Reading: Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, "America's Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine"
Knitting: Another Milo for P, handwarmers for R, brown linen/cotton wrap for my mom, hat for a friend's little boy, hat for R (to match handwarmers).
Cooking: Well, I wish I was cooking these Cinnamon Bun Pancakes...maybe tomorrow.

Little Milo Blue

Taaa-daaaa! An actual finished project, how about that? It's a pretty rare occasion around here.

Pattern: Milo by Georgie Hallam (Ravelry Link)
Yarn: Moda Dea Wool Bamboo
Needles: US 7, 16"

This was a pretty fast knit for me - only a few weeks, once I actually got going. I know, I know, some people can make five of these in that time, but I am a super-slow knitter. I started it and frogged it at least four times, and somewhere during the cast-offs for the shoulder straps I messed up and had to take it off the needles entirely to rip a huge section out. Then I put it back on, but didn't notice it was backwards. Fortunately the yarn is nice and squishy and the garter stitch hid the one row of stockinette I'd just created.

I made the body plain stockinette, so it would be the same front and back, and also because I've never done cables and I knew if I tried I would probably take so long to finish this she'd be wearing it to middle school. I could not, however, seem to do the m1 increases called for without making little holes where the body branches out into stockinette. I couldn't figure out any increase that would add stitches without making it really noticeable, actually. I'm sure this is something to do with my poor knitting skills.

The yarn was really, really nice to work with. I got it in a clearance bin for something like $3 a skein, and it took two skeins to make this, which is a good price for an item that will have macaroni and cheese or yogurt smeared all over it every day it gets worn. I thought I read somewhere on the Coats & Clark website that they were discontinuing the entire Moda Dea line of yarns, and although most of them were godawful technicolor acrylic fun-fur craziness, I will be sad to lose the Wool-Bamboo. It looks like they are, however, introducing Stitch Nation Yarns, which has a wool-bamboo blend, so hopefully it will be similar.

These pictures were taken before it was blocked, because she insisted on wearing it as soon as it came off the needles. No kidding - I bound off, held it up and said, "hey, this is for you!" and she grabbed it and started pulling it on. She slept in it and wore it the next day, too, and was very upset when she had to take it off for brief periods while changing into or out of pajamas.

While sometimes I look at things I've made and see only the mistakes and flaws, having her love this so much made my crafty-mama heart swell with love and, for once, a sense of pride in my work.

Now, With 100% More Ravelry

I finally got around to joining Ravelry. Why did I wait so long?! This thing is awesome. Now if I only had time to knit...