Saturday, September 29, 2007

knitting, and babylegs, and prefolds! oh, my!

Look! I've found a little more time for some crafting! Woo hoo! Here are the recent projects...

First, an update on the knitting...

I have finished swatches in garter, stockinette, 2x2 ribbing, and seed stitch. I feel fairly comfortable with the knit and purl stitches, and am excited to move onto a "real" project.



I am hopeful that I will find my perfect first project in the book Mason Dixon Knitting, which I have heard wonderful things about, and am now next in line at the library to read. Scroll through some of the pictures that people have posted of their projects from the book on Amazon. Inspiring and simple-looking ideas abound!

Second, I have been making some faux-Babylegs. What are Babylegs, you ask? Basically, they are baby leg warmers. No, they aren't necessary, and yes, some may find them strange, but I think they're cute. They are especially popular in cloth diapering and babywearing circles for some (almost) practical reasons. For the cloth diaperers, you can keep those legs warm on a chilly fall morning without covering up the cute diaper with actual pants. Yes, that will be my ghetto baby in a diaper, t-shirt, and babylegs this fall. Around the house only, I promise. Babywearers like them to cover the gap made when you put a baby wearing pants in a sling and the pants ride up and expose the lower leg and ankles to the cold. How necessary will this be in Houston? Not very. But hey--I can surely come up with more reasons why these are a necessary accessory for the modern baby.

The "real" ones are sold for $12 and up in baby boutiques and on-line baby stores, but you can make them in 10 minutes for the cost of a pair of knee-high socks. Here's the tutorial I've been using, and a picture of the pairs I have made this week is below.



You may notice some color groups. Target is selling knee socks in pairs right now, so the greens, blues, and brown/orange came together. Don't mind the solid olive green pair that looks like it got into a fight with the rotary cutter. It did. But we won't talk about that. Baby man is keeping all the solid pairs, the green striped pair, and *maybe* the brown argyle. See the burnt orange? Hook 'em! The blue argyle is on its way to cousin Lucy, since there is a color a little too kin to pink in there for baby man.

and for his adoring fans, the olive striped pair modeled...



and finally, this afternoon's project--trimming prefolds. I love the fancy diapers that make cloth diapering in 2007 so different that it was when my mom did it in the 1977. You can't really beat a pocket diaper or an all-in-one for convenience. But there's something about the old-fashioned prefold that speaks to me. Around the house, baby man wears prefolds and covers most of the time. I am finding, though, that prefold sizing does not match real-life baby sizing. He grows out of the width of the prefold long before he grows out of the length. A little research has told me that this is a common problem easily fixed by taking the next size up prefold for width, and trimming down the length for a custom fit. Baby man wears infant sized prefolds. The length is perfect on him. The width is getting snug. I have premium prefolds (the next size) in the waiting, so yesterday and today I took the rotary cutter and sewing machine to them. Since a picture is worth 1000 words, here is what I did...



On the bottom left, you can see an infant (yellow) and a premium prefold (pre-trimming). You can see that the premium is just about an inch wider (perfect!) but a LOT longer. Bottom right, you can see a trimmed premium. I cut them down to the length of the infants and used the overlocking foot on my sewing machine to finish the raw edge. Someday I *will* own a real serger! I kept the leftover prefold parts to use as doublers to add absorbency when laid down the middle of the diaper prior to folding (shown bottom right). Top left is the pile of doublers and top right is the pile of trimmed prefolds. They fit well, so I'm excited!

There is an on-line cloth diapering store that has wizened up and is having prefolds made for them in custom sizes that fit babies more practically. I think I'll do my prefold buying from there from now on to save myself the trouble of trimming.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

learning something new!

It was time. I can crochet and sew competently. I love yarn and fiber arts, so I tried spinning (a blast!) and it was time to bite the bullet and learn to knit. I have had some impromptu knitting lessons with my friend Cynthia, have watched my mother and sister-in-law, and have spent hours on www.knittinghelp.com (where I was told that any person of reasonable intelligence should be able to teach themselves to knit--ha!), but I needed a professional. So with my birthday money, I signed up for a two week class at my local yarn shop--Yarntopia. Why do yarn shops always have such stupid names? The first two hour session was today, during which we learned all about different yarn fibers (wool, cotton, acrylic, etc), gauge, how to read the band on a ball of yarn, etc (stuff I already knew from crochet), and then we learned to cast on and knit. Here's my swatch so far. (I think it's garter stitch?)



I'm to return next week with it twice as long as it is wide and we'll learn to bind off, fold it in half, sew up the sides, and fill it with lavendar to make a sachet. I thought that idea was brilliant. My teacher said that most beginning knitting classes make a scarf, but she thinks it's intimidating to make something that you or someone you love might want to wear--newbies are too concerned about their mistakes that way. So she likes sachets. They make for good practice, good smells, and can be buried in your lingerie drawer if they're ugly.

Next week we learn to purl so that we can make another sachet in stockinette stitch. I can hardly wait!

Friday, September 07, 2007

to my dissappointed blog readers...

Yes, I know it has been TWO MONTHS since I updated my blog. The reason is very simple--baby man is in the house. Just a few days after my last post, we got our first foster placement--a darling 3.5 week old baby boy. We love him to pieces and are thoroughly enjoying him, but he seriously limits my craft time. I have managed to do a few things anyway, which follow...

another pouch sling (baby inside!)


It's reversible--red on one side and the same black and white print that I used on Courtney's MT on the other. I have long-term plans to add a pocket to the red side in the black and white fabric. Wouldn't that be cute? Oh, and I also have long-term plans to give it to my friend Iris when God gives them a sweet baby. She tried it on with baby man when she came over last week and it fits her far better than it fits me.

and two baby sweaters...

I love this pattern! I've had it on my to-do list for a while now, but got around to it over Labor Day weekend when David was home to help with baby man. I did the 6 month size at first, hoping it would fit baby man when it got cooler outside, but it was too small. I don't know if my gauge was off or it the pattern runs small, but I had try again! I had some trouble with the 2nd one, as you can tell if you look at the pattern pictures closely, but I improvised, and am pleased nonetheless. Oh, and the 12 month size is perfect for baby man (who is nearly 3 months old--ha!) to wear this winter.

first try...


made from some self-striping yarn I bought at my local yarn shop last winter with a hat in mind (that never got done). I did do buttons for this one in the same purple as the trim, but I took the pictures first.

second try...


worked in Paton's Shetland Chunky Tweeds, which is a mostly acrylic with a little bit of wool blend, with brown acrylic trim.

and from here on, be warned that my craft posts may be few and far between. Or I might decide to broaden the purpose of my blog and just share more about life in general.

We'll see...