birthday present crafting

We bought some clementines in a little wooden crate a few weeks ago.  I happen to think those are completely adorable and struggle to throw them away.  We have a little girl's birthday party coming up, so Hazel and I decided to make another Princess and the Pea playset with it.  I made one about 3 years ago, and it's been one of my all-time favorite craft projects.  This time, Hazel selected the fabrics from my fabric stash and helped me plan out the project.  

Seven 1/2" thick mattresses, stuffed with craft foam, pillow, knit pink blanket, crocheted green pea and a little patch pocket on the blanket to store it in, plus a story book to finish the set. Came out so cute!

crafty catch up

My available craft time is still minuscule, as home and homeschool commitments are pretty intense right now, but I have been working on a couple of small things.

First is an order for a friend's daughter. Whenever little Sarah is over at our house, she wears baby dolls in my kids' mini mei tai carriers.  Her mama commissioned one for her upcoming birthday.  Such a cute, fun, little project!

The next one will be an ongoing project, so I'll post update pictures occasionally. I got a sky scarf kit for my birthday from my in-laws, and it's really fun! The concept is that you take note of the sky and knit 2 rows on your scarf.  Every day.  For a year.  In reality, I'm finding that I remember to knit about 5 installments a week.  It's knit in lace weight (really tiny) yarn, double stranded, so you can choose 2 different colors to represent the sky for the day, if need be.  This is roughly 3 weeks worth of NOLA sky.  The most frequent combination so far is light blue and white, although we've had some gray in there, and some darker brighter blues as well.

What about you? Been working on anything fun?

Look! I knit! I crocheted!

It's been soooo long since I've picked up needle or hook, with my craft closet being packed up most of the summer for the TV room renovation and just a general lack of interest in yarn crafting during the heat of the summer. But I whipped up a little baby gift for a friend who is delivering her FIFTH baby BOY tomorrow morning.  So excited for them!!

Too bad about my getting the booties' size off and there being NO way the hat and booties will fit at the same time, despite the fact that I intended them to match.  Hat will fit right out of the shoot.  Booties are more like 6-12mo size.  I was not about to re-work them, though, so it'll have to do.

Converse booties pattern: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/crochet-baby-converse
Hat is just a "math hat".  Calculate gauge, determine how big you want hat to be, cast on appropriate number of stitches to achieve goal, decrease when needed to close hat.  You know, math hat. ;)

dolly knitting

I've mentioned before, I'm sure, about my need for quick, easy, instant gratification type knitting projects?  This usually translates into endless hats and baby booties, as I'm you've surely noticed.  Turns out that apparel knitting can be quick and easy, too, when it's done for the American Girl!  

I found this cute little free skirt pattern on Ravelry, and worked it up with some leftover green yarn with flecks of pink, purple, yellow, and white.  The colorway name is Tiptoe Through the Tulips (yarn dyer named it, not me) and it's really the perfect description for it.  I had maybe half a ball left, and couldn't figure out what I'd ever use it for, but this is perfect!  I made the little pink shirt to go with it.  Perfect spring outfit for Jess!

I was itching to work up another skirt or two, but let's be honest--our one little AG doll doesn't need more than one knit skirt, no matter how cute it is.  So I volunteered to make some outfits for my best girlfriend from Houston's little girl.  Her daughter is Jono's age, and is CRAZY about cupcakes.  She has two 18" dolls living at her house, so these outfits are for Hannah's dollies.  

The cute little cupcake appliqué is also from Ravelry, but it's a paid (but cheap!) pattern. I need to make some more of those cupcakes to put on hair clips and use as bows on little girl birthday presents! 

The shirts are both Liberty Jane patterns.  The cupcake shirts are (slightly modified) from their free trendy tshirt pattern.  I lengthened the sleeves, took out some of the fitted-ness of the body, and shortened the length.  Their t-shirt is a bit too trendy, in my opinion, with it's tiny cap sleeves, fitted body, and looong length.  I love a shirt that fits me like that, but it looks silly on a doll that is supposed to be ~10 years old.  The pink shirt is their Magic Number top, worked as written.  That pattern was fun.  I'm planning to make the dress version soon! 

some recent yarn work

I haven't posted much knit or crochet lately.  Here are a few things I've done in the not-too-distant past.

These two hats were an order for a newborn baby girl.  Mama let me surprise her with colors, so it was a fun one.  I am now officially obsessed with bonnets and want to work up a BUNCH more!

I make hats for the new mamas in MOPs.  We depleted the supply I started out the fall with, so I made a few more to get us through the spring baby boom. 

This was my first ever knit sweater! It knit it intended for our American Girl, but it came out a little big. It fits Scarlett the Build-a-Kitty perfectly, though!  

And this mermaid tail was a baby gift for a MOPs friend who is expecting her first girl in a few weeks and is mermaid CRAZY!  It was a really fun, satisfying pattern to work up.  The yarn cooperated beautifully, and it was MUCH easier than it appears.  Can't wait to see it in newborn pictures!

Besides that, I've been keeping my fingers busy with a few preemie hats here and there.  I decided I'd like to do more NICU hats this year, and not all in one lump right before Hazel's NICU day in June, so I've been working one up whenever the mood strikes and the fingers are itchy.  I've done one on average of once a week or so, so we should have a nice stash ready by time to deliver them!  

I've also been stashing some things that I wanted to work up for fun in the "I might maybe someday open an etsy store" pile.  I'm still mulling that over.   

Thanks for looking!

little, littler, littlest

A mama in my MOPs group unexpectedly delivered her baby boy at 26 weeks.  The thought of any family facing a long hard road in NICU sends me straight for my yarn.  It's what I do.

I made three hats for baby Benjamin.  One in a size that will fit now, one a little bigger and one even a little bigger than that.  The largest size is the size I usually  make for preemies when I do my big stash to celebrate Hazel's NICU discharge--the size for "near-termers" like she was.  The smaller ones are super tiny!  It scares me to think that I know someone with a baby small enough to wear that tiniest one!

I started with the smallest one and prayed as I stitched that he would grow, quickly, out of each size and into the next.  I hope that he thrives and is able to come home with his family very soon!

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.

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!