recent yarn work

Have you noticed that everyone is pregnant with baby boys? Or so it seems!  Almost all of my yarn orders this semester have been for boys.  Here are a few: 

monsters, now and later, for my cousin

The navy one should fit for newborn pictures, but then he'll never wear it again, since he's due mid-summer and it will be far too hot to wear yarny hats.  The larger one should fit for his first winter, and hopefully get a lot more use. 

Two newsboy and bootie sets, one in navy, the other in black.

This was a parting baby gift for Jono's occupational therapist before he graduated (yay!) and she left for maternity leave.  She actually did not know the gender of her baby, so I made my favorite gift for babies of unknown variety-- a neutral bear ear hat, with a flower that can be removed if it's a boy.  

And I made a butterfly beanie for the American Girls.  

These are my favorite types of projects--small, fast, instant gratification.  And it's a good thing I  like them, since let's face it--that's about all I have time for these days! 

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?

girlification

A friend sent me some plain green longies (knit wool pants used with cloth diapers in lieu of a cover) that her two boys had worn and asked me to "girlify" them.  She just had a beautiful baby girl, and no plain green pants were going to do!  This project was SO FUN!

She sent me the pants, a skein of dark pink yarn, and the remains of a ball of light pink yarn that she had something else knit with.  I changed the drawstring from green to pink, added the pink edging to the legs of the pants, and embroidered some flowers (a first for me, and a super fun new skill!).  She also requested a coordinating hat.  The hat pattern is this one, one of my favorites.  I used up the rest of the yarn making a few flowers.  She can use them to embellish whatever she pleases, put them on clips or headbands, etc.  

Yay for girly! and welcome to the world, baby Lily!

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!