Milo's Rhino Romper

I guess it was a bad idea to knit something just for a baby to wear home from the hospital. He's only worn it three times. Once for his hospital pictures, then again on the day he came home:

And then three weeks later, when I panicked that I didn't have enough pictures of him in it:

But now that he's a few weeks old, he spits up a lot, so it doesn't make sense to dress him in something that has to be hand washed. I guess next time I knit for a newborn, I'll use acrylic. At least it makes a cute decoration hanging in his room.

Free pattern here

Gauge

I'm having gauge issues. Last night, I knitted lots of gauge swatches with this blue skein of Malabrigo Twist. I started with size 7 needles and 4 stitches per inch and ended up with size 4 needles, still with 4 stitches per inch. So I gave up and started knitting on the size 4. But when I got to the white yarn, my gauge was 5 stitches per inch. Is it possible that two skeins of Malabrigo Twist vary that much in thickness or is it my knitting that varies that much from day to day? What do I do now? Frog it and knit a swatch in each color? I'm making a newborn size Rhino Romper, and I'm afraid that if my gauge is off in one direction, I'll run out of yarn, and in the other direction, it will be too small. If I hadn't spend so much money on this yarn, I'd give up.

Mama's Girl

Hanne had a crafty day. She tried to wind her own yarn, then she made knitting needles out of popsicle sticks, then wrapped the yarn around her neck, Portuguese style, and knitted her yarn into a big, tangled mess. How can I be mad that she's not asleep when she's in her room "knitting?"

Growing into it

I almost always buy/knit my kids' clothes big because I'm afraid they won't fit long enough if I make them the right size. I knit this Baby Sophisticate sweater 2 years ago, and it was way too big:

He wore it the next winter, but it was still big:

Now it finally fits:

Lesson learned.

More Tatting

#4-12 in the 25 Motif Challenge
Patterns by Dale Pomeroy
Lizbeth #20 thread 

Tatting class is keeping me busy. This is a few weeks worth of homework/classwork, and I know there are other tatters who do this much in a day, but surely those tatters don't have small children? It's kinda tricky keeping all my ducks in a row. It's apparent by my suuuuuuuuper messy house that my ducks are definitely not in a row, but I exercised, read to my kids, and took a nap today, and I'm about to go practice the organ, so I'd say my priorities are pretty strait, except that it's 11:50 PM, and I don't plan on going to bed any time soon.

And, I stumbled across this ball of blue Lizbeth (color 651-not even one of the colors I was considering) in my local yarn store, and it matches pretty well. So I've got no excuses to put off that doily, but I still don't know which colors I want where, so I'm still procrastinating.

Lace Mat Planning

There's this doily pattern that has been taking over the internet, and I really want to make one, but I'm afraid to choose colors. But I got this brilliant idea to put it in my laundry/craft room and model the colors after the doilies on the wallpaper:

 

 

So, blue and white? And what shade of blue? Should it have some charcoal too? What about green? And which round should be which color? I haven't decided if I'll hang it on a white or charcoal background.

I love the way this one looks with the dark color on the outside edge. But I also love the way it looks all in the same color.

Tatting Classes

I've been taking tatting classes at my local yarn store from Dale Pomeroy (who is amazing, and if you ever get the chance to take his classes, you should, even if you already know how to tat.) I'm halfway through level 2, and my tatting is finally starting to look presentable (mostly because I learned how to finish the ends.) So I'm gonna try the 25 motif challenge again. 

#1, 2, 3 in the 25 Motif Challenge
Patterns by Dale Pomeroy
Lizbeth #20 thread

Here is all my work from level 2 so far:

Patterns by Dale Pomeroy
Lizbeth #20 thread

And here is my level 1 work:

Patterns by Dale Pomeroy
Lizbeth #10 thread

Hanne's Necklace

I've been admiring this girl's tatted jewelry since before I learned to tat. In fact, her little flowers are one of the reasons I wanted to learn. So I've been trying to recreate them. I started to get close, and then my thread broke, so I made it into a necklace for Hanne, since she wont care if her flower is missing a few petals.

That big white thing in the middle is a pearl bead. I just glued it on, cuz honestly, Hanne never wears the stuff I make her, and something this small is bound to get lost anyway, and if it does stick around long enough to break, by then I'll have a brad I can stick in the center.

She was really excited about it for about 3 minutes, and then she stuck it in her closet, next to the hand knit shrug that she never wears. Haha. That's what I get for spoiling her.

She Seeketh Wool

This Sunday is Mother's Day, so I've been preparing to accompany a song called "Who Can Find a Virtuous Woman" by Wanda West Palmer. At first I was bothered by the line, "She is not afraid of the snow." I'm terrified of the snow, as any wise woman should be, if she has to drive in it. So I looked up Proverbs 31:21, (where the lyrics came from) and it said, "She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet."

So really it's not about the snow, it's about making sure the family is warm, which is awesome because as knitters, that's what we do. But it gets better. Verse 13 says a virtuous woman "seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands" and verse 19 says "She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff."

When I read these verses, I thought to myself, hey I seek wool! Seeking wool is my number one pursuit! I must be a virtuous woman! Of course, there are a lot of traits in that Proverb that I don't have, so I'm not a completely virtuous woman, but I definitely seek wool. And now we have biblical proof that I would be more virtuous if I were to buy a spinning wheel.

Quick Hat

This is a baby present for one of Ryan's clients. He needed something quick, and I'd made this a couple of years ago to see if the pattern was small enough for a newborn (which it wasn't.) So last night I added a little button band, and I was done. Fastest baby gift ever!

Pattern

Hanne's Whirligig

I was having buyer's remorse after letting Hanne pick out this hot pink yarn, but it turned out really great because it matches tons of stuff. Plus she loves pink. And she looks adorable in it.

Here's the pattern

Baseball Beanie

I saw one of these on Pinterest, and I couldn't resist making one. Mine didn't turn out quite as cute as the one that inspired me, probably cuz there's no baby posing in mine. This is the original image that forced me to make a baseball hat:

source

As if we all weren't baby hungry enough, people have to go and post stuff like this on the internet!

Whirligig Shrug

I made this Whirligig Shrug out of the Anime yarn Ryan brought back from San Francisco. I wanted to use it to make something for someone who liked Japanese Anime, or at least someone who had some connection to Japan. Then Ryan pointed out that we had friends who were two months away from having a part-Japanese baby with a Japanese name. At first I wanted to knit her a kimono sweater, in keeping with the theme, but this pattern was too cute to pass up.

I had to make Sully model it, cuz he was the closest thing I had to a 6-month-old baby girl. I tried it on the sock monkey, but it had no shoulders, so it looked lame. Isn't it weird that it fits him and it's size 6 months? It's a little small, but still-he's 16 months old!

Sorry Sully! You're still very manly.

The pattern

Poppy Pin

Supposedly they wear these in some other countries on their version of Memorial Day. My sister-in-law is moving to England and she likes to wear pins and she likes poppies. So this was a no brainer of a birthday present.

free pattern

The Real Reason I'm Excited About My New Phone...

Don't get me wrong. The iPhone 4 is awesome. But it's way awesomer with cross stitch on the back!

Choosing Colors

If we want to have stockings next Christmas, I'd better start now. I'm starting with the left of these for Hanne:

I don't trust myself to choose colors, so I'm trying to match the ones the designer used, but I'm not sure about the dark green behind the birds. I'm using Wool of the Andes from Knit Picks, and I think Aurora Heather is closest, but it's not my favorite shade of dark green.

Which of those greens on the bottom row would you choose to go with those seven colors on top?

They had it!

I called the yarn store, and they had the same dyelot! I can't stop smiling. It's the little things. Although this kinda feels like a big thing.

Progress

I've made some progress on the sweater, and the good news is it's not too big!




The bad news is that I'm not going to have enough yarn. So the question is do I make the sleeves 3/4 length or do I use a different dye lot on the button band? Is there any chance the store where I bought it will still have the same dye lot in stock? I'm going to call the minute they open tomorrow morning.

Recent Projects

 New blankie for Hanne

 A dishcloth for my mom. I made one for my grandma too, but I forgot to snap a picture.

 

Mandy requested an envelope for part of a Christmas present for her husband. I haven't seen the finished project yet, so this sad picture is all I have.

The start of my Paulie sweater! I'm kinda worried it's gonna be too big, but it took me more than a month to get this far, and there's no way I'm starting over. I'll just have to start eating more!

Ribbed Socks

The one and only knitted gift this Christmas. Last Christmas was super stressful. I'm not sure why I thought I'd have time to knit with a new baby keeping me up all night and a toddler not letting me knit by day. Plus, I was already sacrificing sleep to learn the hymns for church every week and the music for the Christmas program. I felt like a drowning zombie last year.

I learned my lesson, and that's why there is only one knitted gift this year. This Christmas has been awesome because my baby sleeps 12 uninterrupted hours most nights, and I don't have to play in the Christmas program. I even ordered some crocheted stuff from etsy rather than making it myself because Christmas is about peace, not about stress.

I've been working on these socks for several months. It's not that it was a lot of knitting, it was just so boring to knit all that ribbing. From now on, I'm only going to knit socks with more interesting patterns, like the ones from Cookie A's book, Knit. Sock. Love. I really want to knit these Twisted Flower socks. But first, I'm going to take a little break from knitting socks and finish my sweater and make some fair isle stockings so that we wont go another Christmas with nothing but good intentions hanging from our mantle.