Introducing Camembert, our new Doorstop Mouse

we like to keep the windows open as much as possible, but on breezier days that almost always means doors getting blown shut.

We've had Marmalade at our bedroom door for ages, but TW's door has been kept open by random object for far too long, so I finally decided to make Marmalade a companion.

Isn't he adorable?



Yarn: Bernat Baby Softee, held double
hook: G (4mm)
pattern: Amigurumi mouse doorstop

I stuffed him with a nice heavy rock I found while out on a hike and lots of polyfill.
He seems to be settling in nicely, and TW love him, every night before going to bed he has to stop and say 'hi' to his mousy.

Hey! long time no see!

So I've been super busy living life and enjoying my time with TW, but I have a ton of stuff to share with you!

Still no progress on the shawl, I really should get myself an audiobook and buckle down, but until then, I’ve finally finished the big blanket!

For size reference, that's our queen sized bed.

(yes, I had to stand on a chair to take that picture, it was scary.)

It's nice and soft and cozy and warm, and I finished it just in time for a summer heat wave, so it hasn't gotten much use yet, but I foresee lots of cuddles come winter time.

And just because, here is TW modeling it for you:

Yarn: my hand dyed hand-spun

Needles: size 10.5 (6.5mm) knitpicks options

Pattern: a bastardized Shetland Shawl construction: I cast on three stitches and knit the middle panel, increasing every row until it was big enough, and decreasing back down. (a la Grannie's Favorite Washcloth). Then I picked up stitches all along the edge and knit in the round increasing at the corners until I ran out of blue yarn, then I did a sideways knit on edging in white, ending it back at the beginning with Kitchener stitch.

It's meand to be big and warm, and not need any blocking if it needs to be washed.  I can simply squeeze out the water and pat it out in a rough square shape and let it dry.
(My poor pi blanket got dirty soon after TW was born and it still hasn't been blocked since we don't have the room for it here.)

***

Bill's socks are coming along nicely, I have one more pattern repeat and then I start the ribbing.

***

And as the weather has finally started to cool off a bit we can start turning off the AC and opening the windows, which means pleasant breezes... and slamming doors. So I’ve had to get back to the little mousy doorstop. I picked up a nice heavy stone for his base today while out on a hike so I can stuff him and finish up the rest of his head. Then its just a quick nose and a couple of ears!

(although I do have to admit that he looks a bit creepy right now.)

***

In other crafty news, my poor juggling balls have been sitting on my bedroom bookshelf for ages, ever since the old bag fell apart in the wash, so I decided (with the inspiration from my new friends on the FB Project Project group (hi guys!)) that it was time to make them a new bag.

It was super simple, just the leg off of an old pair of PJ bottoms, and a kumihimo cord made from cotton yarn. But now my juggling stuff has a happy new home, and I have more room for books on my self!

***

Before I made the juggling bag I decided to try my idea out on a pair of jeans first. Then I got the nifty idea to make it a set, so I whipped up a few denim bean bags to go with it. (the aren't filled yet, since I need to pick up some of those little plastic pellets first, but I have a craft store trip planned for the near future for some other crafty projects, so I'll pick some up then.)

I have a friend who juggles also, and since I certainly don't need any more balls, I may give them to him.

***

I have a few more crafty ideas in the works, and I'm trying to keep up knitting regularly, (even with the lack of a weekly get together) so hopefully I'll be back soon with more updates!

Catch up Part Two

Remember TW's pixie hat? (you saw it in the last post too.) When my cousin discovered that she was pregnant, she immediately requested that I make one for he son as well. I couldn't refuse!

 

Stella Pixie hat
in Vickie Howell Sheep(ish) in turquoise
on US 6 (4mm) circular needles.

I used the same mods as last time.
(project's Ravelry page)

 I can't wait to get the pictures of it on him! I'll be giving it to her at Christmas, along with a pair of thumbless mittens in the same yarn. (more on them in a later post)

 ***

When my mom was visiting a while ago she brought me yarn! Lion Brand Amazing. It's a wool/acrylic Noro wannabe. It was quite soft and the colors seemed pretty nice too. Around the same time I discovered that all my knit hats either didn't go down over my ears well, or had lace/yarn overs that let the wind in. I decided to remedy that.




It's in Bicolor Brioche
On US 6 (4mm) needles In Lion Brand Amazing in Strawberry Fields and Pink Sands.
(project's Ravelry page)

This is the third time I've knit this particular pattern, and my sixth time knitting Brioche in the round, and I gotta say I still love it!

The hat is nice and squishy and soft, and VERY warm. Perfect for the frequent walks TW and I take while Bill is at work.

***

It hasn't been just all hats around here though. I've also started a new pair of socks:

 

socks on a plane (link is to the Ravelry pattern page)

(my Bayerische socks are on hold until I stop being annoyed at them for being so fiddly in a dark colored yarn)

***

I also washed, carded, spun, and plied up a bunch of yarn from the batch that had originally been destined for a sweater. The dyeing process had been interrupted by our move, and I decided that the sweater was never going to happen. So I cast on in the white yarn I already had spun up, and spun up a batch of blue and white mixed.




There are four skeins of white, two in the center and two for an edging, and then four skeins of blue all for the border.

It should be a nice large, squishy, warm blanket when it's done. It is a bit further along than in the picture now (I'm into the second skein of blue), but its my mindless big lap knitting, and I don't work on it much, but that's ok, since there is no deadline.

***

And finally before I end this post, here is an unremarkable picture of the start of an amigurumi mouse doorstop.

Over the summer and early fall when the temperatures were so nice we had the windows open a lot, unfortunately the wind kept catching the door to TW's room and slamming it on us. Eventually I got fed up and decided that his door needed a doorstop too. But that it had to match Marmalade who guards our bedroom door.

 

 I’m taking my time on him, since he doesn't need to be ready until spring when we open the windows again.

Catch up part one

I'll be playing catch up in the next few posts, I'll try to keep in roughly chronological order, but no promises.

When last we saw knitting content from our intrepid hero there had been owlie mittens and toddler socks.

Since then I've made some crochet acorns:

caps were found while out on one of our many hikes.

yarn is random sock scraps, tiny E hook

pattern from here

but modified to fit my much larger caps.

(project's Ravelry page)

after the acorns I got ambitious and cast on for Haruni using some hand spun I had made long before our move.

the cat was not terribly helpful.

While I was knitting Haruni it got cold and TW grew out of his previous mittens, so I made him a new pair

pattern: Dulaan Easy-On Mittens

yarn: Schaefer Yarn Company Lola (Superwash) in indigo

(project's Ravelry page)

while the mittens were made LAST year, they didn't get worn until this year, this was the only picture I got before there were treated to the Toddler Special (mud puddles, leaves and carrying lots of sticks and pine cones) they are looking quite disheveled now.

Progress was made on Haruni:

I started and finished a new pair of socks for Bill:

(yes, that's right, I managed to break another pair of needles, luckily Knit Picks is awesome and replaced them for me.)

Knit Picks Kettle Dyed Stroll in Ivy

pattern is roughly Cat Bordhi's Ridgeline expansion with a seed stitch accent.

On US 1 / 2.25mm needles, magic loop, two at once.

(project's Ravelry page)

Haruni was finished, but then it took me almost a year to get around to blocking it:

Haruni

(Ravelry link)

on US 3 / 3.25mm needles

using my hand spun Marino/Tencel from Stony Mountain Fibers (the yarn's Ravelry page is here)

(project's Ravelry page)

that's enough for now. It's time to go watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade with my family.

Teething giraffes and more

Wow how time flies, TW is seven months, is crawling like crazy, pulling himself up and standing whenever he can, and has two teeth coming in already. At lunch time my husband will take the little chomping terror for about an hour or two while he naps (the boy won't nap on his own) and I will either make baby food to freeze or craft.

Pictures of baby food are pretty boring, but I have a lot of crafty stuff too.



Newest first are some teething giraffes, (did I mention that TW is chewing on EVERYTHING right now?)
I originally hear about teething giraffes from a baby forum I'm on and immediately went looking for a pattern. I found this one but wasn't very happy with my results (it didn't even get stuffed) so I fiddled around and came up with a slightly better model, but I found the body too square and its legs too spindly to be stable, also my first attempt at head gust to give it more umph for chewing was a lopsided failure. But the boy loved it. The plain boring, muslin, lopsided, spindly giraffe hung around for a while, and I got more and more annoyed with it, I knew I could do better. I widened the legs, sloped the back and tried to make a better head gusset. Along the way I discovered starbright baby on etsy. Well huh. After a bit of brooding I tried my third giraffe (the white one) and it was much better, but the head gusset was even worse than before! A little more fiddling, and a crappy attempt at ears and I had the best giraffe of them all, (the blue one). TW loves them all



Obviously since there is already somebody out there selling teething giraffes (at a very reasonable price, I might add) I'm not going to post my pattern. Go buy one of her's, and support a crafty work at home mom.




More of my babywearing madness, I made a narrow bodied wrap strapped Podaegi (Pod for short). It's kinda like if a mei tai and a wrap had a baby.
I really like it, the fabric is a light/med weight denim with bugs, lizards and frogs embroidered al over it that I found in the red tag bin at Jo-Anns. It went together really quickly and easy using this pattern and this pattern (which seems to have disappeared, hmph - still posting link for future reference) as inspiration.



I forgot to se my walking foot, so the fabric puckered a bit, but I reinforced the heck out of the straps, so while not aesthetically perfect, it's quite secure. There are tons of different ways to wear a Pod, a few can be seen here on you tube.



And we love it.


I made another baby block using fabric leftover from my crappy dress to awesome skirt project for a while back. TW loves the bright colours. And it gets manhandled and chewed often.



You can see it on my Grandmother's lap while she plays with the best baby ever.


And finally there is Marmalade the doorstop cat.



Pattern: fat kitty
Hook: J
Yarn: two strands of random worsted acrylic I had lying around

Stuffed with a freezer bag full of kitty litter and fiberfill for padding.

Pineapple FO, okie dokie progress, and socks!

So I mentioned earlier that I had finished some crochet doilies to adorn the arms of my new chair.
Well, I STILL haven’t found my blocking pins, so I figured I would at least show you the unblocked pictures:





Starry Pineapple Doily from Favorite Pineapple Doilies of Rita Weiss from the American School of Needlework.

J&P coats size 10 crochet cotton in Ecru, and #7 steel crochet hook.


(Doesn't Pillow Guy look so happy in his new home?)

I've also picked up Okie Dokie (aka Frosted Ferns by Herbert Niebling) again, and have made some pretty good progress.



It's about 37% finished now, and as you can see I've finished the first acorn, YAY!

And of course, I've got my ubiquitous pair of socks:



Knit picks Felici in "Aurora"
The usual toe up two at a time, short row heel pattern in 1 1/2 Knit Picks circulars.


Unfortunately (ok, not really) these projects are going to be put on hold for a while, since I've just picked up a Commission knitting job through a swap group on Ravelry.

I'm knitting some socks in exchange for spinning fiber. It's win-win-win!
I get to knit socks, I get awesome spinning fiber, and she gets new socks!

This post brought to you by the letters F and O

Yow, sorry about the two week wit between posts. I guess I'm just a bit too easily distracted.

Well, anyways, today is all FOs!

Lest start off with the oldest, shall we?:

Handspun legwarmers: these guys were made with handspun yarn from some beautiful and gloriously soft alpaca/mohair/Marino roving I got from All Strings Considered (weavespinknit.etsy.com) at Rhinebeck last fall. I decided I needed legwarmers with the exceptionally cold winter we had, so I whipped up a pattern and finished them around the middle of January and wore them almost constantly until last month or so. They are so nice and warm, and did I mention soft! I did need to thread some elastic through the top ribbing so they would stay up, but otherwise these are PERFECT!


(excuse the weird cropping and background, Bill took the pictured and managed to get some rather unflattering pictured of my butt in there too)



And what is that under the legwarmers? Why yes! It's another pair of socks!
Just a plain old Jane toe up pattern, but what makes these guys special is that once again, they are handspun! Made from some wool I dyed myself! The yarn for these socks was entirely spindle spun, and is wearing wonderfully. I didn't have quite enough wool for a full pair, so I saved some aside and spun it with some undyed singles, along with a strand of wooly nylon, and I used that for the heels and toes and cuffs. There a bit pilly in the picture, but that’s only because I've been wearing them A LOT since I finished them, but besides a few pills, they show no sign of wearing out any time soon, awesome!



next up, some tatted Easter bunnies that I put in cards for my family this year:



the two on the left are from here, the middle one is my own design, and the one on the right is from here everybody loved them! Yay!


at the beginning of march during knit night a woman came up to me and asked if I took commissions, a friend of her had begun a baby blanket, but had just gotten out of surgery and the pain meds were making her too loopy to knit, but she really wanted the blanket to be done soon, since the baby had already arrived and the weather was getting warmer.

I looked at the pattern, and it looked relatively easy, so I said sure, what the heck!
Slightly under a month later after some pretty seriously monogamous knitting I had this:




The pattern was an old Bernat pattern (at least all the materials, from yarn to needles called for were Bernat brand), but all I had was a photocopy, without any other information besides “style no. 3020-132”

I'm not really sure this blanket is really all that baby appropriate (there are a lot of long strands to make the swags, and the repeated stitch slipping left rather large holes on either side of the purl sections. And lets not even mention the loopy edging) but when I mailed it out, the woman loved it. so I guess that's all that matters.

And finally, a couple of years ago, I crochet and knit up a bunch of pot scrubbies using some old acrylic and cotton yarns, and while they worked well, they also were falling apart! So I went out and got some nylon yarn and made some new ones!



The 100% nylon (Needloft brand, I got it in the plastic canvas section of Michaels.) should make them both tougher, but also, rougher, so they can do a better job at scrubbing. So far so good!

From the top, clockwise, they are: a crochet pattern of my own design, Abigail, from 1870 Pearl's knit tribble and a crochet spiral tawashi from here (the site is in Japanese, a direct pdf link here)

Fnished Flutterbyes

Yay!

Since the weather is getting nicer around here, I figured it was high time I got off my duff and finished the crochet butterfly top I started a while ago.



All I really needed to do was the sleeves and edging. And since I decided to just do plain Sc around the main body it was a snap. The sleeves on the other hand got ripped out several times before I was happy. See, I have flabby arms, and am very particular about my sleeves. But I eventually got it.



I am so incredibly happy with this top, I just want to wear it all the time, but it's still a bit chilly.
::pout::

original pattern by Proper Trappings and available here(ravelry link)

Cracking right along

The butterfly top is almost there; I finished the main body today, and seamed the shoulder. Now all I have to do is crochet the sleeves and the edging. I'm very exited, it even fits!

Pre-seaming:



Unfortunately, my wrist is starting to crack and hurt badly whenever I crochet. I made bred on Thursday, and them made pizza dough yesterday, and I think all the kneading pushed it over the edge. I'm going to have to take a crochet break for a couple of days so I don't permanently hurt myself.

Luckily, it doesn't hurt to knit! So I'm going to go back to Okie Dokie and get more of that done, but first... an intermission:



Knit lace sun catcher. The picture is from last night, the daytime picture is pretty but you cant see any detail.

I got the pattern from an old Anna magazine, but I bought the wrong sized ring, so I had to knit it with finer thread and needles, and take out a couple of repeats to get it to fit my ring. I'm really happy with the way it came out, but it was a bit of a PITA. I think it would be way easier to make a sun catcher like this in crochet, and I have a whole book full of snowflake patterns that would be perfect, but I need bigger rings for them to fit. (I also need my wrist to stop cracking, ah well.)


(see? No detail)