Still knitting, not so much typing

I've been making time for knitting fairly frequently in the evenings, especially over the last few months, but since I've become a stay-at-home Mom I very rarely have time in front of a computer.  That's quite a shift from the working me that was in front of a computer at least 8 hours per day, even if only part-time.  But, we recently splurged on a nifty Chromebook that's super lightweight and quick to boot, so we'll see if I can make a little more blogging time for myself now.

Hop, hop!

My knitting photography has obviously suffered a bit, too, and rarely happens in the daylight or with the fancy camera.  Sometimes it's just the little point and shoot with a flash or an iPad photo, but so it goes.

It's still enough to be able to show off some cute little bunny cubes and the little helper that gets a big smile when they hop around the house.  And just in time for Easter.

Hoodie Revisited

I think it was sometime in February that my sister admitted that my nephew would likely never wear the sweater I knit him because with the tight fit over his head they were afraid they wouldn't be able to get it back off of him.  Since the sweater itself was sized more in the hopes of fitting him sometime between now and September and it was just the neck that seemed too small for him, I took it back with plans to cut the neck and rip out some stitches and try to get some more space without unraveling it completely.  I completed the surgery in the end of February, but it wasn't until this weekend that we saw them again and had a chance to see if it would ever be wearable or if he'd already outgrown the rest of it.

I ended up removing most of what looked like the colorful insert behind the v-neck by cutting a stitch at the center of the garter stitch edge and carefully unraveling just that color until I hit a point where I wasn't sure I could go any further without a disaster.  I wove in the extra ends that were produced and I'm hoping the applied i-cord will help stabilize the portion of the neck that wasn't part of the neck before.

And the result is.... wearable!  My sister was able to get it on him with very little fuss and he was smiling as soon as he was wearing it and grabbed one of the cuffs and started sucking on it right away again!  The hood is more decorative as it's still small for his 95th percentile noggin, but I'm not sure how much he would put up with wearing a hood anyway.  The body and sleeves obviously aren't so baggy like they were at 4 months old, but they didn't seem too snug yet.  So I'm hoping he'll be able to get at least a little bit of wear out of it before he outgrows it now.  And since I don't have any pictures of him trying it on I'll have to try for pictures if he does wear it again when we see them next.

Then, since I didn't use up much of the variegated skein for the sweater and he enjoyed sucking on his sleeves so much, I decided to use the rest of the yarn for a fun toy for him.  And so the Star That Rocks was born.

In Progress

Lightly stuffed w/toy inside for noise

I gave it to him this weekend and he seemed to enjoy playing with it and tasting it.  It's not stuffed very tightly so it's nice and soft and the stuffing muffles the bell inside so it's not very loud.  And later I heard that it worked well as a pillow while he was sleeping for the car ride home.  Awww!

Boo!!!

Happy Halloween!

I recently took a break from my everyday knitting projects to use up some of my leftover yarn to make this adorable little Fall pumpkin. I'm still not a very fast knitter, so it took me an entire evening to make him, but the finished product was definitely worth the time to me.

Can you find the stuffed animal?

It might be tough. Here are your subjects:












Here is a hint. Two of these animals are trying to shed on our couch. (I don't care, because our new couch is microfiber! Boom, animals, in your face!) The other is our baby's first teddy.

Are you my ball winder?

I'm working on this:



and I'm finished with the first skein. I go up to the yarn closet to grab my ball winder, and...hmmmmmmm. Where is my ball winder? Do I have pregnancy brain? I could swear that I just saw the thing. My hubby was nice enough to go all Little House on the Prarie style and hold his hands out while I wound a ball with my hands. But STILL. Where in the world is my ball winder?

While this little...ahem...misplacement...can be seen as a glitch to this project, I cannot be deterred. Our little baby needs a teddy. I realize that there is not any reason to have this teddy ready before the baby gets here, but I must be nesting.

Hubby had a tradition in his family that kids got their teddy at their first Christmas. I think that is adorable. It is quite possible that I have jumped the gun on this project.

Mini Project Weekend

This weekend was a perfect storm of tiny projects for me. Having just finished some larger projects and not yet ready to start some others that I had in mind, I ended up testing out a lot of smaller things that I had set aside for scrap yarn. Scrap yarn is a bit of strange term in my mind when the leftovers are often half skeins or more from projects that used multiple colors, etc. so some of these projects could be repeated another half dozen times before I actually use up that yarn.

So, from what appears a whirlwind of activity but was just a lot of little things:
Frankenbear, completed:
I can't decide, he may still need a mouth or something to make him look a little cuter/cuddlier. He definitely wins points for bright colors, but isn't quite as cute as the photo for the pattern.

Whale Cat Toy:
I had more than enough leftover yarn to make several more Frankenbears, but didn't have the ambition or a list of who to give them to. Instead, in an effort to make a sleeping cat wake up and run around the house a bit, I whipped up this quick cat toy and loaded some catnip into it before stuffing it and sewing it shut. The catnip must have been fragrant enough because it did cause said sleeping cat to wake up and start throwing the little whale around the house. Of course, I'm not sure it will see much more play now that the initial catnip smell is gone, but we'll see. It took so little effort that it was worth it either way.

Neon Baby Monkey Socks :
I don't know any monkeys, let alone baby ones, but Monkey is the name of the original sock pattern that was adapted for this pattern for baby socks. I don't know who might want to dress their precious little one in socks this bright, I just wanted to try out the pattern and see how baby socks compared to adult socks. Turns out they're crazy fast... and I had way too much knitting time on my hands that night. For now, these are just sitting around waiting for the right person or a possible future gift.

A little knitting knowledge...

This weekend I realized I probably have just enough knitting knowledge to start getting myself in trouble. Much like following some recipes in the kitchen, I found that for one of my latest projects I had to convince myself to stick to the pattern the first time through. At least mostly. Sometimes recipes, and apparently projects, seem... well sometimes I just want to modify them to my own techniques right away without trying the official, written instructions.

Enter Frankenbear. I thought the pattern was really cute, and although I like the variegated yarn they chose I wanted to use up some of the leftover bulky acrylic yarn from my stash. Since my Jiffy yarn was pretty colorful, I thought I could make a fair representation of the bear in a more patchwork fashion with lots of different colors. All of that sounds reasonable, even knowing that all of the color changes would mean lots of tails to work in later. Then I started reading the actual pattern that called for making the front and back of the bear separately and sewing them together at the end. Surely I could somehow convert the pattern to work in the round to avoid all of that seaming and... wait, Wait, WAIT. Danger, brain! Incorporating nine different colors and rewriting a pattern... clearly I'm at least a little insane.

So I backed off. I (somewhat) made my peace with lots of seaming, which I'm terrible at. I've seamed some and pulled it back out already because it looked terrible. So really, I suppose this is mostly a test bear. Maybe he'll teach me a magic secret to seaming. In reality, I expect I'll be disappointed with the rough edges and maybe just sew over them with a contrasting color to look like an actual Frankenbear. I decided that worst case, he'll be a sloppy but cuddly and washable toy that some future child might take pity on when he's finished. And having finished the knitting for him, next time I won't be able to resist modifying the pattern for an attempt in the round. At least I can say I tried it the way the pattern author intended at least once.