Month: November 2006

Very Observant Child

Sarah Carolyn

Carrie has made a few observations today:

To our friend Lexi, as she patted Carrie’s hair, “I have a lot of hair!”
After taking off her rain boots in the car, she told me, “Mommy, I have tiny little feet!”

And in the car (after getting her flu shot, which Carrie watched and didn’t cry at all about) she must have been playing hide and seek with her sippy cup. I hear, “Where’s my water? Where’s my water?” from the back seat, and then “Oh, there it is! I found you!”

(edited to add:)
The other day I was wearing a light-weight fuzzy sweater instead of my usual long-sleeve t-shirt. Carrie looked at me and said “You wear towel shirt?” So I asked her if that was a good thing or a bad thing, and she touched my sleeve and said “oh, so soft!” So I guess “towel shirt” is a compliment!

Presenting: Devan II

Sarah Knitting

I finished sewing the buttons on Devan the second this afternoon. Sorry for the really horrid indoor lighting picture. As far as I can tell the rain is going to continue until…well, probably until it snows. No more sunshine until next summer!

The baby this sweater is intended for is almost two months old. Luckily I didn’t plan for it to be newborn-sized!

This is the second time I’ve knit this pattern, and I still love it. However, I have learned three very important lessons:
1. Baby gifts should generally be knit out of something heavier than sock yarn. Otherwise they do not qualify as “quick knits”.
2. Navy blue (which is what the entire back of the sweater is) is a really boring color to knit.
3. The only thing more tedious than knitting navy blue yarn is sewing it up. Seriously, I thought I was going to become permanently cross-eyed trying to weave the seams.

But it turned out so cute I can’t be really all that frustrated with it!

Approaching The Finish Line

Sarah Crafts

Gifts finished: 17
Gifts in progress: 4
Gifts unstarted: 1*
* This number doesn’t count food gifts or teeny-tiny projects.

It looks like there’s a very good possibility I’ll make my self-imposed deadline of Thanksgiving to finish everything I’m making for Christmas gifts. My goal is to have everything finished or purchased & wrapped by December 1st, along with having the house clean(ish) and decorated(ish). This way I can spend the weeks leading up to Christmas writing Christmas cards, baking cookies and enjoying my birthday!

Carrie’s dress is -> <- this close to being done. I have to figure out how I want to hem the pinafore (I'm not in love with the ruffle the pattern calls for) and I still haven't hemmed the sleeves of the dress. And apparently satin ribbon wide enough to be a sash doesn't exist...? But I'm so glad I started it so early! Thanks for all the compliments on it.

A very rare non-Christmas finished object has been sighted. It’s still lurking in the tote bag awaiting buttons, but I may be able to steal a few moments to finish that small task and take some pictures tomorrow. My blog has become very boring with all of this Christmas crafting going on.

Is It Sunday Night Again Already?

Sarah General

We discovered this morning as we were about to leave for church that we’d both totally spaced and forgotten to pick up my car after we got the oil change yesterday. Who forgets their car?!? Luckily we have a spare car seat for Carrie that we could install in Denis’ car, because the Subaru place isn’t open on Sundays.

Really, I mean, how air-headed could we both be, that both of us could forget? It’s a good thing that Carrie and I don’t have anywhere in particular to be tomorrow morning, because I’ll have to wait until my parents are free so one of them can watch Carrie while the other one drops me off at the dealership.

Crazy.

KMKS Questionnaire

Sarah Knit Mitten Kit Swap

I’m finally answering the questions from the Knit Mitten Kit Swap. Apologies to my pal, who has been waiting patiently.

Are you allergic to any fibers? I’m not actually allergic to anything as far as I know, but mohair makes me itch like crazy.

What are your favorite colors? Blue, green, purple, pink, orange…um…almost anything? More intense colors are more my style than pastels, and I think I look pretty awful in yellows and tans.

Are you a new mitt knitter? How long have you been knitting mittens? I’ve knit mittens before. I have no idea when I knit my first pair – at least a few years ago, anyway.

Do you prefer solid or multicolored yarn? I like both!

What fibers do you prefer in mitten yarn? Wool! I’m not too worried about washability, since mittens don’t tend to need washing so often.

Where do you usually knit mittens? Wherever I’d knit anything else.

How do you usually carry/store small projects? I have various tote bags I rotate projects into when I’m working on them, and my craft room – where I store things I’m *not* currently working on – is a complete disaster of bags, baskets, boxes, and…piles. Piles of things.

What are your favorite mitten patterns? I don’t really have a favorite pattern. Most of my mittens have been made up. I’d actually like to have a pattern!

What are your favorite mitten knitting techniques? When I’m not using a pattern I basically knit them fingers-down, like toe-up socks, only for your hands.

What new techniques would you like to try? Maybe some colorwork or cabled mittens? I’ve done both techniques before, but not on mittens.

What are your favorite needles for knitting mittens? Circulars – I’m starting to really like the few KnitPicks needles I’ve gotten my hands on, more even than my beloved Addis…

What are some of your favorite yarns? I really like a lot of yarns, and I don’t think I really have a particular favorite. I gravitate towards natural fibers, and am most tempted by the soft, squishy hanks of hand painted yarns in the store.

What yarn do you totally covet? Nothing in particular.

Any pattern you would love to make if money and time were no object? I haven’t really looked at mitten patterns all that much, so, no.

Favorite kind of needles (brand, materials, straights or circs, etc)? KnitPicks circulars are my new favorites!

If you were a specific kind of yarn, which brand and kind of yarn would you be? Uh…I don’t know.

Do you have a favorite candy or mail-able snack? Dark chocolate.

What

How To Sew A Christmas Dress

Sarah Crafts

1. Find a pattern that appeals to you (luckily for the designer I could see past the awful fabric choices on the model.)
2. Measure squirmy toddler, decide on size.
3. Cut pieces.
4. Spend hours pinning, sewing, pressing and topstitching.
5. Try dress on toddler and realize…you have a very skinny toddler. And the dress? The dress is not skinny. In fact, the dress has a whopping 8″ of ease around the toddler’s skinny little ribcage.
6. Have sinking feeling in pit of stomach after realizing that 8″ of ease in a dress that’s only 28″ in circumference is, well, ridiculous.
7. Dissolve into tears when your mother concurs that, really, the dress looks a lot more like pajamas than a dress.
8. Spend hours with your mother picking out (double-stitched!) seams, fudging new armhole openings, cutting pieces off of the dress that was completely finished, and stitching it all back together.
9. Press the thing, put it on a hanger and wait until morning.
10. Try it on the toddler who never stands still and do a little happy dance since it actually looks like a dress instead of a flour sack now.

So here’s the dress. Technically it’s not completely finished, as I can’t get Carrie to stand still enough for the split second it would take to figure out where to hem the sleeves. I’m going to have to baste them where I think they should fall and try it on her again.

christmas_dress_altered.jpg

Also, there’s a pinafore that goes over top of this thing (added bonus: I can probably find a nice shirt to go under the pinafore and have another variation for some of the holiday things we’ll be doing next month). This is the bodice before I’ve figured out how to cut it down to the right size, since I don’t want to have to alter it after I’ve sewn the whole thing this time. It’s a very fine wale stretch corduroy that is not quite as bright as the picture shows.
christmas_dress_pinafore_color.jpg

Has It Been A Whole Week?!?

Sarah General

It’s not that I don’t love blogging, it’s just that it’s that time of year again. The time of year where I abandon all pretense of sanity and decide to sew Carrie’s Christmas dress, while simultaneously knitting a way overdue baby gift (the gift’s overdue, not the baby) and creating dozens of handmade Christmas gifts. I know what you’re thinking. I can’t be bothered to make a Halloween costume and settle for buying a fairy costume when I really wanted a butterfly costume (to be fair, she was incredibly cute in that costume), but I can pass up the dozens of perfectly lovely Christmas dresses in the store in order to spend more money and hours of my time sewing tiny little hems on sleeves and fussy little collars. I can’t explain it. I’m pretty sure something’s wrong with the way my brain is wired. At least this year I’ve started the madness much earlier, and there’s a good chance that I’ll be done before Christmas. Mostly.

I just finished sewing in a zipper – since obviously that’s way more important than, oh, I don’t know, um, sleep?!?

So, big bloggy post tomorrow later today with…something…maybe a picture of the dress-in-progress. I promise. And to my Knit Mitt Kit Swap pal, I’ll get to that questionnaire ASAP! I just have to set in some sleeves… (Hmmmm. Sleep or sleeves? Sleep or sleeves? Do you think it’s safe to set in sleeves at quarter to one in the morning, or is that just asking for trouble?)

Oh! And did I mention I have a new laptop? We were at the Apple store on Saturday, and there was a super-duper, once-in-a-lifetime, can’t-pass-it-up deal on a new MacBook Pro. So if anyone’s looking to buy an original titanium powerbook, not quite 4 years old, 1 GB memory, 60 GB hard drive, and a new battery, let me know.

Two Going On Thirteen…

Sarah Carolyn

More Carrie-isms:

In reply to Denis asking her to come over and get her coat on this evening: “No, I busy right now!”

If I ask Carrie if she’s my baby, she’ll often say, “I not a baby, I a little girl!”

When she no longer wants to sit strapped into a shopping cart, she just wiggles out of the belt, starts to stand up (!) and says “I walk now, pleeeeeease!” (This is not a request, the “pleeeeeease” part is just thrown in there to make it sound like a request instead of a command.) Oh, and Carrie figured out how to hold onto the cart handle and stand on the bottom bar the other day. Not the safest thing I’ve ever let her do, but at least she’s sandwiched between me and the cart, I know where she is, and she’s not standing up in the seat portion of the cart.