Knitting Up a Storm

I've done quite a bit of stash-busting knitting (plus and a few pieces with new yarn) over the last two months.  First up was a fish-shaped dishcloth I found on ravelry. I was hoping it would motivate me to do the dishes - it does not.  But it did use up the last of my lemon-lime kitchen cotton!

Then a sweet little baby sweater based on my Grandma Dot's pattern who taught it to my mom who taught it to me in turn. My mom loves making these so much that she sells them on etsy. I may put one or two up in her shop too. They are really a lot of fun to make. I'm really in love with yellow and gray as a color combo right now but yellow is not a good color on me - so I'm foisting it on babies instead!  My friend Sara loved it and cried at the fact that three generations of women in my family have knit this (Geoff points out that it is no great feat to make a pregnant woman cry).

Baby Quinn (in utero here) was born five weeks ago.

I knit up this sweet little summer weight scarf (pattern from Purl Bee) out of a free skein of yarn my mom got from Caron. It is soft, drapey (is that a word?) acrylic/wool blend that feels really luxurious - but it is a weird salmon color. I'm trying to figure out how to work it into my wardrobe, but I'm glad it is out of my stash.



Actually, it works with this outfit - so that's one.

 Next up were one year old sweaters for my cousin's baby Wyatt and my dear little friend Clara out of leftover cotton yarn.  I have a penchant for stripes so they came out in both sweaters:



For Miss Clara, the Confection Shrug





For Master Wyatt, the Candlestick Baby Sweater 

 And another baby sweater for the Christmas baby due to my friends Khytam and David.  This one had a sweet little monkey on it that matched the nursery patterns.  I love how the monkey turned out!

Khytam loved the sweater!

Close-up of the monkey.

And lastly, to keep my toes warm on our hardwood floors, some cuddly alpaca socks with turquoise toes and crochet trim.  I knit these on the way down and back to DC last week.



Our backyard is a blanket of golden leaves - so pretty!

 I was talking to my Khytam (who is a psychologist) and she asked me how I have time for knitting and I told her that I can't handle having my hands unoccupied while I watch TV or ride in the car.  She replied "You have a manic side I've never seen before, don't you?"  I suspect she may be right.

Halfway to a Dress! (the easy half)

I have had about a yard of this fabric sitting around in my stash for a while.  I found it at JoAnn's in the clearance a while ago and bought a yard or so without a real plan for it.

I absolutely adore it - the wacky colors, the flowers and the polka dots - yay!  With the wide border pattern, the only thing it could be was a skirt.  Luckily for me, cutting it straight up the middle gave me plenty of fabric to make a pleated skirt.  I looked at some patterns online but for me the easiest thing was just to calculate the difference between the amount of material I had and my waist measurement and make even pleats.  I kept about a 3" width of fabric to make a waistband and that was really about it.  I'm quite happy with the results:

This was my first shot at putting in an invisible zipping into a garment and honestly, it was really easy.  There are instructions in the package and it turns out the super weird looking adjustable arm thing with two notches that came with my sewing machine is, in fact, a zipper foot (seriously, I've never seen a zipper foot that looks like this).  I made the skirt for Kevin's graduation but was deterred by the wet metal bleachers I would be sitting on for three hours.  So on a somewhat less rainy day this week the skirt and I joined lovely mommy Sarah for a ladies night out.

I'm so happy with my skirt, I might make a whole dress sooner rather than later....or maybe I'll start with a top.

Stash-Buster Saturday: Baby Sun Hat

Hi everybody! Things have been busy but I really want to be doing a better job of blogging so I have decided I needed to make a schedule. Each day of the week has a different theme to be revealed each day this week. Three of the days will be short sweet posts to keep in line with trying to finish my dissertation.

Saturdays are Stash-Buster Saturdays where I'll share a craft that I made as part of my effort to use up the entire closet of craft supplies that I don't want to move when our lease expires August 1.

Using some fabric scraps and leftover bias tape I made a reversible baby sun hat. Here it is being modeled by my stuffed monkey, Reno:




I'm sure the baby I made it for will look even cuter in it! (Although I'm not sure it will fit - I didn't read the directions carefully enough and it is meant for a younger baby!