Celebrating Fall

Summer was a whirlwind of insanity. A never ending parade of chaos and whining and sweaty kids demanding hugs and difficult bed times because the sun was still awake.

And then Fall crept in like a beautiful tiger of red and gold and brown. Darkness comes just in time for bed time, the days are finally cooling off, knitting is even more of a joy because now holding warm yarn is nice and comfy.

So we decided to celebrate Fall.

 We colored in two sheets of cardstock with all the crayons of Autumn colors. Reds and oranges and greens and yellow and brown.

Then, while the kids put the crayons away I used a paper punch to make a bunch of hearts. I wanted leaves, but I didn't have a leaf punch and wasn't about to interrupt a lazy Saturday to go buy one.

 While they looked at the hearts I quickly cut out two trees from scrap book paper I had in the closet. I could have drawn trees, but this seemed like fun. I glued it down and set them to work putting their leaves on the trees. We tried glue sticks, but a dot of white glue worked out better for us.

 

I think it went pretty well!

 

 And I sure love the end result!


I've been knitting like crazy too. So much I have been wanting to make! I finished a shawl this summer that I need to get some pictures of, and a blanket for my cousin that I need to ship and a HUGE white blanket for a friend along with many other small projects in between.

 Also I will have to post an update soon when I get my sweater for Liam finished. It is my first time knitting clothing other than hats or scarves or that cape for Evie.

All in all, YAY for Fall! We are so happy to have it here!

Deri's Gift

I recently finished a gift for someone very special to me. My friend Jessica and I have a unique friendship. We met online in World of Warcraft. Her toon's name was shortened to Deri, and mine to Auri, so we still call each other by those names when we talk on the phone sometimes. We knew each other for about a year before we ever met in person, and that was only after I drove across the country to see her.

Her husband Andrew is one of the sweetest, strongest and kindest men I have ever met and Jessica is just about the best person I could ever imagine knowing. They welcomed a son into their family a few years ago and I had made him a blanket long before he was even conceived because I knew they wanted babies. Now, their second son is due any moment now and I just finished a little gift box for him.

I made the 10 stitch blanket for him in Berrocco's Comfort DK in the colorway Balance Beam. Then, I had so much yarn left over that I made booties, and then I felt it needed one more thing so I whipped out a little doll called Knubbelchen.

The blanket was a lot of fun to make, though I must admit it got a bit tedious as it grew and the edges seemed to take forever. It was a fun project to take with me places to work on and it got a lot of compliments and comments.

The booties were very simple and quick, I would like to make a few more of those in other colors some time and maybe tweak the pattern a little bit.

 

And the Knubbelchen I am just in love with. It is the most adorable little doll and I can not wait to make more of them to give to other babies I know!!!

I hope that I can get out to the post office soon. I should be able to do that tomorrow. Even if the package is a bit late, I am sure she won't mind!

10 Stitches of Patience

I have now started three blankets for a baby my friend is having. She lives far away and has a baby due in.... gosh, six more weeks now. And I wanted to make her a blanket for this one.

I started one but ended up not loving the yarn or the pattern so I put it aside. Then I started another one, but the color changes were a bit above my skill level at the moment and I was being crazy and making it up on my own, so I had no pattern to fall back on.

That blanket now lives in a Duplo box, half finished and destined to be pulled apart and turned into something else. Maybe a cute hat.....

A couple weeks ago at knitting one of the more advanced knitters, who has a Knitting Super Power of somehow remembering EVERYTHING she has ever learned about knitting and always being willing to stop and help anyone, was making a 10 stitch blanket.

It starts off as 10 stitches knitting each row, then turning a corner with short rows and continuing on going around and around.

I had some DK yarn I had bought with the intent of making slippers for my son, but decided that I didn't like the colors on it for slippers. It lived in my stash for a few months until I needed something with changing colors to make this blanket.

The blanket started out easily, going fast and corners were turned rapidly, it grew in size and then it slowed down. Each side feels like it takes forever now. But so far that is my only complaint about this blanket! I am even daring to learn to knit backwards sometimes, though my confidence in this is shaky.

The blue line is where it started.
I might have to knit some toy cars with this,
it reminds me of a little race track or game board.

I am not sure how much bigger this will get, though I did buy two more balls of yarn for it! I am hoping to finish it in time, but I have had a few things interfere.

Wound up with a migraine yesterday that has left me feeling icky all day and long into the night and now this morning all I have the brain power for is rambling on here. And all this beautiful sunshine (which may have been the cause of my headache!) has had my family rushing out into spring at top speed because WOW is it gorgeous out there. But, there is no way to knit outside with two kiddos who get into everything dangerous the moment I get out the yarn.

I did get a suggestion that I should crochet myself a sun hat, since I can not find one that fits me in the store. That project might have to take precedence to the blanket... I am sure that my friend will not mind if it is a little bit late!

The First Day of Spring

Yea. Ok. So the first day isn't until the 20th, but today FELT like the first day. It was rainy this morning, miserable and dreary. Drizzly and cold. Then, right about 11:30 the clouds broke up and the sun came in like a raging inferno. The sidewalks dried up, it was WARM outside, and the afternoon sunshine was gorgeous.

A friend from knitting had invited me to the park, if it wasn't raining, so of course we went out into this gorgeous afternoon.

Now, I have to explain something here. I love it when my kids get messy, but I HATE it all at the same time. I love the idea of them having fun and being kids and exploring the world but I hate the clean up. Wiping muddy boots, stain treating muddy pants, that dingy grey stain on the bottom of socks that never goes away once they have gotten mudded. I hate those problems. I hate peeling wet muddy clothes off the kids before putting them in the car because by God I WILL NOT CLEAN MUD FROM A CARSEAT!

So of course, because it was sunny but still damp on the grass and downright marshy in some places and there was a lake under the swingset... (no really, a lake. Not a puddle in the groove from where feet slide to stop the swing, it was a full out lake. I totally expected to see ducks out there paddling along under the swings.) ... I knew I was in for a muddy day. I embraced it. I even welcomed it, because with mud comes fun, with fun comes tired kids, with tired kids comes a mommy who can have a relaxing evening. So bring on the mud!

And we did. Liam was muddy kneed before 5 minutes went by and Evie started off slow with just her hands being dirty from some playing in the pathway pebbles. Soon though she took off to try stomping in a puddle and got her boot stuck in the mud and pulled her foot out and landed on her butt. In the mud.

Yup. It was that bad.

   But we got in some quality duck watching time before that!

And in the end, the kids were not at all put off by a little mud. We played, we romped, we got a corndog from the corner market. Liam crashed out in the car on the way home, Evie lasted until 4:45 and managed to stay awake through a bath before demanding her "baba" and falling asleep.

Today I made memories. I made a friend, which is a big deal for me. I made it through the whole day without once panicking about the muddy clothes I was going to have to deal with.

And now that I have written this while eating my homemade chicken burrito, I am off to go scrub some boots. I really need to buy these kids real rainboots. 

DYE! DYE!

I have always been fascinated with dying fabric and yarn with natural dyes. Those made from plants or tree bark or nut hulls. Sadly, it is the middle of winter and nothing useful is available for the colors I want to dye with.

When a project came up that I could not find the right color for, I started looking at dyes. My green dye was a failure because the color on the bottle was about 25 shades OFF from the color it actually was. Poopy. Big Poopy.

I did some reading and tried to dye with food dyes, I used some Wilton frosting color. Again, no good (and now I am very low on Leaf Green dye).

I read some more and found that I was missing something. Soda Ash and Urea are apparently needed to dye cotton. A trip to the craft store will remedy that, but it is not something I am going to do today. Today is a stay at home in pajamas kind of day.

Well, I stared in disappointment as the beautiful green washed out of my yarn during rinsing and felt defeated. Then I remembered that I had bought a wool blend to dye.

I got out my skein and laid it out and, tied it up so that it would not get tangled. I set it to soak in a water and vinegar bath for an hour like recommended. Next I prepared my dye.

Now, I was not sure if I was going to write about this event, so I didn't take any pictures of the yarn prep, but I will next time I dye. I DID use the concept presented here on Instructables though I knew I wanted it to shift colors, so I put my dye in one jar so I was only dipping part of it. You could do the same with a bowl though if you had more yarn.

I laid out sheets of plastic wrap on an old cookie sheet, drained the vinegar from my yarn and gently pressed the water out it so it was damp but not soaking. Next, I dipped all but 4 inches of the skein into the jar of dye. I pulled it out slowly and tipped up the plastic wrap, the bottom of the skein stayed in the dye for about 10 minutes. Once it looked about right I pulled it out of the jar, wrapping it up in the plastic wrap as I went, gently curling the plastic wrapped yarn into a sort of dog poo looking pile with the darkest part on the bottom of the pile.



 I set that in a glass bowl, dark part down and nuked it in the microwave for 3 minutes to heat it. It is now dangling in my sink, the plastic wrap tied to my faucet to keep the colors from bleeding UP. I have to let it cool all the way without touching it or I run the risk of felting the yarn a bit. I don't want that to happen!

Next I rinsed it out and WITHOUT wringing it, set it somewhere to dry. I used my bath tub, hanging it off the shower head.

It wound up being too light in the end, so I repeated the process in a new batch of dye and it came out perfect.

This time though, my daughter got to it once it was dry and I couldn't get a picture of the skein looking pretty.

And then I wrapped it all up into a ball.

I have a project in mind for this, I just need to learn a bit more about fair isle knitting! 
I wish I could fully describe how soft this yarn is. how perfectly the dye came out, how amazing the colors look. I would totally recommend dying yarn to anyone who wanted to try it. You get a one of a kind color that no one else in the world will ever have, because you made it yourself.

Knittion Impossible - The Norwegian Baby Hat

I found This Hat  a while ago and was just waiting until I had the yarn I wanted to make it with. At a random trip to a JoAnn's Fabric (which is rarely I place I go to look for yarn as it is usually filled with nothing but acrylic yarn) a couple weeks ago I found the yarn I liked. Serenity Garden Yarn in the color Crocus. I also bought that same yarn in some other colorways, but I am saving that for another time. It is a Dralon Microfiber yarn and its only downside is that the strands can come apart a bit as you knit, but if you are aware of that it is easy to watch for and correct.

When I got home I was so excited to start the hat, but after trying to begin in I ran into a whole host of problems.

First try: The gauge was off, my babies have HUGE heads, so I made the largest size hat in the pattern. After getting the border made I discovered that the hat would have been loose and baggy on MY head. I took it apart.

Second try: The pattern was translated from Norwegian, and I think it may have been written for someone with more experience and knitting smarts. So when it said m1, k1, m1 I just assumed that I would make one left both times. As you can imagine this did not work well and the movement of the stitches was off. I took it apart. 

Third try: This time, I did the m1 right, k1, m1 left. Well, of course, the hat is upside down for those ways, so the right side was trying to go left, and the left was trying to go right and oh goodness it was ugly. I took it apart.

Fourth try: Well, this time I was counting the stitches from the "knit 2 tog tbl – psso" part. I was ending each of those combos on the same stitch that had come together on the previous reduction. Well, that put me off balance for the rest of it, so that my increases were in the wrong places as well! I took it apart.

Fifth try: I don't know what happened here, I got three rows in and something was wrong. I took it apart.

Sixth try: I have learned from all my mistakes and finally I did it right!!!!!! I DID IT!!!

The Decreases done properly

The increases done properly

The finished hat

 The blog that I found the pattern on (through the Ravelry link) is called Grosblog and here is the pattern itself.  I have to wonder if some of the detail was lost in translation or if it was not there to begin with.

But in the end, I made a hat, I learned a lot, and now I want to make another one, but I have a baby blanket to finish first!

The Imperfect Source of Perfection

I just recently decided I need to learn how to knit, recent as in about 6 months ago. I have been crocheting since I was 8 or 9, never finished anything until I was 19 though. I had tried knitting a few times but never got the hang of it.

The day before I got married was the first time I met my mother in law. (long story on why it was so fast a marriage, will tell that one later) She was going to perform the wedding. We instantly liked each other and I learned that she was an avid knitter. When my son was born she came out to see him and brought him a blanket she had made. This blanket was my inspiration to try again at knitting, but once more it did not go well. When she was diagnosed with cancer, it lit a fire under my butt to really learn. I wanted to have something to share with her, something in common with her, something of her to carry with me forever.

She bought me some yarn on my trip to Mississippi to see her. I took it home to make a blanket for my daughter who was about 7 months old. I had finally gotten to start on the last of the three colors of yarn when I learned that I had been knitting through the BACK loop, all of my stitches were twisted. I debated finishing it that way, after all, I had put WEEKS of work into this thing as a new knitter working slowly. In the end, I decided that if I was going to learn, I was going to learn RIGHT. So I took the whole thing apart and wound it into a giant ball and started over. I knit the whole thing in  stockinette. This stitch curls, more than Shirley Temple's pigtails, it curls. I was aghast when my simple little border I crocheted onto the blanket did nothing to help this. I stared at my curling blanket and frowned. Should I take it apart again? I spent a day reading online what I had done wrong and how all stockinette stitches would curl due to tension in the yarn. I needed to make a border as part of the blanket that would ease that tension at the ends and stop the curling somewhat. Or I could block it, but as it got used and worn the curls would come back until I blocked it again. I looked at my three shades of pink with their dark purple border and decided to leave it as it was. I would leave it as a reminder to me to always do my research before jumping into a project so that I would be sure to do it right.

 

My daughter snuggles this blankie and snoozes with it, she drapes it over her head and walks around the living room laughing. She drags it across the floor, the curling edges mean nothing to her, they are just part of the blankie.

Somewhere in this blanket, and all of my worry and struggles with it, I found a lesson about how our children do not see our faults like we do. How they love us with all of our imperfections. They see warmth and comfort, not curling edges and the flaws of a first time project. In a way, our children are a first time project, even our second or third or fourth children, simply because no two children are the same. We make mistakes, we scold at the wrong time, and turn our backs for that second that they end up falling off the chair, we promise ice cream but don't deliver. We are not perfect, we are dragged across the floor and loved, our flaws mean little to them in the end. All they see is love.

The pattern for my Imperfect Love Blankie

Cast on as many stitches as you feel would make a good size blanket in whatever yarn makes you happy with whatever needles feel good in your hand that day.

Knit one row, purl one row. Repeat those rows until the yarn is gone.

Look up a crochet border that you like, Google it if you don't have one memorized, use another yarn that makes you happy to make the border and laugh when you find edge stitches that are too lose or too tight. Enjoy the freedom of accepted imperfection. Rejoice in the curling edges. Learn from it. Love your blankie. Love yourself unconditionally.