happythings

The answer is Yes

 
Yay!  It was a stretch and required much sitting and knitting when I should have been doing other things, BUT - it was done on the 99th day and she loves it.  Oh - and it was 84 stitches around and much less tall.  Yay for 2nd chances.

Umm

 
Well, now I know.  100 stitches is too big. 

I made Bea a "100 Stitches" hat to celebrate her 100th day of Kindergarten coming up on Tuesday.  The good news is that I got it done in time.  The bad news is self-evident. 

It is even huge on me.  Well then - it will be another hat to donate to the Knitzvah for someone with a very large head and I will go back to the drawing board.  Can I finish in time for Tuesday?

Hats!

 
 
My first knit hats are done.  Finally.  They took FOR.EV.ER.  But the good news is that I am now quite proficient at rib stitch!  I was inspired to learn to make hats for a local Knitzvah (cute, eh?) project.  Last year it was scarves (notice no purling.)  This year it was hats - for distribution to homeless people during the December holidays. 

I searched the internet for the easiest hat pattern I could - one that used just regular straight needles since that was all I had.  This one is what I used.  The pattern said it was one-size-fits-all and it is true it really does stretch but it doesn't seem like it would fit really large heads.  You cast on for 88 stitches and then do a rib stitch (knit2,purl2) for 11.5 inches (or a little less in my case cause I was running out of yarn!)  Then you decrease for a few rows, slide everything off on to a big needle, pull the top tight and whip stitch the side closed.  I decreased for a few rows past what the pattern said because I didn't want to add a pompom to the top and I was afraid the hole at the top would be too big.  It didn't end up making it too cone-head-y thankfully. 

It was a really easy pattern once I got better at rib stitch.  Easy if you don't count the fact that it took HOURS and HOURS and HOURS!  And HOURS! 

 

I made another one casting on for 66 stitches that would work for an infant/toddler.  It fits Bea but it is not quite roomy enough. 

Bea's first quilt

 

Bea and I collaborated on this little sampler quilt as a result of reading Quilt Block History of Pioneer Days by Mary Cobb.  This book caught my eye at the library because I like the idea of teaching history from the point of view of home life - women/children etc.  The book includes activities for kids to do but they are paper/coloring/scissor type quilt blocks.  Here at the happythings home, we can do better than that! 

Bea picked out the all the fabrics and puzzled the blocks together after I cut them.  Log cabin, rail fence, 9-patch, shoo fly, album, and modified square in a square.  Then she helped me sew them (on "turtle" speed), even pressing the presser foot for the first time.  She lost interest in the sashing stage but was back into it with the quilting, helping me move the quilt around for the wavy line quilting and even doing the short rows herself.  She is really proud of it, especially of her "album" block where she wrote her name.

Quick (if a little stinky) craft with the girl

We have done these sharpie "tie-dye" circles before.  They really are fun and addictive and so easy.  Bea and her friend were big on concentric circles this time and they all turned out cool.

This link will take you to the instructions that we used - basically you just color a design on fabric with sharpies and then add rubbing alcohol to let the colors bleed out.

We decided to make a t-shirt with it - her friend had made one before so Bea needed one too!  I drew the stems of the flowers on after it dried.  

I'm thinking that a very cool quilt could be made from these circles... Ideas percolating...

For some reason, I decided to learn to crochet...

 

...and I do like it.  Really - I love it.  Doing it anyway.  It's fast and fun and it makes SO much more sense to me than knitting does (which is not saying much... but still.)  And when I make a mistake I instantly see it and I can take it out and fix it, unlike knitting where I have to solicit help or abandon the whole thing.  It is important for me to be able to fix my own mistakes for I do make them at a rapid pace!

I require fluency with a stitch before moving on so after I "got it" with a few small projects -- doll house blankets/rugs, wrist cuffs, little "pocket" purse --  I did a big square of single crochet and then a big square of double crochet and sewed them together and stuffed them to make a pillow for Bea.  It turned out really wonky but she cares not, lovely girl.  

This weekend I learned how to do double crochet in a circle and it was so fun.  I made this hat which I do not love at all.  It just sits on the head - no stretch.  I tried it with another yarn.  Same thing.  Just not a stretchy stitch.

So here's the thing, and I am completely rambling now, but even if these things had turned out well, I'm not sure I really love how crochet stitches "look."  At least the stitches that I've learned in the way I've done them.  Do you know what I mean?  What to do, what to do... 

Such tribulations we face in the name of finding something to do with our hands while we wait at our kid's classes, eh?

Lots of sewing then. Now, nothing.

 

I sewed my little heart out for a while - sewing blankets for some folks that our church is hosting through Foundation for the Homeless.  Among the people were 10 children, ages 17 years through 2 months.  Our sewing bee had fun and lots of people made blankets.  A stuffed animal lover donated some animals to go along with the blankets and my little stuffed animal & blanket expert helped match them up and drew little cards to go on them.  I've updated my photo album with shots of the quilts/blankets I worked on.  My favorite was this blue, gray, and orange shot cotton with sharks on the back.

We made the fleece blankets for the the teens in the group.  I cut 4.5" fringe on a single layer of fleece and tied it on itself.  It kinda shrinks but you can stretch it back to shape pretty easily.  I'm not a giant fan of the feel of inexpensive fleece but it is a quick, affordable project that I'll probably be repeating. 

We haven't had any feedback on this project so I can't really say if it was a good thing or not actually - but we had a lot of fun doing it and hopefully it brought a few smiles to a few kids.  I finished my work on these in mid August and haven't sewn a stitch since.  I'm in the mood to get back into it but keep getting called in other directions... 

Yet another one of those "DUH" moments

 

I have been having more than I consider my fair share of "DUH" moments lately.  You know what I mean?  If not, good for you. 

Bea got a new booster seat and the seatbelt was bothering her neck.  For a while I let her borrow my fleece seltbelt covery-thing that I have used for years and then, by a series of car and seat changing scenarios, she didn't have it anymore so I added to my errand list "Go to autoparts store and buy Bea a seatbelt covery thing."  I didn't get it done for a few days and this morning while I was yet again pulling the seatbelt roughly across her neck (you can see the red mark above :-(), it hit me.  DUH.  I could just make my own.  !!!

 

And I had all the supplies on hand.  9x9 inch square of fleece and fabric (pink wedding cakes) - (her choice) - (duh) sewed together with a strip of velcro added so it rolls up in a tube around the seatbelt.  5 minutes, including changing the thread so it would also be pink.

3+ years later...

 

...it is done.  I made the top in a beginning quilt class I took in 2006.  I hand quilted, with varying degrees of success, around each star.  That took a couple of years.  This summer I added some machine quilting in the ditch in a few places and around the border because I didn't trust my hand quilting to actually hold the thing together.  Then I bound it up.  Turns out holding on to a project for this long makes me really dislike the finished project.  Either that or the salmon color border/binding/back which I do not care for.  Not one bit.  Too 80s.  Or soemthing. Don't know what I was thinking. 

Well, anyway -- here's a funny story. 

When I was working on stitching up the binding I took it along with me while I waited at Bea's gymnastics class.  Kids from two families came up to me while I was working on it and asked if I knit it myself.  Yes, I told them, but this is a quilt.  It is sewed together, not knit.  Yeah, it's called knitting, they said.  No, sewing, I said.  They didn't get it.  It's not so strange I guess.  Lots of people knit in public these days.  Sewing by hand is not nearly so easy or portable.   Still, it might be nice if they could tell the difference. 

Log cabin-ish scrap squares, rainbow set

 

I made more squares of the same style as the ones from Bea's big quilt - enough for a few more baby quilts. For this one I tried a rainbow set and I like it except the white line just "falls off the page." 

If you haven't done an easy, no fuss type log cabin block, Krommama posted this tutorial.  Her explanation and photos are good.  I don't do everything just the same way as her and you won't probably either and that is just perfect.  Anyway, this will get you started if you need help.

I tried a new-to-me wavy line quilting pattern, inspired by Pocket Farmer's newest quilt (which was in turn inspired by Caro's quilt which I somehow glossed over without noting that neat quilting.  I really pulled on the quilt more than I do with straight-line quilting so I was concerned it would be too loose/puckery and wouldn't lay flat in the end but it really turned out OK!  Yay.  And it certainly was easy.  You can't see the quilting very well in either of these photos but if you click onto the links above you can get a better idea of what I attempted.

And the back is cute and orange.  I originally got this fabric for another project from the nice ladies at Sew Mama Sew.  (It is the Katie Jump Rope line - and it's on sale right now!) On the computer it looked red red red and that, along with the coloway name "Geranium" had me expecting a totally different color than it is.  I have never seen an orange-red geranium.  Oh well - it was a treat to have some cute new fabric to bind and back this colorful quilt!