The first sweater I made for her is this one, in a marled Cotton Fleece in a Raspberry/Pink colorway. 

I was itching to do something with a crochet collar and so this is what I came up with. 

I didn't have a pattern, and for everything but the sleeves, I think it worked out OK.  For the sleeves, I decided to pick up and knit down, and there are some areas where I don't like the way the increases look.

But otherwise, I think it's OK.  For the crochet part, I just measured around the opening and picked a motif out of a book that had a repeat that would fit in space I needed.  I then centered it and attached it to the inside edges.  I like the yarn, but I think the idea that I had would have worked better in wool than in cotton.  La La likes the sweater and often picks it when we ask her which sweater she wants to wear.

The next sweater I made is this one.

This was done a la Barbara Walker... from the top down.  It's in KnitPicks Swish Bulky, a yarn that I really like.  I bought a few skeins that were on clearance and was bummed when I decided to make a sweater with it and the colors were all sold out.  I decided to call anyway and they were able to get me one more skein of the purple, so I went on with the sweater and used the purple for the cuffs and collar. 

I did make a swatch, and despite my measuring and working from the top down, the sweater is still to big for La La, so she will grow into it.  I thought that would happen, so I made the cuffs extra long so that they would roll up in the beginning, then could be unrolled as she got taller. 

I still need to put the buttons on.  La La picked them out at JoAnn's.  I'm not kidding - she was only 10 months old but she picked out the buttons, in fact I didn't even see them until she pointed them out.  They are little purple flowers. 

The final sweater I made was for her Halloween costume. 

For many, many months, her favorite animal has been the Lion, so it was a natural pick to make her a Lion sweater for Halloween. 

I started with a basic sweater pattern, added a hood, ears, tail, and foldover mittens that could be buttoned open since she'd be wearing it to school and would need to eat, color, etc with her hands. 

I had the hardest time trying to figure out the mane. I scoured my knitting books, knowing that I'd seen this stitch somewhere that left loops on the front of the work.  I couldn't find it anywhere and was starting to think I was crazy.  I even looked through my harmony crochet guides, thinking maybe it was not a knitting pattern at all, but still nothing could be found. 

So then I turned to Google, and after much searching, I finally found something that looked perfect on Knitty.  There was a pattern for a knitted lion washcloth that was really cute and had a lion face in the middle with a mane all around.  This wasn't the place I saw the original loopy stitch, but it worked perfectly for the mane and the end of the tail. 

Again, I used KnitPicks Swish, but this time in worsted weight.  This is a really good washable yarn and I've been happy with it for everything I've used it in. 

She wore the sweater to school and on Halloween, and seemed to love it.  She would put up her paws and RAWR!! and roar on cue.   She wouldn't let me paint her face though, so she only got some semi-decent whiskers and nose. 

At school, they had a costume parade.  First they wheeled out cribs filled with the infants.  Next was the toddler room, which is where La La is.  Some kids walked out holding onto a rope, and the kids who wander were in wagons.  You can guess where La La was... she takes after her mother with the looking at everything she passes. 

When her wagon was facing where I was sitting at the perimeter of the play yard, she saw me and wanted to be with me and so she started crying.  This was only a few weeks after her transition to the toddler room, so she was still upset in the mornings when we dropped her off.  So, I picked her up and we sat and watched the rest of the parade, and then went to visit with her friend NickNick and his parents. 

After the parade, I took her back to her classroom and had a long tearful goodbye.  That's always the hardest part of leaving her.  Most days she's fine, but once in a while, even now, she doesn't want us to drop her off and she whines or actually cries.  

Here she is waiting for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, dressed in her PJs and her Lion sweater. 

That's what I wrote on the label for this quilt I just made... my first!

There is a new baby on the way for one of my Stitch n' Beach girlfriends.

I started with a Jelly Roll of fabric from I think 2009 or 08 called "All you need is love".  It was red, pink, and white, with some brown and a great green that just pops!

There are polka dots, stripes, hearts and lots of Love Love Love.  Very girly for the girl on the way. 

I was inspired by this pattern, which means, I read that pattern, and went and did my own thing.  I'm happy with the result.  (Do you love my giant red corkboard wall?  yeah, me too.  ahem.) 

It's backed with the red hippos from IKEA. 

I don't know what it is about this fabric that I love so much, but I do.  I have a pillow and duvet cover in the green hippos for La La's crib and  I bought some more of the fabric because eventually she will outgrow her crib and I want to keep the fabric around. 

I quilted in straight lines, (uh, mostly) on the diagonal.  I started without a walking foot and then realized it would be better to get one and it made the rest of the lines much easier. 

I machine stitched the binding to the front, and hand stitched the back and even mitered the corners.  I got some advice from fellow SnB gal Carole who is an expert quilter, and I'm so glad I asked because what she showed me looked so much nicer than what I was trying to do at first. 

I started working on this quilt in February at the LA Modern Quilt Guild's Sewing Saturday.  They have a space where we can spend almost the whole day with great light, a great space and everyone brings their work, their machines, a few irons, ironing boards, cutting mats and rulers and everyone shared tools and advice and I had such a great time that I want to go back in March, but may have to wait for April. 

Just like my local SnB, there were women of all ages and skill levels, and even a few men.  I wish I could join the guild but will never be able to make it to a meeting, as they meet on Monday nights and getting around LA after work is not on my list of fun things to do.  I might join anyway, just to get in on these great Weekend Sews. 

I am so looking forward to meeting the recipient of this quilt.  She's due in a month.

I didn't get to stay at the baby shower Wednesday night because we've got the plague at casa adnohr right now.  Mom, Dad, and La La all have conjunctivitis, Mom also has an ear infection and laryngitis, and Dad has an ear infection and bronchitis.  We spent the day yesterday sanitizing the house because this needs to get out!!!  We are still coughing til we're dizzy and are just miserable. 

I am really bummed because some of the women that don't come on a regular basis always come for a special occasion, and I didn't get to see them.  I just ran in, gave momma the gift and left.  I felt really bad, but didn't want to make anyone else sick, this is no fun.  Especially momma who wouldn't be able to take the good antibiotics to kill the bugs. 

But I'm really happy I was able to complete this in time for the shower.  I really enjoyed it and can't wait to start on the next project.  It's either going to be a quilt, some more doll clothes, or a really cute book for La La.  I'll describe that later, once I iron out the details. 

ETA:  I forgot about Sew & Tell.  I wanted to link this up so I've added this line so you can see what others are sewing and sharing too!

I'm finally getting around to it. 

Some shoes: 

Some bodies: 

Some clothes:   

Some more:     

All for these little guys and gals: 

Green eyes for La La:

Special violet eyes for Ms. A. 

Brother and sister pairs:

The boy cousins:

The girl cousins:

The pattern is from Wee Wonderfuls, called Kit, Chloe and Louise.

But the pattern is for three girl dolls, which was fine, but I also needed two boy dolls.  Yikes!  How do I do the boys hair? 

I struggled with it for a few hours, then came up with this idea: 

I made 2" wide strips of cardboard and wrapped the yarn the short way around.  Then I sewed up the middle and used that line of stitching to anchor the hair to the top of their heads.  Whew!  I think it looks pretty good for a hack. 

Then I needed some clothes for the boy dolls.  The shirts were ok, I just used one of the girl shirts in boyish fabric. 

And then I needed some pants.  And shorts.  I used up quite a bit of muslin making test pairs, and finally came up with a decent pants pattern, which I then shortened for shorts.  Pretty nice!

If I sound a bit proud of myself, I am.  I haven't really sewn in 20 years, since home ec in middle school, really.  And while I was doing this project, which I started Nov 1 and finished on Dec 26th(!!!) I realized I really enjoy sewing and want to get back into it.

I bought a new sewing machine just before starting because I thought I needed an update from my old Kenmore.  I picked up an (relatively) inexpensive Brother from Costco.  Great price, great machine and it was perfect.  And I gifted the old machine to Ms. A's mom, who was in need of a new machine since hers broke and she has a little girl in need of doll clothes!

I also bid on and was able to get a pattern to make clothes for my daughter's Groovy Girls dolls, which is pretty cools because Ms. A has some of them too, and I can try that for birthdays and such until they outgrow them. 

The pattern for these dolls was well written, although there were a few mistakes that I fixed along the way.  And also, I wanted to make dresses for all the dolls but just couldn't wrap my head around the instructions for the pintucks and ran out of time before Christmas.  So I ended up with two outfits for each doll instead of three for the girl dolls.   The girls got undersuits but the boys didn't, since the girls were in dresses and the boys had shorts or pants. 

I would definitely recommend the pattern if you are looking for a really cute ragdoll.  My daughter plays with her quite a lot, which surprised me because she wasn't really into dolls for a long time.  She calls the doll "baby". 

I used assorted fabrics that I don't even know the names of, I just bought stuff online that looked cute.  The hair though, was great.  It's a tonal ombre from Lamb's Pride and it really gave a great hair effect, I thought. 

So there it is, the long overdue update.  Up next, the next sewing project. 

The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the color Wild Cherry, and they were knit on size 2.25 KnitPicks circular needles. I used one Harmony and one Nickel which was a great way of avioding the thing that I do at least once per sock, which is to pick up the wrong needle end while knitting and then end up with a silly twisted mess. I really liked using both needles .

I used the Harmony for the top textured side, and the nickel for the bottom smooth side, and that worked nicely! Well actually, I did the first sock only on the nickel needles, but after our local Stitch 'n Bitch Xmas party, I had a collection of the tiny sizes of Harmony needles, so I wanted to use them right away and so I did, for the second sock.

The pattern comes from Cat Bordhi's book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters, Book one. The pattern is called Bartholemew's Tantalizing Socks. Since my yarn was called Wild Cherry, the socks are now dubbed Wild Barty.

Do you know who Jim Steinman is? He had at least one solo album that I know of, but is most famous for writing the lyrics to Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell albums. He's also written a number of hits, such as Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", Air Supply's "Making Love out of Nothing at All", and Celine Dion's "It's all Coming Back to Me Now". When a Jim Steinman song comes on the radio, I can spot it by the end of the first verse. If you notice what these songs have in common, you'll catch my drift.

I have friends as far back as high school (Suzanne), college (Karlanne) and real life (Bill) who can attest to my hatred of Jim Steinman songs. They all loved Bat out of Hell, and I always hated the songs. They are just... too... wordy! He (Mr. Steinman) crams too many words into his songs.

I'm no George Orwell, I appreciate good description and good narrative, but Great Maker! He uses too many words. And I'll bet that anyone who has an opinion about Jim Steinman songs either loves or hates them, I don't know how anyone could be indifferent.

Anyway, the reason for this little digression is to give context to the patterns in Cat Bordhi's new book. The woman uses too many words! Socks are not that complicated. These socks are not that different than the socks we've all been knitting for years.

The increases are positioned in a different place and the rate of increase is 1/3 instead of 1/2 for most socks. But following the pattern is difficult. You have to jump back and forth between several different sections of the book just to get the whole pattern. (Kinda sucks if, like me, you like to photocopy the pages you need and leave the book at home, so if you do that, be sure to read the whole pattern before walking away from the photocopier.)

She has her own language - LaLinc and LaRinc, stories about hairdressers and necklaces. It's just silly. It's like a combination of a children's story (young children) and a knitting pattern. Maybe that's what she was going for, I don't know. It's not what I was looking for though. Some of the socks look interesting, I just wanted to know how to make the interesting ones.

And maybe I am just taking out my general frustration on Ms. Bordhi. I am a bit tired of the whole dumbing down of the world I see around me. I am no expert - you may recall the last pair of socks I made took me 5 socks to get the pair, but I do think that we adults just don't need to have everything spelled out for us! We are raising a generation of bubble-wrapped children with no critical thinking skills or ability to figure things out themselves, and it seems everything around us is coming down to the same level. It's like Harrison Bergeron.

And the thing is, the very first knitting book I bought was Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles: a Manual of Elegant Knitting Techniques and Patterns and it wasn't as wordy and strange as this new one. I haven't looked at any of her other patterns because I didn't think the mobius thing was interesting, although one of my fellow S'nB women did. I'll have to ask her if those patterns were weird.

I think going forward, I will read the whole pattern, copy the relevant information onto an index card (because it would fit on an index card, really) and leave the book for reading at home, like a novel or a bedtime story.

The socks themselves are very comfortable, and I will likely make another pair in the same pattern "family", called Sky. Next, I'll try a "Fountain" sock. I'm actually thinking that 2008 will be the "Year of the Sock" for the nodster, I've got way too much sock yarn and this year I am going to use it. A lot of it. I had even skeined up some yarn for dyeing, but never got around to mixing up the dyes. I want to do that this year too. I guess that's my only resolution for 2008, more socks!

Happy new year!

ETA: Link to the project on Ravelry