Pumpkins for Big Boys

Hey, did you know that I still have other kids? It’s true! So the other night, while I was sitting in the living room contemplating the future of my babies in the hospital (people say, “Melissa! How are you doing so much right now?!” and the answer is that I have a team of nurses and a medical staff providing round-the-clock care to my twins, and they really don’t like me to spend all day there. I need things to do.) I decided to make something awesome for my big boys.

There’s not much to them - just two sheets of orange felt sewn together in the shape of pumpkins (with a stem inserted) but they sure look pretty.

I also cut little pockets in the back -

and used some purple felt (the craft store here didn’t have black) to make jack-o-lantern face pieces. That way, you can store the pieces inside of the pumpkins, and then you can make awesome faces like these:

Heeheehee. I had a lot of fun making the pieces. My kids and I get along really well. Anyway, Max and Charlie lost no time making their own creations:

Those things on either side of the nose are cheeks. I asked. As you can see, the felt clings lightly to itself, allowing for the jack-o-lanterns to be picked up but permitting easy removal. Good times.

Charlie made that face all by himself, too. He’s getting so big! *sniffle*

Now that I’ve made these, I can think of a million other things to make in a similar vein…watch out, you may see more felt creations in the future!

From the Pumpkin Patch

It’s October, and something strange is growing in the pumpkin patch.

Strange, yet utterly adorable. The boys have been moved in to share a bed with each other, and are more are less disconnected from stuff. We’re still not sure how long they’ll need to stay in the hospital, but things are moving in a good direction.

Perhaps I will post the pattern for the pumpkin hat later. Before I go, though, how about another gratuitous baby shot?

BABIES!!!

Just Some Finishing Left

So, I logged on and realized that, once again, I haven’t blogged for nearly a month (although for once, I had more than enough to blog about). I deleted a record number of spam comments in a variety of languages - even some jokes - and now I have something to show off. Just a couple of projects I’ve been working on all year … now they’re almost finished.

And, not to brag, but I think they’re some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Our twins arrived this week, more than a month before their due date. I don’t even have blog pseudonyms picked out for them yet! (Despite that, both of them weighed 5 pounds and change at their birth. We are all impressed.) They only need a little bit of finishing up before they’re ready to come home with us - probably about two weeks in the hospital - and then we will be on our way back home.

Max and Charlie are over the moon.

I’ll try not to wait so long for the next post, this time.

Progress

So, I’m almost finished with the first Baby Sophisticate. Basically I need to add buttons and figure out what (if any) embellishments I’d like to add. It looks good, I think,

although the border pulls up a little in the front. I hate picking up stitches. Grr. On the bright side, I should have enough yarn to make a second one!

Anyway, instead of jumping right into the same sweater in the same yarn and the same size, I decided to make something a little larger. (You know. If you make all these sweaters and hats in newborn or 0-3 month size, then you have a ton of stuff at first, then one day they’ve got nothing.)

I picked Sue’s No-Holes Hexagon Sweater and woo-hoo! It’s fast. I’m using mods laid out by another Raveller to eliminate the increase holes, used worsted weight and an H hook for something more jackety, and added two rounds just to the front/back/bottom so the sleeves wouldn’t get too wide. I think I’ll add some cuffs to the sleeves, too, for a little more length, but I haven’t decided what to do about the collar yet.

Or how I’m going to close it. That’s a really bad picture of the color, too - it’s Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Chestnut Heather, and it’s a gorgeous shade of gold-flecked brownish burgundy. Very rich, but masculine. These houses down here are so different from the ones back home - sunlight is aggressively kept out with blinds and curtains, the windows are small and high, with deep eaves shading them as much as possible. All of my photos have a fluorescent tint.

Soo, in between cranking out baby things, I’m going to try and take a break to make something I promised to Max this spring…and if I can pull it off, it’ll be awesome!

A Real, Honest-to-Goodness Blog Post

Hey! I’m knitting something! (No! Really!)

You see, up to this point all I’ve made for the twins is one sweater and one hat apiece. This is clearly insufficient for a pair of babies who are going to spend the first week of their lives in a fanatically air-conditioned environment and then immediately transition into a real winter (complete with mounds and mounds of snow). I really only made Max and Charlie one sweater each - I mean, we were living in Texas - and that was kind of just to do it. These little guys are going to need what I can make for them. (And that makes it so much more fun, doesn’t it?)

Now, this (these? I am making two of them) sweater is very special. In my frantic, last minute stash diving - trying to decide which yarn would do me the most good to pack in our limited space, what projects I would use them for, etc - I uncovered a long-buried wool cache. More than two years ago, if I recall, I went into a Jo-Ann’s to find that a lot of their house yarns were on clearance. To my delight, this included the soft, gorgeous, 100% wool and generally quite pricey Tesoro. I bought every ball they had (for the low, low price of $2.35 apiece) and tucked it away to use for baby things. Well, as you know, a lot has happened between then and now, and so the yarn hasn’t so much as seen the light of day for a long time.

At any rate, in this stash I discovered five balls of blue (and one of yellow, to use for contrast or extra yardage) and decided that now was the time for them to be put to use. Sadly, the Tesoro has now long been discontinued, so there’s not much chance of getting more…that means that I have 2.5 balls of blue to use for each sweater, plus another half-ball of yellow in case I run out and need to do the edgings in contrasting colors. I’ve done a lot of calculations, and I think it will be doable.  The pattern is Baby Sophisticate, available free and really quite cute. Now, I don’t think I have the buttons I want to use for these (although I did remember to bring buttons!) but that’s okay. Just today we stumbled across what appears to be the arts and crafts store on a nearby base, and it is HUGE. We couldn’t go today, but I am so psyched to visit next week. The seductive image my mind is painting me, of a large selection of American yarn, has me extremely hopeful that I’ll find something interesting there.

Oh, Hi!

Things have been incredibly hectic over the last few weeks, but I’m writing to you now from the other side of our plane trip. That’s right, we’re down here by the hospital in muggy sunny Okinawa! So, while I haven’t been able to muster much energy or interesting content for the blog this last month, I now have time. Lots and lots of time.

Also (interestingly) I think I’ll be able to work on some projects! I had anticipated not really doing much knitting or crocheting down here since the hot and sticky weather drains me of any desire to cover my lap with wool, but the cottage we’re staying in requires us to keep the air conditioning on all the time to prevent the growth of mold. Let me just say that 21C is a lot cooler than you’d think. We’re going to be glad when our trunks show up and we can pull out the sweatshirts we packed for the trip back home.

Anyway - here we are! Now we just have to wait a few weeks for the twins to get here.

How to Make a Magazine Organizer - for Free*

*Or, near enough as makes no never mind, as Mom used to say.

We have a bit of a magazine problem at our house. Or I suppose, to be more precise, a magazine storage problem. That’s what happens when someone buys every magazine they see with a motorcycle on the front.

At any rate, something must be done!

You will need:

• A large, empty cereal box
• Scissors
• A ruler or straight-edge
• A marker, pen, pencil, etc.
• Tape
• Wrapping paper

Step 1: Cut off the flaps on top.

Step 2: Mark the box from corner to corner on each side (make sure you have the top of the line on the same side on each side).

Step 3: Cut down the line, across the short side of the box (at the crease) and up the other line in one piece. You really need the cut-off portion to be in one piece.

Step 4: Flip it over so the top is at the bottom. Use the magazines to measure how far you need to scoot it over so they’ll fit. Tape the pieces together securely (don’t forget the bottom!) all around, inside and out.

Step 5: Mark around from the bottom of one “V” to the bottom of the “V” on the other side. (Make sure you’re doing this to the piece you taped on, and not the big piece.)

Step 6:  Cut across the line.

And it works! But, if (like me), you object to Kung-fu Panda and packing tape in your decorating, continue:

Step 7: Wrap the magazine holder. (This will require some wrapping-fu.)

(I made a straight cut down from the top to accommodate the weird  angle. ALSO - be sure to tape the wrapping paper down on the inside, ALL the way around. This will help minimize wear and tear as the magazines go in and out.)

Is it macho? No. Is it elegant? Ummmmm….maybe? No. But it works.

So there you go! See? No power tools, no problem.

Gemstone Goodies

So, I got some fun things in the mail.

Malachite, amethyst, lapis lazuli, and cultured freshwater pearls - not to mention some shiny gold beads and findings and a very nice set of red jasper focal components.

Fire Mountain Gems is a fun place to shop.

I also picked up a spiffy beading board:

which is AWESOME for laying out necklaces. Instead of just stringing beads to see how they look, you can measure how long you want your necklace to be and start in the middle, working your way to the fastening. You can also lay out more than one strand at a time, which is massively useful, since trying to design a multi-strand necklace on the fly is far more complicated than one might expect.

So, I made this today…and I like it. :)  Max is pretty smitten with the hearts, too.

In other news, a Hitler cat has been hanging around our porch for the last three days. The kids, of course, have gone nuts over it and it’s been almost all I can do to keep them from rushing out “to rub it.” Now, I don’t have anything against cats. I like cats. (I’m also allergic to cats, but that hasn’t stopped me from being friends with cats in the past.) I do, however, have serious qualms about letting my kids go ‘play’ with a random stray cat that just hangs around and stares at us. Hopefully it will move on quickly, and this will soon be but a happy memory.

It occurs to me that the sliding door needs washing.

Super Monkey Ball!

(Gratuitous Nintendo reference ftw!)

So, to round out the little collection, I made the boys a monkey. I think it may be my favorite of the three - look how cute he is! Look at the startled little face, hahaha. The best part, really, is the ears. They’re so nicely three-dimensional.

I think they look good together. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’m trying to get some more work done on my shrug, which has languished unfinished for FAR too long.

More Ani-balls

Let me just lead with a less washed-out picture of the lion I made:

See? So much cuter in the sunshine! That goes for the tail view as well:

It’s been raining for days. It rained this morning, as a matter of fact; long and hard and thoroughly. I was afraid it might not dry out enough for me to get outside for  some shots of the aniballs in their…’natural’ environment, but in the evening enough had evaporated that we cautiously ventured out.

As you can see, Charlie got his elephant:

and I must say, it’s even a bigger hit than the lion. It’s slightly larger which makes it easier for little hands to throw and catch, and the boy’s have had the grandest time making elephant  sounds as they throw it around. The elephant has a little tail of its own, as well:

Although not long enough to use as a handle. These little guys are fun!