And suddenly –

by Melissa // November 19, 2008 // 5 Comments

Ta-da! Ridiculously adorable, and absolutely perfect for a little baby boy. I did run into one little snag – it wasn’t until I’d cast off that I realized there were no buttonholes of any sort written into the pattern. Oops. Fortunately, (as I was mulling over the course of action I should take in the fastener department) I got the news that the baby shower had been postponed. The woman who was going to be surprised found out, and requested a different time…and then shortly after word was passed along that she wanted to wait until much closer to her due date so that her mother could come. Fair enough. (I also found out that the reason for the extremely short notice in the beginning was that a friend of hers wanted to help plan it and be here for it, and as she’s moving soon the shower had to be sooner rather than later. Again, fair enough.)

Anyway! I let the little sweater sit in my basket, almost completely finished, for about two days, before I decided to go for it and add some buttons. I made three little figure-eights with the yarn (crochet chains, five chains for each side of the loop), sewed one side of the eight and a button to one side of the sweater, and a button to the other side. They are beautiful, beautiful buttons, too.

Gorgeous. I bought them at the Daiso, 10 buttons for 100 yen. Hah. It was really difficult to get a decent picture of them. It was pretty dim outside…because it started snowing!

It was the year’s first snowfall, and Max noticed it first. “Mommy, what’s happening out the window?” I’ll tell you what was happening. Big, fat, huge white snowflakes were falling down as thick as thieves. The boys were ecstatic. They immediately headed for the door and I had to drag them back for coats, shoes, and mittens. Snow…there’s just something magical about it, and especially for children (who don’t see snow and think about things like shoveling, and icy roads, and frostbite, and the months of cold ahead…) it holds an irresistible fascination. They danced in the snow. They laughed and spun. They tried to catch snowflakes as though they were bubbles. But you know what? You can’t really see the snow very well in that picture, let’s see if the next one shows it more clearly…

EEK! That’s only four hours after the snow started. I honestly didn’t think it would stick. I mean, I was walking around in short sleeves yesterday. Last night it rained, and everything was wet – but I guess 9 hours of snowfall (yes, NINE hours, it is still snowing and it has not stopped since it began this morning) will have its way.

This is a picture I took seven hours after the snow started. Thanksgiving may still be a week away, but with snow this deep, I think Max said it best: “Mommy, it’s time for CHRISTMAS!”

Procrastination Makes it Happen

by Melissa // November 14, 2008 // 6 Comments

I’ve often observed in the past that procrastinating a task makes me exert extra energy in another area to make ignoring the first task easier. For instance, If I’m putting off a phone call, I might wash the dishes. If I’m avoiding scrubbing the bathroom, I might fold the laundry, or sweep the floors. And if I’m trying to put off designing a sweater –

I might launch into a project that seems easy only by comparison. What you see here is the first third (maybe first two-fifths) of a long-sleeved lace shrug. It’s gorgeous. I’m using fingering weight yarn (Red Heart Lustersheen! Unexpectedly cottony texture), it’s got a very long cuff which will have buttons, but the shape I’m shooting for is like the slouchy shrug Drew Barrymore wears in Music and Lyrics. (Which I watch all the time. Good movie.) I’m ridiculously pleased with this project. Another nice touch is the lace pattern, which when stretched out…

reveals a subtle floral pattern that I think is just beautiful. Now, I would have a lot more of this done than I do, but on Wednesday one of my friends found out that the baby she’s having is a boy. The email containing that news was quickly followed by one from another friend, saying that we were going to surprise her with a shower…in a week! (A week? Don’t they know I need to MAKE THINGS?! …I was indignant for a while, but someone else told me that the rush is so that another of our friends who is moving in about a month will be able to come. Fair enough.) Anyway, I decided to make a BICO, since it’s billed as a three-hour baby sweater, so I could be sure of finishing in time. I had some yarn I thought would work back in the bottomless stash, I found the right hook, and got to work! And, I mean, I totally finished it, but it’s a little…how do I put this…

Froofy? I mean, it’s a little…floofy. For a boy. For someone else, especially, whose boy-froofy-level-tolerance I do not know. (She has daughters but this is her first son. I don’t know.) Add to that the fact that it turns out Red Heart Baby Clouds is perceptibly thicker than the Homespun called for in the pattern, so that I created by accident a sweater more likely to fit a 12-18 month old than a 6 month old, and it grows even less…possibly appropriate. Bother. Fortunately, I began far enough in advance that there was still time for another project!

I thought about crocheting another sweater, but I’ve crocheted three baby sweaters in the last month. Free, appropriately sized, unisex and CUTE patterns are a bit thin on the ground for crochet baby sweaters, so I decided I’d go for a knit sweater, even though I’m a slower knitter. After all, how long could something actually called a ‘5-hour baby sweater’ take?

Why yes, those needles ARE a bit short for this project, thanks for noticing! I’m making the Baby Boy 5-Hour sweater, which eliminates the little lacy holes you see in the classic 5-hour baby sweater to make it more masculine. But it’s cute, right? And clever. I haven’t had to reattach the yarn once. You knit from the center front to the sleeve, knit the sleeve flat, slip stitch up to close the sleeve and bring your working yarn back up to the level of the rest of the stitches, knit across the back, work the second sleeve the same as the first, knit across, and then work the body flat. Ingenious! So, the sweater is taking me longer than I think it would take a more accomplished knitter (or someone without children…) but I should be finished in good time, and that thing is adorable.

Sweet, Sweet Avoidance

by Melissa // November 8, 2008 // 3 Comments

Well. Sweater design is proving a worthy adversary: despite hours of work, we have returned to 7 unused skeins and thus have nothing to show. (Well, unless you’re interested in seeing one skein re-wrapped in its own entrails. But I don’t feel like photographing, formatting, and uploading that just for giggles.) So, while I regroup, I’m distancing the problem by whipping out lots and lots of small, easy projects! For example:

Magnet cars! We saw a little boy with some of these in church a few weeks ago: it’s just felt sewn around a round magnet with four small buttons for wheels. They’re fast, fun, and well-loved. (I’m pretty sure the peanut gallery is going to demand more colors.) So that was this morning…last night I tossed off two versions of a design I’m writing up to submit for Crochet Uncut‘s last-minute project issue, due out in December. (If you’re not familiar, Crochet Uncut is a new crochet e-zine that’s just starting up.) Obviously I can’t show you pictures yet, but trust me – it was fun.

Now I’ve put away the buttons and felt and I’m very carefully not looking directly at the sweater yarn glaring at me from the side table, thinking that surely, there must be one more thing I can do before I go back to that…oh, well. I suppose I have some mending that I could do…

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