And She's Off!!!

Less than a month until Christmas and that means I have some very busy nights ahead of me! Project after project, knitting, tying and sewing! I have almost all the materials I'll be needing, a few things have been started and one gift is all done. Not a bad start! There is still plenty to do, though, so I hope Phin will cooperate with me the next few weeks. I am so excited about these things, I can't wait to see how everything turns out! The only bummer? No pictures until after Christmas and everyone has their stuff. :)

There is a napping baby in my house and this time can't go to waste. There is tulle calling to me! :)

My last big project for a little while...

At least I think it will be. It's a carseat organizer I made for the kiddos, since we moved them to the back of the van. I wasn't even sure I wanted to start it, but I was able to complete it in just a couple days. I also replaced the elastic in some diapers and I'm just waiting on one to be re-waterproofed so I can fix that one, then I can pack up my sewing stuff for a while and get ready for the baby.

So here it is...super fancy. :)

That's all folks! Nothing too exciting, but it's nice to get things done that you've been procrastinating on. This was definitely something I had been waiting on a looooong time. Now let's just hope I"m not waiting on this baby for much longer. :) Until next time!

I Did It! I Did It! The Newborn Diapers Are Done!!!

If it hasn't been made clear, I finally finished my newborn fitteds! It was a pretty time-consuming process, but that's mostly because I have to make everything as complicated as humanly possible.

These are all made with the Darling Diapers pattern. The first three pictures are of the Tiny Newborn size and the outers are stretchy or at least somewhat stretchy cotton knits that I found at JoAnn. The second group of three are the Newborn size and are all made with woven, non-stretchy fabrics also found at Joann. For all of these, the hidden part of the diaper and underside of the soaker are made with Bamboo fleece and the inners are Bamboo Velour. Bamboo Velour is SO, so soft and it dyes up really well with Dylon, as you can see. You can also see that while counting my pieces and figuring out which ones would be which colors, I messed up somewhere. I switched up the sizes for a red soaker, so two are mismatched and the left diaper in the bottom row was suppose to be all yellow inside. Whoops! At least the blue kind of matches. :)


The inners of the Tiny Newborn size...




The front of the TN size...



The back of the TN size...

The center diaper in the bottom row is probably my least favorite of all I made. With the mismatched inner, tabs that match the diaper, but not the inner and then the wrong colored thread used to stitch the tabs...it's just craziness. My favorite of these would probably be the Hawaiian print on the top left. It's just so cute!!! I saved some of the fabric to make undies for the big boys, too. :)

The inners of the Newborn size...

The front of the NB size...

The backs of the NB size...

I like all of these, for the most part. Not crazy about the natural soaker in the otherwise red inner of the top right diaper. I particularly like the Snoopy Flannel and the Packer and space wovens. The Packer inner is actually mismatched on purpse, so no mistake there. :) I also got extra of the planet fabric to make the boys undies with.

A more close-up picture of the fabrics I used, except for the plain blue and red stretch knits...

Overall, I'm happy with the work I did, especially since this was my first try at diapers. This won't be my entire newborn stash. I have a bunch of prefolds as well as a couple little pockets. From here I'll be going to mostly pockets and I also have a bunch of small fitted pieces cut out and ready to go, but I am short on materials and time right now, so those will have to wait a bit. The next items on the agenda are some nursing pads and I'm also going to be replacing the shot elastic in some bumGenious! pockets. Busy, busy! If only I could do it all in my recliner. :)

Brynwood Needleworks

My cousin has a blog that I have recently begun to follow through Facebook. It is so great to see what she's been up to with her crafts and sewing, very inspirational to a novice like me. :) Today is her 100th post and with it, an opportunity to win some fun stuff! Check out http://www.brynwoodneedleworks.blogspot.com/ to find out how you can be entered in her giveaway, but more importantly, to take a look at some of her nifty projects.

Looking forward to the next 100 posts, Donna!!! :)

So, it's been a while. And no, I never finished the socks...or a single sock, but I have more important things to do now. It's time to start making some baby things, folks! I have quite a few projects on the agenda for the upcoming weeks, including a boatload of cloth diapers. But I already got a few knit projects done and ready to show. None of these have been washed or blocked yet, but they look nice enough as they are, so here are some pictures...

First up, 2 sleepsacks. I didn't really follow a pattern for these, so I hope they work out. They are both made with Purewool, I can't remember the colorway of the one on the left, bought it years and years ago, but it's single-ply and super soft. The one on the right is 3-ply Mesto.

Next are two pairs of longies, both made with 3-ply Purewool. On the left is a newborn pair in Biarritz and on the right is a small pair in Tiatucura. I'm not thrilled with the heavy gold hue of the yellow or the pooling in the body of these, but they'll be useable.

I'm putting these up last because they're my favorite. :) A newborn pair of shorties in 3-ply Purewool in Firmament. Love these!!!

That's it for the time being! I'm used to pulling out the knitting needles in my free time, it's going to be weird sitting at the sewing desk for a few weeks. I have some really cute diapers to make though, so hopefully I'll have pictures of those up soon too. Like I've said before, I work so much better with a deadline. :)

Sock update and King Gus

I finally started on Josh's socks! That was last Saturday, actually. I finished the leg/ankle of one and when I got to the heel, I took a break. A weeklong break. :) I will get back to it, just need to find the motivation, I supppose. So far, so good though!

And here is a picture I received from my sister of my nephew Gus. He's sporting his new crown and playsilk/cape. The crown is made from the LTK pattern out of Patons Classic wool in New Denim and Burgundy. I did have some trouble with felting and sizing it correctly, but I was able to make it work and I'm so glad it did! I really only gave myself enough time to get it right the first time, which is really nothing new for me. :) I did buy yarn at least a year ago to make my boys some crowns too. One more thing to add to my project list!

Kai Will Love Me Forever

Christmas was almost a month ago and I'm still waiting on pictures of my gifts on or with their recipients. I decided would just go ahead and post the pictures I have. Of course that means Kai is modeling two girlie hats, which he wasn't fond of wearing to begin with. I'm sure he'll be super excited to see them on the computer. :)

Here is the first one, a gift for my niece, Malia. This hat was made with RYC Soft Lux in Powder. It's a pale pink worsted weight yarn, shot through with a gold metallic fiber. Just a little sparkle, not too much. I got it to match a metallic gold coat that my mom was getting her for a Christmas gift. The pattern is called Petal and can be found here. I thought I had the correct gauge, but the small size turned out quite wide for me. It wasn't a big deal because I wasn't sure on size anyway, but in case anyone else gives it a try, watch your gauge. It is a really cute hat, I'd like one for myself if I ever get around to it.
I also made a set of mittens to go with the hat, nothing spectacular, just some plain mittens. I also had enough yarn left to make a long, lacey-type scarf. It was actually a little too long, but it still looked nice. Hopefully I'll get some pics to put up soon.

Next is a hat I made for my younger niece, Kaelana. I saw this pattern and knew I had to make this hat for her. I had a bit of trouble finding the perfect colors of yarn, but found an acceptable frosting and cup color at JoAnn in easy-care acrylic. My first attempt at this hat can be seen in the second picture on the left. It's cute, but when I put it on Kai and Zeke's head the "frosting" part hugged quite tightly to their heads and you couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be. It was definitely cuter sitting on a table or bench that it was on a head. I decided it needed to be puffier on the top, so you could tell it was a cupcake whether it was off the head or on. So I added stitches and used a smaller needle to make the ribbnig so it would still be snug on the bottom. The top picture is the result and it looked much better. Since I really didn't like the first hat and I was running short on time, I just snipped the "cherry" off hat number 1 and put it on the new one. So imagine the top hat with the red pom from the second picture. If I ever make this hat again, I may try adding "sprinkles" or something for fun.

Here are the playsilks!!! I dyed them myself and they turned out pretty decent. I'm not too fond of the first one, which was actually not the first one I did, but I've learned my lesson on wrapping my fabric too tightly. The dye just couldn't get in there.

My first attempt was the fushia/purple one and it turned out so well, I was thrilled. I made it specifically for Kaelana, so I was very happy it turned out. After doing the rest I decided to give the red, yellow and blue to August, my nephew. I also gave him a crown, which I don't have a picture of. Hopefully I will soon.

Now I need to get to work on Josh's socks. Poor guy has been waiting for those darn socks for over a year and I have been asking him to remind me since after Christmas. I really stink at getting started when I don't have a deadline. I'll get them started before the weekend! Maybe. :)