WiP Wednesday – After Thanksgiving Edition

This week will be a short one because I feel kind of…flaky.

The fleece nine-patch is still  on the design wall and still a work in progress, there’s a winter wall hanging that I need to put hanging corners on, and I have my quilts set aside for the modern quilt guild meeting tonight.

Oh, and I also started a mini tree skirt because our tiny tree needs one.  I’m working loosely off a tutorial posted on The Magic Bean.  The main fabric is called Merry Main Street from Alexander Henry Fabrics.  The solids are a mix of things from JoAnn.  I think there’s a Kona in there, but there are also two sparkly solids.

I was trying not to be too matchy, matchy, plan-y, plan-y when I was putting this together which means I went without the design wall because mine was already full.  It wasn’t until I got it most of the way put together that I realized my oops.  Oops!  At this point, I don’t care.  I’m still a little short in the front to back width so I need another two rows of nine patch – one for each end.  I’ve got my fingers crossed for an end of the week finish.

My other project for the week is a birthday gift for my Mom.  Don’t worry, she already knows what she’s getting.  The Boo is incredibly excited that her Nana is going to have a hat just like hers.  She has reminded me of this fact several times a day…just in case I forgot.  The bigger (and slightly more exciting news, at least from my perspective), is that I no longer have to chase balls of yarn around a purple plastic bag.  Dearest Pirouette, why didn’t I buy you sooner?

I may have become a flake this week, but I doubt the others have.  Why not stop by Freshly Pieced and see what the others were up to?

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Crafty Wearables

Once the “darf” was finished, Miss M informed me that she needed a “bidder hat” to go with it.  For once I actually purchased more yarn than I needed for a project which just meant that I needed to find a pattern.  When I’ve made hats in the past I’ve always used a Skater Beanie pattern I found for free on Ravelry.  The pattern is simple, but the math behind it means you get the perfect size every single time.  It’s a bit plain, though, and a Miss M’s scarf needed something girly to go with it.

This “Vintage Inspired Scallop Hat” (also from Ravelry) seemed like the perfect fit.  The pattern is really very simple (although you need to be mindful of the final repeat just before the join).  I actually made two hats because I thought the first one was too big.  I finished up the second hat on Thursday last week.  When we were done, Miss M and I made a second trip to the yarn store to pick out the grey for the flower.  For the record, purple and grey is my new favorite color combination.   I think this hat is perfect.  Miss M is adorable wearing it, and were it not for the fact that I really want a pair of fingerless gloves, I think I’d make myself a hat with the opposite color combination (grey with purple).

Two pairs of fingerless gloves of my own design – albeit a very, very simple one.  They’re a bit…square, but warm and that seems to me to be the most important thing.  I could have aimed for a fashion accessory and I did for a brief moment while searching Ravelry.  In the end, functionality and warmth win out.  These were super fast to work up in half-double crochet which ultimately is my favorite stitch for winter wear.  Nowhere near as cute as Miss M’s stuff, though.

Today also marks the 25th day of NaBloWriMo and it seems like the month has passed us by in the blink of an eye.  Can you believe it?  The kids are all off school tomorrow which will be the first time in a long time that we’ve all been off at the same time.  We’re going to be heading off to the apple orchard tomorrow – how about you?

Washing Woolies

When I was at the yarn store the other day, I picked up a bottle of Eucalan woolwash.  I have washed many a wool diaper cover in my day (crocheted by moi, of course), but I have yet to wash any of the kids’ wool outerwear.  Given how prone my children are to getting dirty (read here: very or maybe better stated like magnets), this is not a good thing.  I picked up the grapefruit scented one, but in reading through their website I probably should have gone with either lavender or eucalyptus as both are moth inhibitors.

While washing a couple of sinks of hats and scarves I couldn’t help but hear Mary Thienes-Schunemann’s voice in the back of my head singing “Washin’ Woolies.”  Her soprano voice grates on my nerves like nobody’s business.  I sometimes wonder what I was thinking when I bought “This is the Way We Wash-a-Day” back in my Waldorf-curious phase.  No, really, what was I thinking?

Undershirts and leggings,
Scarves and mittens too,
We’re washin’ all our woolies ’til they look like new.

Aside from a few hats my Mom has made the kids, the only knitted item I’ve made is a scarf for Mr. J from last year (the blue one on the bottom of the above picture).  It was fun to knit, but in looking over both scarves when washing them, I actually prefer the crocheted ones because they seem a great deal sturdier.  I did find a small hole in the knit scarf that was super quick to repair thanks to the tiniest crochet hook I have ever seen.  I have no idea what one uses such a small hook for as it was one of the many things I got from my Grandma’s house recently, but fixing a scarf seems like a perfectly acceptable use.

We’re washin’ woolies,
Wooly woolies.

The purple hat is one of two berry hats my Mom made Miss L not too long ago.  There’s an adorable red one that’s missing in this batch of woolens.  It’s gone missing right along with Miss M’s brand new “darf.”  I don’t know how she lost it so quickly.  In spite of her knack for loosing things, I had sort of figured even she wouldn’t be able to lose something so quickly.  It may not surprise you, but Miss M was also the last person to have the red berry hat in her possession.  I’ve looked for them, but have come up empty.  Who knows where the little booger had them last.

What we really need is the husband.  The man can find anything.  This is a damn good thing seeing as I’d probably lose my head if it wasn’t attached to my body.  Unfortunately, my finder is also working buku hours at the moment.  Hopefully when he’s “off” work he’ll get a chance to call up a search party and go on the hunt for our missing items.

Speaking of lost things…I should start a list…

Done This Week

When we last left my grey and yellow quilt, I was contemplating what to do with it.  Cut it up?  Move forward?  Because, really, what do you do when you spend all that time making something and end up hating it?  I went the cut it up route.  I have made some progress, but have let it sit over the last couple of weeks.  Being an inch deep, mile wide sort of person, this is typical for me.

In the meantime, I had a much more urgent project to get done.  The other week, when we were getting read to go to our Family Dharma class, my youngest, Miss Boo, realized for the first time that she was the only one of the three who did not have a scarf of her own to wear.  In my defense, up until this point she didn’t really need one.  She wasn’t old enough just yet to require such a cold weather accessory.

I promised her that I would make her a “darf” of her very own.  I took her to my favorite yarn store, The Dragonfly Yarn Shop, and let her pick out her own Malabrigo Merino Worsted.  She went with the Kettle Dyed #148, Hollyhock.  Just slightly over one evening later, she was the proud owner of her very own “Gentle Waves” scarf.

I haven’t crocheted since last year around this time, so it felt good to work with a hook and yummy yarn!