A Flurry of FOs

Every morning heralds the approach of November with a grey, gloomy sky and a chill that keeps me huddled under the flannel sheets and extra quilt for as long as possible (not long with two small children clamoring for the day to start).

This is the weather to make things quickly.

Things like sheepy hats with high wool content and giant Baa-bles.

And wee baby mittens in delicious shades of autumn morning grey (though the pattern is called (delightfully) Bleak Midwinter).

And of course, little cowls that look like bandanas.  I used the same pattern and the same modifications as when I made this in red for Silas.

There have also been a couple of dishcloths.  With all this winter knitting I have made the executive decision to leap from the dishcloth bandwagon (unless Knit Picks puts out a pattern that I can't resist), so these may be the last couple this year.

Weeks Irrelevant

Pumpking Dishcloth by Teresa Gregorio
Knit Picks Cotlin DK, Clementine and Peapod

I'm a sucker for all things pumpkin. If it says pumpkin spice on it, you already have my money.

Campfire, by Marjorie Dussaud
Peaches & Creme, Rosemary

This was the first Dussaud dishcloth that I have enjoyed in a while. It was fast, fun, easy to memorize, and the drape is delicious.

I'd like to be the kind of person who makes my kids' Halloween costumes, but not yet.  I have always been the kind of person with really good luck at thrift stores, however.

Ezra is sporting a dragon coat and a sparkly jumpsuit found at the bargain shoppe.  Silas wore it for his two first Halloweens.

This year Silas is Thomas the Tank Engine, courtesy of Once Upon a Child.  This should fit him for many Halloweens if he's agreeable, because it's completely open-sided, which also means that he can wear it no matter the weather - even a bulky winter coat will fit under it without disrupting the effect of the costume.  This year wasn't too bad, he's just wearing his Thomas rain slicker (and his new rain boots, which he was one hundred times more excited about than the costume, and which he is still wearing).

Ryan reprised last year's cowboy costume.

Everything out of his own wardrobe, basically.  I'm a fan of men owning cowboy hats - it makes for very easy costumes for Pioneer Day when you're in school if you can just raid your dad's closet.

I should have gotten a picture of my entire outfit, but you'll get the gist.  I went for fall spirit/Mother Nature/wood Elf, etc.

Sparkly green dress courtesy of Goodwill, 2006.  Fall garland courtesy of Wal-Mart clearance sale, 2014.  I was going to wear this last year, but it turns out that dresses you could wear when you were 19 will not fit you when you are 9 months pregnant, no matter how forgiving you think that A-line is.

Here's a pic from 2013, the second time Silas wore the dragon costume, where you can see a bit more of the dress (generic princess that year):

Now just imagine it with 12 feet of fall foliage draped around it, and you'll get the idea.

YarnAlong: With Time Travel

Silas calls this book LlamaLlamaLlama!  We read it a lot.  It goes back to the library on Saturday, and I think it's going to end up under the Christmas tree this year.

I started another Cedar Shakes hat, this time for Ezra.  The Paton's Kroy is considerably thinner than the yarn that I used for Silas' hat, so even though I cast on for the same size (toddler), it's turning out rather smaller and with a slightly open fabric.  I'm debating whether or not to start over with smaller needles and working the child size instead.  The outcome might be the same.  Ezra at 10 months already has a head the circumference of the average child's, an issue we ran into with Silas as well.  There are some baby clothes that we literally cannot get over these babies' mammoth heads, and their little caps fit for about fifteen minutes.

Silas hat, made with a heavy fingering yarn that still had a substantial fabric on the 4's, still fits him two years later.

Assuming this kid IS actually the child in question.  Where did my little chubby-faced baby go?

Two years ago. Never mind where the cheeks went, where did the time go?

Loose ends

I've been in a finishing mood lately, though I would have thought I'd had enough of endings.  There's something to be said for closure, at any rate.

I finished the twined mittens I started back in February.  I need to take a better picture so I can upload it to the pattern page.  The technique was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it.

I made myself a hat:

It's the Star-Crossed Slouchy Beret that's so popular on Ravelry (13000+ projects - so viral I would have avoided it except I saw one in person and fell hard in love).  I had to make some mods to get it to fit my head, mostly just adding stitches and then adjusting for the increases and decreases so the cables still worked.  I love the colors in this yarn (Knit Picks Chroma in Hollyhock).  Purple and grey may be my new grey and pink.

I've also caught up on a few dishcloths.

Zig Zag dishcloth by Faith Schmidt

Simple Lines by Chelsea Berkompas

Orbital Dishcloth by Stacey Winklepleck

And my showstopper:

Petticoat Dishcloth, by Kendra Nitta

This dishcloth is just a little crazy.  You start at the outside edge and cast on 200+ stitches, knit a bit, and then on a separate needle cast on another ridiculous number of stitches and knit a bit and then join the two pieces together, cast on a third piece, knit, join, and finally knit down to the center.  Were I designing this I would have started from the center, worked out, and then picked up the stiches for the second and third ruffles so everything was worked in one piece, but perhaps that isn't as simple or neat as it sounds in my head.

The yarn is Cotlin DK.  I started this thing in April, all that ruffling in light yarn took this long to finally finish.  As long as it took, and as frustrating as it was to try and join so many stitches on a 16" cable without twisting, it was really a lot of fun to knit.  I can't even imagine using it as a dishcloth.  Right now it's sitting on my bathroom counter collecting bobby pins and hair-ties, kind of a fiber-happy take on the those catch-all bathroom trays that I've noticed we're selling in the Domestics dept. recently.

In other news, it's officially footie pajama weather.

R is for...

Read to me.

They tell me reading to your kids helps them develop reading and language skills. They also say it's important for your kids to see you reading.

E-readers count, right?

I grew up in a house full of books, watching my dad read in every free moment. My mom isn't as voracious a reader as he, but she too loves books, especially biographies and of course the Bible. She read to us often and loved taking us to the library. She also taught us to look for words everywhere, on signs and the sides of vehicles and the backs of cereal boxes.  I'm trying to do the same with Silas, and even Ezra looks very intently at the pictures while I'm reading to Silas.  I would show you a picture of this, but there's no good way to juggle a camera along with a three year old and a nearly five month old and a book.

Ezra devouring a good book

I still like to be read to, as my love of literary podcasts and audiobooks will attest.  I hope my kids will let me read to them for a long, long time.

Books that Silas loves for me to read to him:

This Train
The Little Red Caboose
Moonpowder
Go, Dog, Go!
What Do You Say when a Monkey Acts this Way?
The Foot Book

F is for...

Feet

The covering thereof

I have never been a fan of feet (except for on wee bairns), nor socks (I outright refused to touch them as a child when my mother was teaching me how to fold laundry), so the fact that I was compelled when a new knitter to try knitting socks for the sheer experience of it is something of a tribute to their fascination.

Two things in particular - modern knitters complaining that they were difficult, and historical knitters making them all the time. If there's anything I like, it's a challenge and making something authentic from scratch.

Of course, authentic was stretched a bit for my first few pairs, not having any access to sockweight yarn, but the My Basic Sock pattern taught me the rudiments of sock construction, and worsted weight yarn, even with minimal wool content makes a quite warm sock for the days when you have to be out shoveling snow. Most importantly, I learned that making socks isn't hard at all if you have clear directions. I made my second pair in just over a week.

I had a deadline, I wanted to make St. Patrick's Day socks for my brother, being undeterred by his size 12 feet. Thuja is another good, clear pattern for a beginner. I finished the second sock in two days. Second sock syndrome didn't hit until the odyssey of the never ending kilt hose.

Ten years later, still no farther than this.

Then there were mini socks.

 

Swap fodder, mainly. Swaps are also good motivation to finish actual pairs of socks.

Lace socks go quickly.

Slippers are a fun change of pace.

And always, go big or go home:

E is for . . .

Ezra

Where did four months go? 

I have been shockingly negligent about knitting for him, but as he has all of Silas' handmedowns it hasn't been a priority.

Of course, I knitted him a stocking.

And a hat.

But that's as far as I have managed to this point. It's tricky to knit for your own babies, because they are often in need of your undivided attention, and working on projects here and there when you have a spare moment doesn't work well when they grow faster than you can knit. 

Patterns I plan to make for Ezra (if I ever have the time):

Anders

Gansey Booties  (free!)
Pembroke Vest (free!)
Nursing Necklace - crochet (free!)

D is for...

Dishcloth

(or, Drat, I fell asleep as soon as I got home yesterday (around 6:30) and didn't post a C entry.)

I'm 13 weeks into this 52 Weeks of Free Dishcloths adventure, and so far I've finished
16 dishcloths, one potholder, and a scrubby.

Scrubby

The narrow drawer next to the sink where I keep such things is filling up very pleasantly.

I've come a long way from my spiritual membership in I'd Rather Poke Myself in the Eye with a Dpn than Knit a Dishcloth. I still sympathise with them; they have many valid points. Dishcloths do deteriorate quickly, and spending precious knitting time making something that will be used to scrub the gunk out of the microwave can seem sacrilegious.

 I was firmly of that mindset, until someone sent me a Tribble in a swap, and I used it one day to scrub something firmly burnt onto the stove, and it worked so darn well that I finally saw the light and went on a small dishcloth/scrubby spree. They do take up precious knitting time, though, and they don't look at all impressive on your Ravelry notebook, so I gave it up again in favor of hats and mittens and fingerless gloves and a myriad of other more respectable projects, until I got into a miserable knitting slump where even the sight of a knitting needle made me queasy (being pregnant had a bit to do with it). There's nothing like a little instant gratification to get you out of a dark place like that, and dishcloths are about as instant as you can get without straying into crochet. You can easily make one or more every week...

So my dishcloth drawer is filling up. It's at a perfect height for Silas to get into, so he can mop up his own inevitable spills, which he does with great enthusiasm.

Couldn't find the scrubbing pic, so here he is loading the dishwasher

When he was sick this week, I went to that drawer to find a cloth to sponge his feverish brow, and found a heart-shaped dishcloth to make him smile. There are reasons to knit dishcloths.

The tribble

Patterns I love that start with D:

Double-breasted Bunny Suit

Drop-stitch Cowl - instant gratification of the super-bulky variety (free!)

Dwarven Battle Bonnet

Duck - absurdly cute baby booties (free!)

Doctor Who scarf (free!)

Danish Hearts - crochet (free!)

Doily-style Dishcloth - my first dishcloth (free!)

B is for . . .

. . . My baby, the birthday boy.

Silas is 3 today. He is my little ball of energy, always go, go, go. He's the subject of many blurry photos.

He attracts dirt like a brand new white carpet does.

He loves his baby brother.

He is brave.

That is a real, live, very tall, moving horse that he's sitting on so casually, with only one hand on the saddle horn.

He's got the beat.

Obviously, I'm pretty smitten with my beautiful baby boy, not so much a baby anymore. He really is getting to be a big boy now, but he'll always, always be my baby.