Category Archives: crochet

Oct21

Pumpkins

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Another busy week around here.  Lots of fall fun, including a trip to the pumpkin patch.  We’ve had several house-showings, which is driving us a little crazy at this point.  I think we’ve given up hope of actually selling, and just wish people would leave us alone.  Why do we keep giving free tours of our home to people who will just say things like “oh, it’s so cute!  We just love it!  But we needed an extra bathroom.”  Or first-floor bedroom, or extra square footage, or garage…it’s always something that we clearly didn’t have based on the information in our listing, but for some reason people want to come see it (and not buy it) anyway.

This photo was an accident–he looked away as I was taking it, but isn’t his hat adorable next to the real pumpkins?  I made that for him last year.  I’d just made a similar one for Dorothy and she insisted the new baby would need one too.  Obviously she was right.  Speaking of her being right, today she was putting on her ruby slippers and talking to my mother-in-law.  She said, “when I wear these shoes, people always say, ‘are you Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz?’ But I’m like, ‘ummmm, no, I’m Dorothy from the city.’” 
When did she become such a teenager?  She also seems to have a particular interest in a boy from school, in a way that seems to indicate to me that she’s got a budding awareness of “special” boy/girl relationships.  She always tells me what he’s up to, talks about him often, and last night after church choir (which they also both participate in) she said, “C. sat next to me at choir, then I patted his back, and he went [ insert giggle silly face with tongue sticking out and full body wiggle].  Then after choir I gave him three different hugs.”  Oh my!

Today we made cookies, without boys.  (Except Worth, I guess, who was kept happy with pea crisps while we baked.)  The last few years I have tried several different recipes for pumpkin cookies, but to be frank they all sort of suck.  I mean, the are edible, they made from butter and sugar after all.  But they aren’t good like pumpkin-bread-in-cookie-form or anything.  Today I thought I’d try a different route and make a recipe for applesauce cookies, but sub in pumpkin.  I also added pumpkin pie spice, and substituted chocolate chips for the recommended raisins.  They taste good but are too chewy, and the bottoms basically scraped right off when I severed them from the cookie sheet they were stuck to.  Parchment might have helped with the release, but not the texture.  I think it must be hard to develop a pumpkin cookie recipe because of all the moisture in cooked pumpkin.  If anyone has one, please let me know!

In between house-showings and pumpkin patches this week I did something that makes me feel really smug and obnoxious–I ordered my Christmas cards!  I know it’s early, but it was this gorgeous afternoon, the kids were playing out front, and from the basement I’d just unearthed the holiday dress I’d purchased on clearance last year for Dorothy.  It has a matching dress for her doll, which is always extra special.  Dorothy saw it and had herself and her dolly dressed in no time, so I popped the baby into this little fleece Santa suit left from Dorothy’s babyhood, and clicked away.  I got adorable photos of both kids in their holiday get-ups, so I figured I might as well finish the task while I was on it and selected a pretty photo card online.  Now bring it on, season-accelerating commercial world, I’m ready for you!  Before you even change your displays from spooky to Santa, my holiday cards are done.  Pow!

I am a dork, but you are reading my blog–please love me anyway.  :)

Oct4

Brrrrrr!

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 I love fall!  The first chilly days are such a rush, I have no idea why.  I really dislike cold weather (like January/February) but the preview days in fall are just gorgeous.  It was fun to bundle my family up in new crocheted things this morning.  Dorothy and Worth are wearing wool pumpkin hats and I’m in a sweater I made last year but was too pregnant to squeeze into.  It’s a terrifically soft alpaca that I scored for cheap at, of all places, Tuesday Morning, then ran out of and had to pay out the @ss on the Internet for more.  Oops!  But I love the sweater.  It is based on a pattern (the Cupcake, from the Happy Hooker book) intended as a fitted, cotton spring thing, but I used a larger hook and improvised a bit to make a warmer tunic to layer with.  I hate being hot in sweaters, but this one has some breathability.

And a new hat for me, finished just today.  I used yarn that Rob bought me for our anniversary and a free pattern from Ravelry, the Bonita Hat.  I love the colors he picked out and I’m trying to pretend it doesn’t itch.  I may give it a rinse in some Eucalan next time I’m washing woolen kid stuff and see if that helps.

Worth looks totally adorable in the hats I made for him last year while I was pregnant, but I’m afraid I’m having a little trouble squeezing them onto his sweet enormous noggin.  I remember looking up in a book the “average” head size of a nine-month-old when planning this winter’s hats (he’ll be 9 months in December), but unfortunately these are tight.  But for now I can still squeeze them on, and I love this stocking one in particular, which was worked on no particular pattern and with the goal of using up some scrap yarn.  Cutie boy!

Sep8

Fall in the air

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So the weather went cool this weekend, and all of the sudden my bright and fun summer bag no longer seemed appropriate. Yet I wasn’t fully ready to break out the fall colors (it was, after all, back to something like 97 today) so I pulled out a project from last summer. It’s bright, but the wooliness of the yarn makes it seem a little more fallish to me. Anyway, it made me happy to get it back out. I crocheted it out of odds and ends yarn last summer based on a pattern in Crochet Today.

We had a low-key but nice holiday weekend. Here is a picture of the kids in the yard, getting some good use out of their sunhats before we trade them in for the woolly kind. I have to admit that rather than enjoy the gorgeous weather, I spent a great deal of weekend time inside ogling tiny vintage campers online, which was totally fun in its own way, so I don’t actually regret it. :) I think teardrop and other tiny (meaning 10 to 12 foot) camper trailers are just so cute. (Search for “teardrop trailer” on Flickr if you don’t know what I’m talking about!) I think we may buy one, and then I’ll have the fun of personalizing it, not to mention making great adventures with my little happy campers!
And last but certainly not least, here is my big preschooler all ready for her first day of school. She had a really great day. Highlights for her included walking across an alley to the playground in a herd (not holding any one’s hand!), building blocks, playing house with a panda toy, and being given a personalized cloth place mat at snack time that will be laundered and reused every day. My favorite quotes from her were, “the guinea pig was not as big as I expected. I thought it would be like a real pig,” and “guess what, Mom? We get to go back tomorrow!”
Sep5

A resting rug

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Orientation at Dorothy’s preschool went fabulously. We’re so excited for her to attend this great program. I feel like the teachers share my values and that she’s really going to benefit from this year or two, and that the harmony between the school’s values and mine should make an easy transition on to homeschool if that is indeed the route we take. Hooray for the start of something wonderful and new!

At orientation they told us each child needs a satchel-style bag and a resting rug. I’d already taken care of the bag, but she didn’t have a rug yet. I wasn’t sure what the other kids would have–if everyone else had a plain bath towel, I didn’t want my little princess to tramp in with some fussy handmade setup that would make us seem show-offish or materialistic. But the example our teacher showed us of a resting rug was actually a simple little floor quilt with a hook for hanging on their little hooks, so I decided to fix Dorothy up with one on that model. We tucked the baby in for a nap and then headed downstairs to the fabric stash where Dorothy selected purple as a primary color, and I dug out several fabric scraps, some hand-me-down fabric, a thrifted shower curtain, an old stained tablecloth, and two thrifted sheets that all came together in a pleasantly purple way. I just cut 3 inch strips of various lengths to make an intentionally haphazard stripe pattern, and I like the way it turned out. It’s solid purple on the back and I sandwiched an old stained bath towel inside to make it comfy for lying on the preschool floor during their wind-down time. She loves it and has slept on top of it in bed the last two nights. I told her when she lays on it she’ll feel like Mommy is giving her a great big hug.

And here’s a little pirate booty! I crocheted dark grey longies with a skull and crossbones motif on the bum when I found out I was pregnant with a boy, last fall. I was concerned he’d grow out of them before cool enough weather came, but fortunately I could still stuff him into them (and enjoy seeing how cute they looked) yesterday.

Aug7

Thinking ahead

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Yes, it reached 102 degrees around here this week, but inside the air-conditioning I was working on a new hat and scarf set for Dorothy. When I went to Joann last weekend I knew I better come home with more than just fabric for Worth, so I also picked up some inexpensive yarn for Dorothy. It’s just acrylic, but it’s soft and should wash well, and with her fickle tastes there is always the possibility she will never wear it–I’ve wasted good wool on her before. I paid all of $4.50 for the yarn (at half off) and there’s enough left for another project, so I feel good about not making any particular investment in it. It’s a simple bulb-shaped hat that I fitted to her head as I went, and the scarf is just five rows of double-crochets with a little scalloped edge. I love how quickly bulky yarn works up! I used double-strands on the hat so it would be extra warm. The flower is an oversized version of the flower from this pattern. It seems a little overstated for the cap of a four-year-old, but, well, that’s what four-year-olds like. It’s adorable on, and I told her I will now always be able to spot her in her rainbow hat playing on the school playground once cool weather comes.

Aug5

Some projects and a nap strategy

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This tank was an embellishment from earlier in the summer. I thought I’d photograph it on me to show how the sun design wraps around, but I never remember to. I love how it turned out and I’ve worn it over and over. It was another $5 tank top from Target, and I used a compass to make pencil circles on fabric for the sun design, cut them out and attached them to the shirt with double-sided fusible web (Wonder Under), then zig-zagged around them on the machine. It was inspired by a beautiful shirt I saw on someone at an art fair last year.

And after all my fussing over kids’ sunhats earlier in the summer, Baby Worth went and outgrew his and I had to go at it again. At least by now I think I’ve been able to establish a good work flow for hats and this one came together quickly. I used Simplicity 5695. It looks very New Orleansish to me, in a good way. Definitely not a sweet teddy bears and bunnies kind of hat, but I think he likes it.
And speaking of that baby, he’s taken a high-maintenance turn the last few days. He’s waking up screaming at night, is spending less time contentedly playing with measuring cups on the floor, and is refusing to nap for more than fifteen minutes at a time. I’m not sure if the source of his discontent is teething or a new develpmental milestone (he’s creeping backwards–watch out world!), but I’m trying to strategize how to keep us all sane and happy and I seem to have worked out a good nap plan, at least. He seems to be sleeping lightly and will wake up fully after just a few minutes if he doesn’t see me there with pats and reassurance, so today I put him down for his nap on the sofa next to me and I sat there with my crochet and coffee for an hour while he slept. It ended up being a sweet hour where I got to admire his perfect little sleeping body, take a quiet and restful hour myself, and make some progress on a crochet project too. Now I might be disappointed after this stage passes and I can tuck him in upstairs by himself again!
Jul29

A jar cozy

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This isn’t a new project, but just one I was using and enjoying. Last summer I crocheted cozies for the repurposed glass juice jars we use for water. I put little handles on them and they are very cute and portable, and they both insulate the jar and keep it from getting broken if I want to grab one on the go. It felt like a nice way to use up (gifted) scratchy acrylic yarn I wouldn’t want to wear or put on my babies. I just crocheted a little mat the size of the bottom of the bottles, then did double crochets in a round all the way up the side. I used several stands of yarn together so it would be extra bulky.

In other news, we’re really enjoying our hiatus from house-selling. Our goal is to have it back on the market in two weeks, but in the meantime it’s nice to not have the constant threat of a showing hanging over our heads. In a funny turn of events, however, the house is actually pretty clean right now because I just bought a steam mop and Dorothy and I are both so charmed by it that we keep using it. I love the idea of being able to keep the floor clean and chemical-free as our little wee one becomes more mobile and has the floor as his new realm. We’ll just hope the charm of using the mop doesn’t wear off in a couple months. (Ha!)

Jul10

The obligatory baby-in-sunglasses photo

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Baby Worth is outgrowing things faster than I can photograph them. I keep finding things I thought he wouldn’t wear until later, only to discover they are already tight! This turquoise and lime green crocheted soaker seemed enormous when I finished it, but is now (at first wearing, since it was with a stash of supposedly “too big” clothes) already snug around the legs. This is a good excuse to put it on him a lot in the next few weeks anyway. I love wool soakers over cotton prefolds in this heat even though it seems counterintuitive, because unlike PUL covers (or plastic gel-filled disposables–ick) they are so breathable.

Jun20

Feet, fathers, and a cold jar of something

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I haven’t had much to blog about this week. While recovering from a summer cold, I’ve been spending most of my down time backing up photos and burning our family movies to DVD. I don’t even try to “keep up” with things like that–I just take care of it all in one big effort every six months or year or so and that seems to work well enough. It’s fun when I do, because we have a great time reviewing Dorothy’s progress and re-watching some favorite old family movies.

The picture above is Worth’s feet this morning. I made these shoes (crocheted then wet-felted) during that last painful week of pregnancy, when I just kept churning out booties and hoping to go into labor. I watched the Olympics while I did these one night. I love them, but I don’t know what they are supposed to be. Jester feet? I think they look a little like leaves, as if his chubby little legs just sprouted out of them. I’ve been waiting for him to grow into them, and now he has. Fun!

This project was actually from a couple weeks ago. I was tempted by a set of clear plastic iced tea tumblers at Costco, but felt like I didn’t need any more drinking plastic in my life. So I assembled this instead. It’s a wide-mouth canning jar with a stainless steel drinking straw. I used a metal punch to poke just the right sized hole in a heavy-duty plastic lid, so it’s reasonably spill-proof, easily washable, not plastic (except the lid), and cheap! This week I’ve been guzzling juice out of it as I try to kick this cold. This size jar fits nicely in my car drink holder, but I can use any size wide-mouthed jar.

And last but not least, Father’s Day! Dorothy and I put together a nice little gift bag for Rob with a Dorothy-decorated coffee mug, a picture for his office, a whole stack of Dorothy art, and an impish pair of cufflinks from Etsy with little treasure maps on them. I think he likes it all (although he unintentionally attempted to dissassemble some Dorothy art that was supposed to stay folded–oops!), and now we’re off to spend the rest of the afternoon appreciating him however he wishes!