i finally got around to sewing the elastic into the waistband of lily's skirt. i found this elastic in my grandma's sewing basket. i have no idea how old it is, but given that it cost 29 cents i'm guessing it's seen a few years.
but luckily, as i said in the title, the old gal's still got a little snap left in her - so into the waistband she went!
-melissa
ps - you know what this means... finished skirt photoshoot coming soon!
i also finished up my zen circle baby blanket for bundles of joy this weekend.
it's just lucy of attic24's flat circle tutorial zen-crocheted out to a 40" diameter and then trimmed with one round of sc and one round of picot edging.
can't you just picture a sweet little baby rolling around on the blanket?
i can. and it has totally made my day. yay!!
-melissa
sometimes when crafting you feel the drive to push your self, challenge your creativity, learn a new skill.
other times you just need to crochet a giant circle.
-melissa
happy monday to you all! i've just been crocheting away on lily's skirt since last we talked.
have i mentioned how much i love how fast crochet is? because i love how fast crochet is. odds are good i'll finish this little number up tonight!
in other flowerly news... my first iris of the season has bloomed:
these iris came with the house and i've always thought they were ugly. i just want them to be purple. but still, it's always exciting when they begin to bloom.
and in other random starwars-nerdiness-news i got a new awesome key chain from the copper fox on etsy to go with my old school princess leia key chain.
all-in-all a pretty good start to the week!
-melissa
joining up with ginny at small things for the weekly yarn along:
reading: mocking jay by suzanne collins - brian and i are about half-way through the final installation of the hunger games trilogy. and oh goodness things are heating up!! if brian and i weren't reading this together i totally would have stayed up half the night last night finishing the book!
crocheting: an andalucia skirt (rav link) for lily. i love how quickly crochet goes - i began this project only monday and already have made quite a bit of progress. i'm loving the fan pattern too - it's very zen-inducing and soothing to knit. (or crochet, as it were.)
what are y'all reading this week?
-melissa
i've been avoiding finishing up my brother's birthday present (a nintendo kleenex box cover - rav link) because after finishing the main body i thought the rest of the details would be a fiddly pain.
but i finally made my self sit down today and finish it, and you know what? turns out it was a real fiddly pain. ugh. but ones baby brother only turns the big three-oh once, so i guess i can suffer through a few hours of fiddly nonsense for him just this one time.
it's a little lumpy, but kinda cute in that old-school-nerd-city kinda way.
-melissa
my march donation item for bundles of joy is completed.
another ripple afghan (rav pattern link). i love this pattern, it is so comforting and soothing to make.
i hope it continues to bring soothing comfort as well as snuggles and joy to its new owner and her/his family.
-melissa
joining up with ginny at small things for the weekly yarn along.
this week i am rippling along (pattern: neat ripple by lucy at attic24 - rav link) and have just finished reading the cats of rockville station by jean craighead george. the book is my pick for the new bookclub that lily has created. here are the "rules:" there are only two members - lily and i - and we each read a book, then trade and read the other person's book. then we meet at the coffee shop, eat a giant cookie and talk about the books.
we're supposed to have our first meeting next wednesday after school and we still need to trade. she keeps changing her choice of books though (every book she finishes she decides is the book she wants to choose), so i need to pin her down before i start reading.
and speaking of cats..... here's some completely adorable shots i got of peapod this past weekend:
books, yarn, and cats... what more could you ask for?
-melissa
forgive me bloggers, it has been 1 month and 9 days since my last ripple...
given that i had all this yarn just sitting in my basement:
there was really only one solution i could come up with:
oh sweet ripples... how i have missed you.
-melissa
my "somewhat binding" pledge to not buy any yarn this year (while still working) has, from time to time, made things somewhat more complicated. matching up the ideas in my head with the yarn i have in my stash has lead to all kinds of adventures, from striping random colors to crazy guage issues. as i said in the title, sometimes sleeping on a problem helps, but other times... notsomuch.
for example, my brother's birthday is in a week and i wanted to make him the old school nintendo controller kleenex box cover i saw on ravelry. i had some random grey cotton yarn in my stash, so that was good. but then i decided that instead of following the pattern i'd rather crochet it and just use the pattern as a guide. (why did i decided this? i'm still not sure.)
what resulted is what i've taken to calling the frankenbox. a very cobbled together box cover that if i was tugging on it would fit perfectly on the kleenex box, but if left to its own devices would lump and frump and not sit nicely at all.
wednesday night i dramatically threw it on the floor and declared to brian that there was nothing to be done but to rip it apart and start anew tomorrow. i went to bed grumpy at myself for wasting an entire night's crafting time on this ill-planned venture.
but when i awoke it was if the yarn gods were singing in my ears....just get it wet and block it to fit on the box!!! so i did.
and, glory be, it worked!
but that left me thursday morning with a drying kleenex box cover and nothing to take to my thursday morning knit meetup.
again i felt the yarn gods singing to me.... this is the perfect time to start a little "yay your pregnant" present for your sister. (oh- have i mentioned that my sister meghan is pregnant with her third baby!! yay!!) i had a couple of skeins of the super dreamy rowan cocoon in my stash that i knew would be just perfect. but what to knit?
i was running very short on time (as in 10 minutes to get myself out the door) and the first thing that popped into my mind was to make a sleep sack. but i didn't have enough of the cocoon yarn on hand for that. so the second thing that popped into my mind was to knit a sweet little milo vest for baby to wear this fall/winter. so i grabbed the pattern, yarn, and needles and ran out the door.
i got to knitting and realized that rowan cocoon is bulky weight and the milo pattern calls for dk weight yarn... i decide to just make the newborn size, thinking that my family tends to have large babies, baby will be 3-6 months old in the winter anyway, and (as i always think when i'm knitting for babies) babies will eventually be every size, so it will fit at some point.
cut to last night, i'm cruising along on my little vest, but i keep looking at it and thinking... this seems a little bit big for a newborn size... but i kept reminding myself of all the reasonings in the last paragraph and just kept knitting.
eventually though, i had to face facts - "a little bit big" might be an understatement... and i got out my measuring tape and did a little calculating.
ahem... i'd like to think i can blame the squirrel, but turns out the item i was knitting was sized, not for a 3-6 month old, but for a 2-3 year old. hmmmm...... i did the only reasonable thing i could think of at that point to solve the problem and just went to bed. because sometimes sleeping on it helps, right?
well this is one of those notsomuch times.... my vest did not magically shrink overnight. now i am facing facts and ripping it out and then going to ravelry to search for a more appropriate project to celebrate the coming of my new niece or nephew.
-melissa
