The kindness of others!!

One of my pasttimes is reading/posting on a few internet message boards (rather sad, probably) and among my favorites is The Diaper Pin. The crazy knitting mamas there have helped me a LOT with knitting shorties and I always admire their work!

One of the moms dyed her first yarn recently. I oohed and aahed over it, it was so pretty. It didn't turn out at all how she wanted, because she has a little boy, and it was just too girly. I begged her to sell it to me! ;) She didn't bite. Bummer. Then, she posted pictures of this darling skirty she was knitting with it. I had no idea ~ but she was knitting it for Evelyn!!!! I was so amazed at her generousity. Hours and hours of knitting went into the skirty, I'm sure. It fits her like a glove and it's so beautiful. We are sure to get compliments on it wherever we go!

Here are a few pictures of Evelyn, who apparently only wanted to run away from me:







Classic thumb-in-mouth, curly crazy hair, sweet-looking Evelyn!



Thank you again Patti!! You are so sweet to knit this for us. We love it!

Yummy Colorado yarn!

Oooooh aaaahhhh! Isn't it gorgeous?!? We spent last week with family in Grand Lake, CO and it seems that a person can get a LOT of knitting done in a 15-hour car ride....sooo...I was anxious to buy more yarn and not run out of knitting projects on the ride home! ;) My grandma asked about a LYS at the quilt shop and she directed us to Lonesome Stone Fiber, an alpaca farm in Granby, CO about 15 minutes away. It was soooo cool! We petted a lot of pretty yarn...my grandma bought some 100% alpaca and I got the above yarn ~ 2 skeins of the blue which is 100% superwash merino and slated for a sweater for Evelyn. The pink is 50/50 alpaca/merino and is soooo soft!! They were my birthday present from the wonderful knitting Grandma! Thanks! :D

Oh, and I did not run out of yarn on the way home....I don't really enjoy knitting with teeny tiny weight yarn. Blah! :P

Pathetic Quilt Square Attempt!

Okay, so I've been a REALLY bad blogger. Sorry. We had a wonderful family vacation in SD/Colorado and the week before that I was childless but had a whole long to-do list that I tried to finish! (Didn't really. Bummer.)

So here is the first of many posts of crafty stuff. It may take me a few days to get them all done, lol!

First, my first ever quilt square. Ugh. I am not cut out (haha! sorry bad joke) for quilting. See how one edge isn't square? Um, yeah. I first sewed the blue fabric on backwards (doh) and then it wasn't quite big enough all the way to the end and I did not feel like ripping it out. I sent it off to Pin mama quiltlovinlisa to make into a quilt for a mommy who unfortunately lost her 21-month-old daughter just recently. I can't even imagine her pain. We are putting together a "healing hearts" theme quilt for her.

Good thing I'm not going to take up quilting - I bought the fabric at my local quilt shop (and got waaaaay too much, too) and it was spendy!!! Sheesh. Yarn is almost cheaper. ;)

Here's the end result:

Shorties for Ezra

Long overdue pictures here! I've had these finished for a while and they were dry yesterday. I feel yucky. Bleck. :P Stupid stomach bug, getting in the way of my un-interrupted knitting and cleaning and scrapbooking. The girls are having way too much at Grandma's this week, although we are not getting pictures (AHEM!) to prove it. I couldn't get the color right, the trim has more of a green hue to it. The trim and body color are Lion Wool 100% wool and knit on size 7 needles, pattern is sort of a combo of the Belladonna pattern and the Perfection Pants pattern. Neither uses an elastic waistband, that's my first attempt, and yeah, it's kind of "festive" looking! I have another pair of shorts for Evelyn on the needles and the waistband looks SO much better. (Thanks Zersha!!!)

I hope they fit the little Pin baby!

Swish Ruffle Shorts finished!

Ruffle style #2. Super easy to do - Kfab for 2 rows, then bind off. Annoying and time-consuming because you end up with a ridiculous number of stitches at the end and I, for one, hardly have the patience to CO 7,567,235 stitches. Okay that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it sure feels like forever, especially when you're just wanting to get them done!! The yarn is superwash wool from www.knitpicks.com. It's incredibly soft and nice to work with! It is machine washable so these are wear-to-daycare shorties. :)

Action shot ~ see that they are kinda tight over her fitted diaper. They'll fit better over a 'sposie and that's what I intended!

I still need to make a drawstring for the waist, and I'm determined to figure out how to use my lucet if it kills me!! I'm sure it's so easy, but I'm just not getting it. Sigh.

Ruffle shorties are done!

Here they are!

The drawstring is supposed to be a twisted cord...well, it mostly untwisted and it's too thick so I don't really like it. I didn't expect them to fit her either but they fit quite well! The inseam is a little bit long, she has incredibly short legs! They are more of short capris than shorts, really. Brad says they are cute, "in a hippy 60's baby kind of way." lol, I don't think he is fond of the wool clothing. Too bad for him!

Here is an action shot on the darling model:

And another:

Socks and shorts, quite the fashion statement huh? ;) Well, it's cold here today, and rained off and on.

And, just so she isn't left out, here's Oh:

Whenever the camera comes out, she's all posed and ready to say cheese! I told her I was taking a pic of Evelyn's new pants, so she said: Mama! Take picture of my pants! :) So there you go, a picture of Olivia's pants. Pretty exciting huh?

First attempt at ruffles

Well, it was frustrating to say the least! I kept screwing up on the pattern, even though it was simple. You knit the same 3 stitches each round, increasing before/after a set of purl stitches then on the next round purl the purl sts and the increases. Not really hard at all! Ugh. And, I think I've got to watch the Knittinghelp.com videos again because I got some big holes with the M1T/M1F increases that I then tried to "fix" and made it worse. Big loops now. Blah!

Well, here's a pic w/ one leg done and it doesn't look too bad from the outside, anyway!

And an overexposed pic (I blame FIL's camera, lol) of the yucky inside loops:

I'm stalled now because I'm almost out of yarn and my 2nd skein is at home. So, I'm taking a break. I did the first leg with my new 12" Addi turbos and after all that searching for 12" circs, I'm not sure I liked them! Oops. Next shorties I'm going to try knitting both legs at once with 2 longer needles. We'll see how that goes!