Baby Raglan Sweater

Here's the baby raglan sweater from Debbie Bliss's The Baby Knits Book. All in all, a pretty straightforward, easy-to-follow pattern for a beginner knitter like me. The only problem I had was seaming the pieces all together. What's the best method for seaming raglan sleeves to the body of the sweater? Mattress stitch? Is that what people use? For some reason it seems like the mattress stitch is more for connecting two pieces of stockinette stitching together. Please correct me if I'm wrong. What I ended up doing was crocheting the pieces together, so the crocheting shows when it's turned inside out. Is this what people do? (Yeesh, I really should just join my local S 'n B!) The front looks relatively smooth (if you don't look too closely).

So anyway, I'm undecided if I like this sweater or not. Something about the neckline screams "GIRL!!!" I had a sweater in the 80's with that kind of neckline. Oh, and the body seems a little short. Tell me what you think. Maybe it'll look good on a real baby. Just don't have a human around here that size to try it on yet.

Today is My Birthday!!!!!

I woke up this morning to my little guys excitedly climbing into my bed. They sang happy birthday to me in their croaky morning voices and helped me open my presents. Look at all my loot:

Isn't that fun? Dave took Davey to Fred Meyer yesterday to get all my presents. From what I hear, Davey was super excited to get stuff for mommy, and at the same time very decisive about what he knew mommy would want--lots of pink sparkly stuff (note the toothpaste, toothbrush, sparkly flip flops and hot pink socks). Not pictured are a monster truck that has already been absorbed into the rest of the toys downstairs and another pair of flip flops that the boys took turns wearing around the house this morning. Also, hubby got me a gift card to Gene Juarez, and is taking me out for dinner tonight. Hee hee.

I'm so blessed. Not because of the stuff (obviously), but because God has given me the most precious family. A loving, generous, and thoughtful husband, who, as it turns out, is a fabulous father as well. Two--soon to be three--boys who love to snuggle, hug, kiss, and share their love with me everyday. Thirty-six is shaping up to be pretty good already.

Happy Birthday Keith Mitchell

This is a long overdue post, since Keithy-babes celebrated his 2nd birthday on Feb. 12th. How did my little one go from this:
to this:and now this:

in a mere 2 years? Love you, my sweet little funny boy!!!!

Baby Sweater

I've decided to be brave and try knitting a real sweater. Up until now I've stuck to pretty much rectangular things: dishcloths, scarves, a couple of bags with very minor shaping. Probably the most complex things I've knitted have been (don't laugh) baby booties and and a few of these lovely little egg warmer/barbie doll sweaters:

We had some neighbor friends over for dinner a few weeks ago. She saw my egg warmers and then we started talking about knitting. Turns out her grandmother taught her how to knit when she was a child and she has knitted sweaters without patterns ever since!!!! Huh? She gave me this huge pep talk and told me that I already know everything I need to make a simple sweater. So, by golly, I'm gonna do it. With some help/handholding from www.knittinghelp.com, I'm gonna make this simple raglan sweater from Debbie Bliss's The Baby Knits Book.

I'm almost done, actually. I've completed the front, back and one of the sleeves. So one more sleeve to go, and then I can sew it all up, and I'll be bonafide! By the way, I wish I could say that I was using the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran called for in the book, but I chickened out and went for Lion Brand Wool-Ease instead, thinking that I don't want to waste good pricey yarn on a novice such as myself in case this doesn't turn out well. I guess this little sweater is going to be my rough draft--i.e. wool ease = dressmaker's muslin, right?

Getting Back in the Game

Wow. Can't believe it's been 2 weeks since my last post. It was pretty crazy around here with my hubby off on his business trip. He's back, thank goodness, but it was hard being a pregnant single mom of two. Thankfully my mom came to visit me from California to keep me sane. We did get some little crafts done. Not as much in the good old days when we used to craft for hours in the afternoons when baby Davey was asleep. Davey's napping days are long behind us, and now for some reason, mom and I have different energy schedules. I usually get my crafting done at night after the boys are in bed--that's when I feel like I have freedom; whereas my mom gets her second wind in the afternoon and is all tuckered out by the end of the day. Oh well... it was great having her here, and I've been having pangs of sadness now that she is on her way back home. :(


I need to get my act together and start taking some pictures of things I've made recently. Unfortunately it is so overcast here it almost looks like evening. I'll wait until the light is better. In the meantime, here is a pic of the shoes I bought a few weeks ago to bring me cheer during these dark dismal days. I absolutely love Keens. They make my feet happy. I developed heel spurs from walking around barefoot on our wood floors, so I wear these all day long--esp. in the house. Hmmm...what a lovely bit of trivia.


Now that life is getting back to normal, I'm looking forward to catching up with all my bloggie friends. Sorry for the lack of commenting lately. Can't wait to see what everyone has been up to!

The Man of the House

Here's my Davey--all 4-1/2 years of him. My hubby left on a business trip and gave Davey the lecture about being the man of the house when he's gone. He's taking this very seriously. He's making sure to take care of mommy and the baby in her belly. When I brought him home from preschool yesterday, he took off his shoes, put them in the shoe closet, hung his tote bag on the peg, and then took out his lunch box and put it on the kitchen counter (all without being asked!) Then he climbed up on his step stool, got a glass, and proceeded to fill it up with ice water from the dispenser for me because he knows the baby needs lots of water. Then he insisted on making me toast for lunch. All he knows how to make is toast, and I ate both pieces even though I wasn't really in the mood. He is being a total sweetie. I just hope I don't have to eat toast for lunch every day his dad is gone :).

I made the hat for him before Christmas. He's very into racing cars, and went crazy over the checkered flag fleece.

Fridge Magnets

I looooove Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, MI. They have the most scrumptious bread ever. When hubby and I were grad students there we'd try to get their bread at least a couple of times of month. What a treat. And restaurants all over town served their bread too. One of our favorites, The Grizzly Peak, had Zingerman's brewhouse bread that was just the thing to go with their cheddar and ale soup. UMMM! Now that we live in far away Washington, I just have to settle for drooling over (and getting all nostalgic about) their catalog.

And who is their graphic artist anyway? So gifted! Look at this stuff! Have you ever seen such cute little loaves of bread?
And aside from bread, they sell cheese, wine, olive oil, varietal honey, vinegars...you name it. But the thing I like the most about the pictures is that they are all outlined in black. And the ones in the forefront, if cut out carefully, can be used as stand-alone fridge magnets! I made a bunch of these last year and gave them away. This was before I was blogging. Before I thought to take pictures of them. Here are a couple that I kept for myself.

Time to locate the mod-podge because I'm feeling the urge to make more.

Quilting, quilting....

I haven't posted much about this lately, but really, I've been quilting like a madwoman here. I have a quilteasy machine which is this humongo contraption that takes up my entire dining room table. It makes the actual quilting process fun because I can do my stippling (or stitch in the ditch, or whatever) without having to move a big heavy quilt around, BUT it is an ordeal to set up and take down, which is why I never feel like it's worth it to set it up just to do one quilt. I'm trying to get three quilt tops (and backs--which are also a bit of work because I adore pieced backs) ready to go before I set it up.

I've finished the top and back for one quilt already--the pink bicycle quilt that I posted about here. I'm also working on this monkey/banana quilt for a baby boy (mine, or my nephew...we'll see how it turns out first--wink, wink):

and this:

which is a jojo knock-off of this Denyse Schmidt quilt from the last issue of Country Living magazine:

You should see the state of my sewing room. Tons of projects going on at once. Mass confusion. Huge mess. But I love it that way.