Munckin Pictures, Sewing, and Knitting

First, a new picture of the munchkins, taken a few days ago. A likes to hold his brother almost as much as B. You can tell it was still early by her crazy hair! Both of the older kids like to be next to J. A will climb up on the couch and pat his back. B did the same to A when he was this age too.
B loves to help with J, and here she is helping to snap up his clothes after a diaper change.
For the few weeks following the holidays I didn't want to knit anything too complicated, so I made this fluffy little bolero for B out of some Lion Brand Fun Fetti that I found in the sale bin at Joann's. She loves it, of course!
Two weeks ago, I washed, carded, spun, and dyed some Dorset/Romney fleece from a sheep named Maggie, who lives at Ewe and I Farm. It made a wonderfully bouncy and lofty yarn.
The yarn was knit up into soakers, which were auctioned off to help a friend whose family business was lost in a fire last month. The hat ans booties were made with Lion Suede. The hat features an owl cable, but the brown really didn't photograph well. I designed the booties on the fly. I knew that ribbing in this yarn wouldn't work well, so I added the button and strap instead. The diapers for this and the girly set were knit by my friend Rachel from the Darling Diaper newborn pattern. The brown wool for the i-cord and embroidered owl came from a sheep named Maxine at Serenity Farms. Her wool was a dream to spin! It was so soft and bouncy that I had a hard time putting it down, I wish I had more!

Here is J modeling the booties. They are nice because they don't kick off easily!

The girly set has the patterns, except the hat has a scalloped edge, and the booties are mary-jane style. I added croched flowers to the soaker ties.

A and J were needing new soakers to go over their diapers, and I haven't had the time to knit as many as they needed. So I've been shopping in Joann's remnant bin for fleece, and made them some embellished Sweet Baby Soakers. They fit like the knitted ones, but are so much faster to make! I had fun adding the goldfish, and A liked them too!
I have more knitting in the wings, and I hope to have pictures soon!

Finished Bag, Spinning, and Munchkins

A few weekends ago we went on a shopping trip (a very rare occurrence!) since we had a gift card to use. B loves taking pictures, so we bought her her own digital camera. It is very basic, and she just loves it! This is how she can be seen quite often these days! The same day as our shopping trip, we went to a local pick-your-own farm and picked 7-8 lbs. of blackberries. B had fun, but I think that A enjoyed himself the most! It was a beautiful cool day after a week of 100*, and he just sat in the shade and ate every blackberry that he could find, green, red, black, he didn't care! Here he is catching a nap during the ride home. You can see the evidence of his enjoyment!
A has been walking around lately playing with all of the play food, but his favorite is the corn. He made short work of his ear of corn at dinnertime the other night!
When I was resizing the pictures for this post, I came across this one of B at about 15 months, just a bit younger than A is now. There is definitely sibling similarity here!
I finished my bag over a week ago, but didn't have a chance to line it until last week. The lining was actually the most difficult part of the whole bag. I must have miscalculated on my first attempt, because the lining was way too wide! And then I had to stitch the top of the lining to the bag. I love to sew, but not that kind of sewing! But I like how the bag turned out, and it is a bit bigger than the one that I usually use now, which will be nice when out with the munchkins. I also finished my spinning for a swap that I'm in. This is a dyed corriedale top from TheFiberDenn that I spun from the fold into a worsted weight yarn with fairly high twist. There about 275 yds and 4 oz. I liked the top because it had sections of white, and then sections of various shades of green. I like the way it turned out, and would love to try other colors dyed this way, if I ever get the right equipment.

More Morning Glory Spinning and Ideas

Here is my first skein of Morning Glory yarn, 250 yards and 2 oz. I'll be happy if I end up with 500 yards of the blue. It is a little heavier than fingering weight, and it is nice and fluffy! Just what I was aiming for.
Now the rest of this is all Cary's fault. Ever since she said that the blue reminded her of morning glories, it has been downhill from there! I have all sorts of ideas bouncing around in my head for morning glory patterns is lace and in stranded knitting. Since I didn't want to try to match the colors in the blue morning glory blend, I made a leaf blend instead. I used bright green, emerald green, and just a touch of green and yellow firestar, with the same 50% BFL, 25% silk, and 25% alpaca base. I really like the way that these turned out as well! I am trying to decide if I want to use beads in this design or not. We'll see how the swatching goes, and I may need to save some of the ideas that I have for when I have a bit more time to play with them.
I'm also working furiously on my Sockapalooza socks, and am nearing the toe of the first and hope to finish it and cast on the mate this weekend. I'll have a picture of them when I'm finished!

Morning Glory Batts

Last week I dyed up some fibers to blend on my drumcarder. This is the first full batch of blended fibers that I have worked on, and I'm really pleased with my results. I started with 4 piles of fiber, each one containing 1/2 oz. BFL (blue-faced leicester), and 1/4 oz. each of alpaca and silk. The BFL and alpaca had some purple as well. I had hoped for a bit of a darker color, but since it was my first time dyeing as well, there was quite a few areas that didn't get dyed. It made me glad that I used light grey alpaca instead of cream! I think that it added a bit of depth to it. I also added a sprinkling of blue and bright pink firestar in the last pass through. To blend the three fibers and the colors, I started with one pile of fiber and carded each one in the same way. I started with a thin layer of BFL, then I made a "sandwich" of alpaca, then silk, topped with BFL, and fed that in all at once to keep the silk from bunching too much. I carded each pile into two batts, and then split them in half and carded them with each other. Then I took one of these batts and blended it with half of a batt from one of the other batches to make sure that I had a fairly even blend. I added just a hint of dyed firestar (a few grams) to the last pass to give a bit of depth and shine.
Cary saw a picture of these batts and said that they reminded her of Heavenly Blue morning glories, and I just love those, so the name stuck! I ended up with 8 batts and have spun half of them, and hope to ply what I've spun tonight. They were are dream to spin, and I actually decided to draft from the fold, which I don't do often, to add a bit of loft to the fiber as I was spinning it. Holding the bit of fiber over my index finger didn't work as well as I would have liked, so I placed it over my thumb instead, which worked surprisingly well. I was aiming for a fingering weight, so we'll see how well I did with that tomorrow! I'll be using this to knit one of my shawls for Journey to a Shawl.

Dyeing and Spinning

Last week I received a beautiful Cormo fleece from Cormo Sheep and Wool Farm. The fleece is a beautiful variegated grey, and almost completely free of VM. IT is just a joy to work with! I really wanted to use this fleece for my Journey to a Shawl project. I spun the sample below and it was a bit heavier than I wanted. Then I broke out the dyes for more sampling!
I had some Romney/Dorset wool from Ewe and I Farm on hand, so I pulled that out to dye with the silk and angora for my shawl blend. I really like the way the blues and purples came out, and I know that I want a lot less green! But that's what sampling is for!
Here are the two batts that I carded, a base of grey Cormo, and a handful each of dyed silk and angora (I know, very exact measurements!). I didn't want to over card the blend because I really want some streaks of color in a mostly grey yarn, and it worked really well!

I spun one batt into a heavy laceweight, and the other into a light fingering weight. The Cormo makes a fantastic lace yarn, but I felt that the colors were a bit too muted, so I'll spin some plain laceweight at a later date! The fingering weight is springy and soft, and there were nice streaks of color too. Unfortunately we are having some computer issues, so I can't upload the photos of my samples! So now I need to dye the rest of my silk and angora, and wash up the rest of the fleece so that I can spin up 1200 or so yards of yarn that I'll need for my shawl. I don't have a pattern yet, but I'm sure that I'll devise one before I finish my spinning.

Some Sock Spinning

After finishing my Maple Garland Shawl last week, I decided to do some spinning. These are some luxury sock batts from Abby at Franquemont Fibers. They were very easy and a joy to spin. The batts are 68% superwash merino, 30% silk, and 2% firestar. The sparkle is very hard to photograph, but it is subtle.

I spun a fairly fine single and then chain-plied the singles to preserve the three color gradations. The color is called Orchid, but I think it looks like a sunrise, with the blue/purple, red/purple, and the yellow/pink. I ended up with 212 yards and 2.5 oz. three-ply yarn. I need to find/dye a complimentary colored fiber to spin for some heels and/or toes. I really prefer ankle socks, so I can get by with a little less yarn that average. And I will knit these toe-up to make the best use of the yarn that I have. This will probably be my project for our trip to Nashville for graduation in the beginning of May.

The only green around here is yarn!

Well, I haven't been knitting much lately, but I've been spinning and sewing. I did finish knitting the afghan, but sent it off before I got a picture. But is is loved and being used.

I finished up my second skein of yarn for the Interweave skein swap for Julie. It is a mixed fiber batt and I spun it thick/thin. I hope that she likes it! The color is called Godzilla. The snow in background is some left over from our storm this weekend.

After struggling for several years with crib sheets that don't fit after a few washings and rip at the corner seams, I decided to sew a few of my own. I bought the flannel on sale at Joann's and used the pattern at Bundles of Love as a rough guide. Here is B's sheet, which has pink guitars, to match her pink guitar (she's a girly girl!). My mom made the blanket and pillow out of patchwork flannel and chenille. It was her first project on her new sewing machine. B carries the pillow downstairs with her in the morning, and back upstairs for bed at night.


I made A's sheet out of a cute train print. The little blanket bunny is a modified version of the one at the Lionbrand website, but I rewrote it for a different yarn and gauge. A loves it and plays with it before he goes to sleep and after he wakes up.

Since we moved here just over a month ago, we have had some snow every week. The last one froze into a 3 inch sheet of ice. But on Sunday we hat 6 or so inches of wet snow. My husband was shoveling, and B wanted to join him. She made snow angels and played, and he helped her make her first snowman when he was done.


A spent some time outside too. He was my intrepid little explorer, trying to dig out the rocks and pick at everything. He didn't like his mittens too much, but he did like to try to see what the snow tasted like!

A Long Overdue Update

It's been a long time since I've posted. I made a bunch of hats and mittens for Christmas gifts, but I didn't have a chance to snap any pictures. I finished up a few last minute projects, and visited both my extended family and my husband's extended family for Christmas. We had a blessed, if exhausting trip. Here's a picture of the munchkins on the Sunday before we left.

I was working on spinning a grey/purple glitz yarn in the two days before we left on our Christmas trip. I really wanted to get it finished in time to take with me to knit during our long drives, so I worked on it while the munchkins were awake, which I usually don't do. As I was spinning, I looked up to see this from my chair (A was just starting to get into things then, now he is all over!):

And her is one skein of the finished yarn, the purple is a little difficult to see:

As soon as we returned home, we started packing for our move halfway across the county. And that is where I stand, in limbo, waiting for our move to be completed. But I have been busy with crafting too, it has made things seem more normal.

My husband loves to play the piano. He doesn't get to play as often as he would like with the kids around, because they love to play too. Here is a picture of B at about 11 months "playing."

A is more active than B was at his age, and at 8 months, can barely reach the keys, but like to play as much as his big sister!

Currently the munchkins and I are staying with my parents while our belongings are packed and moved to our new place. I've actually finished a few things in the past few days. In the three days prior to leaving our old place (do you see a trend here?) I spun up 2 ox of mohair fluff from Margarett at Running Moon Farm. The picture can hardly do it justice. Browns are not really my color, but there is a beautiful range of browns and oranges. I spun a medium singles and plied it with sewing thread to make a loopy boucle. It was kind of fun to make, but it was a bit labor-intensive, so I don't think that I will be making this type of yarn a lot. I spun this for my Spin to Knit secret pal, and the exchange has inspired me to try things outside of my comfort zone. Here's a picture of the two skeins, although they are much prettier in person.

For Christmas, B received a kitchen set from my parents. It is staying here until our move is complete. So she has been cooking up a storm and "needed" a dishtowel. So I whipped this one up on Thursday for her. She loves it! I found some dishcloth cotton in my mom's stash, and designed it on the needles.
I don't like to carry a purse or a diaper bag, but I do need something to keep my wallet, phone, a diaper, some wipes, and frequently a snack for the munchkin in. I have a lovely bag from Rebecca that I received as a gift in a swap. I like the size, but I really wanted pockets. So I found a pattern for this cute bag in the Winter 2006 issue of BHG Quilts and More magazine. The long strap slides through the shorter one to close the bag and form the carrying strap. I like it so much that I bought some more fabric to make another one today. And I made it in just one morning, which is even better!
Sorry to have gone on so long, but I had more to share than I thought! Wishing you all a belated happy and blessed new year!

Knitting the blues

In my last post I forgot to show what else I had finished in the last week. I've been spinning up some blue and green merino to knit into a hat for A. I'll spin up the rest, with added glitz, to make a hat for B. I spun a firm but springy two ply and is 270 yds in the two ounces. I probably won't start the other two oz. for a week or two.

It has gotten chilly here lately, so I took out some fruit hats that I made last fall while I was pregnant. It is a blueberry hat, inspired by several other fruit hats I've seen, but I didn't knit with a pattern, I just used my basic hat formula and added green at the top and a little leaf. I used Wendy/Peter Pan Velvet Touch. It is like knitting velour and, unlike chenille, it doesn't worm. I love this for baby things! It is so soft. So here is a picture of A today, before our walk to the park.

Finished Bee Sweater and FTP Yarn

Well, I finally finished the baby bee sweater. I used about one and three quarters skins of Lion Brand Wool Ease. It's not my favorite yarn, but it is for a mom that I don't think will want to handwash them. My mom fell in love with the bee buttons, and we though they would look cute sewn on to the honeycomb sections. It's my own design, but I don't think that I can write a pattern for it since I just made it up as I went. The hat is my own design as well, but I can probably write a pattern for that if anyone is interested.

I am please with how the hat turned out too. I started without much of a plan, and had no idea what I would do about the decreases when I got there. I think they flow pretty seamlessly, and I really like how the top came out, and especially like the flower-like shape.



I also spent a few days during naptime and a few evenings to spin just under two ounces of rainbow colored Bluefaced Leicester top into a three ply sock yarn. I've never Navajo plyed on such a large scale before, and I really like how the colors maintained their separation, yet blend nicely too. The color is much more true in the picture of the bobbin of yarn. In the skein the colors look a little garish, but they are prettier in person, and I think they will be perfect in the sock I have planned for my FTP (Feet to Prayers) partner.

Busy Week

This has been a busy week and a half. Last week my husband's car broke down. We fixed it, and not wanting to deal with any more car troubles, we sold it last night! It was only listed for two hours before we got a call. Praise God for the quick sale and the much needed funds! We are now down to one car, but that will be okay for a few months. Fall has also arrived here, so I've been strapping A into the Snugli, and have been taking B for a walk every day. She loves to hunt for acorns, pine cones, bird feathers (because "feathers help birdies fly, Mommy"), and various other things that are such treasures to two-year-olds. It is wonderful to be able to do this again after the scorching summer that we had. Since it has been too cool for swimming, I used B's pool to dry some fleece that I washed last week. It was dirty and I had almost given up on it since I usually wash fleece in the sink, but I decided to try the washing machine method since I wasn't going to lose anything, and it came out pretty well. It really is a pretty fleece, a nice variegated grey Corriedale.

I've been steadily working on my husband M's sweater. I've finished the back and am almost to V-neck shaping on the front. I am looking forward to the color sections of the sleeves again. This isn't the greatest picture, but I wanted some natural light.

My mom is going to a baby shower for her best friend's daughter next month and crocheted a blanket for her. She asked me if I could knit a sweater and hat set. The daughter's favorite color is yellow, and since they do not know the gender of the baby, we went with that. They also have a bumblebee bedding set, so I decided to design a sweater with honeycomb cables. Mom found some cute bee buttons that we will sew on the front. I'm knitting a raglan cardigan from the top down. I just started this yesterday, and am pleased with the progress thus far.

I took a break from knitting a few nights ago and spun up one of the samples that I got from Carole at Twin Brooks Farm. She has such beautiful blends. This blend was my least favorite of the bunch, reds, yellows, and oranges are just not my cup of tea, but my mom loves autumnal colors, so I'll need to find something to combine this with since it is only 1/2 oz. and 41 yds.

This lovely skein of yarn arrived this week from Bear Farm Yarns. It is a heathered burgundy and is a heavy worsted/aran weight. It is from their flock of Corriedale sheep. This skein is destined to become a soaker for a dear friend. I started the pattern in another yarn but didn't have enough, so I am looking forward to seeing if the finished soaker matches the picture in my head. Can you tell that I really don't like to follow patterns and would rather design my own!

I also received my Harvest Sock Swap pal, and have picked out a nice yarn for that, and hopefully will get it cast on this weekend. I just need to spend some time and swatch up some of the designs in my head and see what looks good.