Now that it's December (the boys actually stopped eating breakfast this morning because they HAD to run through the house and change all the calendars), it's time to get going on the holiday knit gifts. One felted bowl for my great aunt, coming up! A skein of some pretty, pretty Manos, a quick peek into the One Skein book, and in about an hour, I've got an almost finished bowl. As usual with my quickie hat projects, I knitted this in one sitting until I needed dpn's and then stopped knitting rather than get up off the sofa to get the other needles. I was asleep on the sofa about 15 minutes later. Dang pregnancy, totally interfering with my late-night knitting!

The boys have new big boy bunk beds! They're so excited. They told their friends at school, my friends at a holiday party, the crossing guard, pretty much everyone we meet.

They even helped Daddy put it together.

That is, once we got all the pieces. I had to drive back to IKEA to get all these missing screws and bits.

Go ahead, count 'em, that's over 220 missing parts! It took the nice lady at customer service more than 15 minutes to gather them all up for me. Before I left home, hubby had instructed me, "no matter what they give you, count them before you leave," so I went to the restaurant for some meatballs (I'm pregnant, so naturally I got hungry waiting for those parts!) and counted all those little pieces. And wouldn't you know it, I was still 32 pieces short. Back to customer service, more waiting, and then, of course, more food.

Wee one can now claim one of the boys' old beds (now where did we store those side slats to covert it back to a crib??). The latest ultrasound shows her sleeping away, dreaming of IKEA furniture.

One more holiday knit gift to add to the list! How did this happen?

I swore I wouldn't do any holiday knitting this year. My list for the holiday gift knitalong blog consisted of two overdue baby sweaters already on the needles and two craft projects to do for the boys (more on these later!). And then came the felted bowl (still awaiting felting) for my great aunt, who always gets a knitted gift - come on, you remember the hotties! And now, the man's cashmere scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts (yes, there are corrections for this pattern). I dug this lovely, but long neglected cashmerino aran out of the stash and I hope I can turn it into a handsome man scarf for a family friend fast.

After this one though, no más!

This is what the boys used to say when they were little and something looked colorful and yummy to them. (Thank goodness they would ask! Usually it'd be like paper or some sort of small choking hazard toy.) And it's all I can think of when I look at this Trekking yarn.

One front panel of wee one's Candace sweater done! I like the way the color sequence came out this time, with mostly brown and pink and cream and one little stripe of the orange near the top. The front panel took just over one complete color repeat, so that means that to make the second side match, I'll have to wind off pretty much a whole 'nother front panel's worth of yarn to start at the same point. I'm going to have some pretty weird leftovers after this one's done!

The x's and o's are done at last! Oooh, I love this little sweater. I just want to squish it and cuddle with it. It's so snuggly and cute. It's was really a perfect combination of a great sweater, a great pattern and a really great yarn. Hugs and kisses to everyone involved: Louisa Harding, Miss Bea, Rowan, and all the adorable little babies who inspire us to make these sweaters. I thoroughly enjoyed knitting this one (maybe that's why I dragged it out for three months - ha, ha). I gotta give it away, but I think wee one needs one of these for sure!

So not only is that one loooooong overdue baby sweater finished, but it's the first holiday knit gift done. Woo hoo!

So this is what I'm planning on making the boys for Christmas....

I saw this book at Rhinebeck and bought it for a friend. Then for weeks afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept asking myself if I'd really ever make one of these silly creatures and then I thought it'd be great fun to make some for the boys. I ordered the book, showed it to the boys and they really seemed to think it was a cool idea. (They even keep the book in their room now!)

They each picked out a favorite creature in the book and wrote up a little list of the specific characteristics they want their sock monster to have. You probably can't read it all, so I'll tell you that buck teeth and a sticking out tongue are at the top of the list. And three eyes, they have to have three eyes. Of course B wants a yellow monster and S wants a red one, so I'll be on the lookout on my weekend shopping trip for funky red and yellow socks to transform into their monsters. Look for me in the sock aisles of NYC!

NYC was great! I got all my Christmas shopping done (and boy are my arms tired!). And I even squeezed in a few minutes of shopping for myself at Purl.

There's some Mission Falls cotton for one of those LMKG children's cotton hats (I never actually made one of them with cotton!) and some pretty pink yarn I've never heard of before (Pear Tree Merino) for another sweet baby hat for wee one (check out the super cute Tante Sophie patterns! I got the last one shown on that page. How can you resist that baby face?). I even picked up a few fat quarters of fun, girly fabric from the the new Purl Patchwork store.

That place was so nice, I momentarily started dreaming of taking up quilting (but of course, I don't have the room or the patience for quilting so that will remain a dream).

I visited my mom while I was in the city and look, she wore her native sweater!

We had yummy comfort food at Sparky's.

I like my new camera phone - can you tell?

And then she let me raid her sock drawer for socks for the stupid sock creatures.

A red argyle sock creature for S and blue/yellow argyle creature for B - they couldn't be more perfect!

Once I had those silly socks in my hot little hands, I couldn't wait to get started on the boys' stupid sock creatures. This book is so funny - it doesn't just say to cut, but instead instructs you to hack and slash with swashbuckling strokes.

beginning...

check out my middle there!

Look at how silly they're going to be!

(don't forget, buck teeth and sticky-outy tonges are still to come)

And it's about time I finished up that bowl so I can felt it, don't you think?

...and end.

Off to sew and felt!

Ooh, this is a very manly scarf. It's all nice and texture-y, but not pretty or pattern-y. It reminds me of a nice houndstooth or check. Very male. And the beige cashmerino, what man wouldn't wear that?

The Last Minute Knitted Gifts pattern calls for a chunkier cashmere, so I've adjusted for my smaller gauge, casting on 35 sts and working in pattern as directed. Since I've subbed yarns and gauge, I'm not sure how many balls of the cashmerino I'll need. This first ball got me to 15", so I'm hoping that three will be enough (the pattern measurements say the scarf should be 50" long). If I'm lucky, I'll only have two more late nights of knitting (and we're talking, I'm so tired from working all day and really should be sleeping, what with the pregnancy and school tomorrow, but I've got to knit these few little Christmas gifts... nights) to go.

Two candy fronts!

We actually live over what was once a candy store. I think that's kinda cool. Wish there were places like that still around nowadays. Now we're left to satify our nostalgia with sock yarn and online searches.

My favorite Christmas album playing on the ipod.

Presents wrapped and ready to ship to the in-laws abroad.

The fire hydrants have their snow flags.

The boys made candy houses after school.

And I can cross one more present off my knit gift list!

I went for a good manly length of 40 inches on the man's cashmere scarf, just enough to cross over your neck and tuck under the lapels of a manly jacket. It only took me two and a half balls of the Cashmerino Aran and four days to knit this one. (Gotta credit an unexpectedly warm day and long playground session yesterday for the early finish.) It has to be sent too, so it's good that it went quickly. A perfect Last Minute Knitted Gift, I'd say!

Ever have one of those days? After dead duck day, things that you were excited about, things that were good, just make you sad or mad. After dead duck day, you plod along and do the things that one needs to do, but you just can't feel about them the way you did before. Last week ended with a big ol' dead duck day for me. And I'm having a hard time caring about that big ol' freaking duck any more.

(some ducks can be very big)

Now that's it's dead duck day plus three, I say enough about disappointments and disillusionment; Christmas is not the time of year to be focusing on those sorts of things (not that we've had any time to put up a tree or get out Christmas decorations - we may have to forgo that this year). Still, the decorations are all around and the Christmas music is never too far away (usually I feel like I can't escape it, but this year I'm thankful every time I catch a note or two). I'm not religious, but I can really appreciate the idea of a holiday celebrating a birth and a new beginning. So I'm off to an OB appointment to focus on the impending birth in our family, instead of some silly dead duck.

Who could be sad or mad about dead duck day when this happened?

S lost his first tooth!

And this:

hubby rushed out to get us a tree before only the puny ones were left

And this:

kindergarten holiday concert - awwwww

And tonight I may even get to knit. Ooooooh, good times.

Actually, no. And why should it be, it only went through the wash four times. Okay, I couldn't wash it in super hot water because I was doing real laundry with it and I couldn't stay by the machine to keep it from going through the rinse, so it's not like we had optimal felting conditions. After five washes, though, it finally went from this...

...to this:

And the boys made some paper flowers to fill up the bowl for my great aunt.

How very merry.

Even baby sweater sleeves can seem long. So, since I'm feeling generally crappy anyway, why not tackle baby sweater sleeve hell?!

I loooove how the color sequence came out on the sleeve and how it's just slightly off-set from the sequence on the front. Who would have thought that sleeve hell could cheer me up so much?

Two knitty nosewarmers for the boys. Did I mention that they added these to their wishlists? Well, they've certainly mentioned it to me - every cold early morning walk to school since November! S said that he needed a little hat for his nose and I said I just may know of a way to make such a thing. Famous last words, eh?

I used all the leftover yarn from their kool-aid dyed caps for these - so they'll match their winter wear perfectly - and knit them in about an hour last night at 9:30. It would have gone faster, but I was half-asleep already after a loooong day (work, work, work, and then two holiday playdates for the boys). And I fiddled with the pattern a bit. My gauge was larger than the original (I used worsted-weight wool instead of stretchy cotton sock yarn), and the increasing section of the short rows looked a little too gap-py without double wraps. So I went back and double wrapped them like in traditional sock heel short rows.

Now they just need a little blocking and some ties. I can't wait to see them on the boys. That red one is going to look like a clown nose, for sure! Who knows if they'll find them too silly to wear or not, but I'll get at least one picture. I promise!

I spent the night before Christmas Eve braiding ties (wow, that took a long time!) so Santa could put the nosewarmers under the tree for Christmas morning.

click here for the video! (Windows Media file should work on Internet Explorer
or try this link for Real Media version or this link for Quick Time version)

And I even got a little something knitty for Christmas! Hubby (with the help of knitbuddy, Dani) got me the Itty-Bitty Hats book (something I've picked up and considered buying for myself a dozen times) along with yarn to make the little striped cherry-o hat. So I did.

I started it while playing board games with the boys (which I can do virtually hands free, 'cause when we're playing Mousetrap the boys always want to do all the building, plus they like to move the all pieces themselves, and S built a lego die roller with his Christmas legos that spits the die out of it's mouth to roll it!). And then I relaxed in the evening (with a very excited wee one in my belly) by finishing off hat and cherries.

Hope your holiday was merry!

I had a blast searching etsy this year for fun, funky Christmas gifts. Like ebay though, it can be overwhelming to search for stuff, so I wanted to tell you about some of the awesome sellers I found and the things I really loved.

First, monster shirts for the boys. These were the only clothes the boys didn't unwrap and then immediately toss aside on Christmas morning. (Actual quote: "Wow, I wonder what's in this one. I hope it isn't more clothes!") In fact, they asked to wear the monster shirts that day and the next. They're from NissaLissa. She sews these super cute monster faces on tees and onesies and did a custom order for me for the boys (note the favorite colors on the ears!). And I simply couldn't resist this little pink monster onesie for wee one to match.

And then I went amigurumi shopping for my friends. I found so much fun stuff, like the Ogilvies at Chez Michelle and the coolest amigurumi and softie seller ever jellibat. I was also very tempted by sock monkey items like this sock monkey dress, pretty girly things like this precious little smock dress, funny baby clothes like the cute creatures from Lemon Cadet and the most beautiful applique ever at Ponies & Sugar Cookies.

Etsy, good.

It's not just all baby sweaters and baby hats around here. I'm making an actual baby! Time for another belly shot:

And this belly's moving! Check out the video:

click on picture for Windows Media version
(click here for RealPlayer version)

Dance, baby, dance!