My Rhinebeck sweater is back on track. And just in time - how did it get to be October already??!

Here's about 7 inches of the body, worked in the round. Can you believe that that's just ONE skein of the Shelridge Farm worsted?! And what's really cool is that in juuuust the right lighting, you can see very subtle color variations in the green. Now I have to jot down some design notes of my work so far and do some math so I can keep knitting. Only 19 days left!

And only 30 days until Halloween. (And you thought Christmas was a busy time to be a knitter!) I started wee one's baby Viking hat but I'm knitting it along with my beginning knitting class and I can't get too far ahead of them so I couldn't knit too much more on it. Instead I moved on to making the wings and the braids.

Only one more week of hat class, so I should be able to have this done in time for a reveal on Leif Erikson Day. Then I can focus on the boys' costumes. I may knit hats for them to wear with the costumes I'm sewing. These Mac & Me hat patterns (thanks for the link Zelda Zunk!) are so funny, I feel like I've got to make at least one. The ghost hat would be a perfect way to top off B's ghost poncho. And S's Spongebob is going to need a Krusty Krab hat, no? Take off the big black eyes, add an anchor and a bill and it's perfect.

Only 30 days....

Wee one has a new stuffed friend - it's turtle buddy from Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing. This pattern looked so cute and I just happened to have a fat quarter of this Kaffe Fassett print that seemed perfect for a turtle. Two hours later and it's a turtle!

I love his funny little turtle butt. But man oh man, was it hard to turn that tiny tail piece right side out! Oddly enough, the entire pattern was both more and less difficult than I was expecting. Amy has bent the rules alright, so anyone with sewing experience, be sure to follow her rules. Don't go tracing your pattern pieces and then cutting them all out before reading the pattern like I almost did! Karol uses this clever technique of sewing two layers together along the pattern outline, which goes faster and makes things much less fiddly but it means that the pattern pieces don't actually contain any seam allowances. But not all the pieces are done like this: the body pieces are cut out and sewn together normally with a 1/4" seam allowance. So naturally I got all confused and was never quite sure I was doing things correctly. And then I had all these questions, like how much should I stuff the pieces, and how far in should I sew the basting line, and where exactly should I position the legs and tail and head, and how big of a stuff/turning hole should I leave open in the bottom? There are are lots of helpful drawings in the pattern, but not a lot of specific details. Again this may only be a problem for folks like me with enough sewing experience to expect these sorts of instructions, but not enough experience to know that you don't really need them. After making the thing, I can see that if you just use your best judgment on all those things, it's gonna look adorable!

Isn't it cute how the wonky seam line gives him a funny little frown?! It's so cool making things from this book and seeing how they come together. My favorite part was after the top and bottom were stitched together (right sides together, of course) with the head and all the legs all tucked inside, you turn the whole thing right-side out by pulling all the limbs through the turning hole - it was just so turtley!

Hey, it's all green things this week so far...

More mystery yarn from Clara of Knitter's Review and the forthcoming The Knitter's Book of Yarn. These are soooo soft and fuzzy. While I was trying to figure out what they are, I realized that I don't really know too many fibers that give yarn a lovely halo. I'm betting these are probably some fabulous fiber that I've never seen before like qiviut or something. Yuuuuuummmmmy.

These next two yarns are, according to Clara, "bast fibers". I had to look that up! My fingers have some guesses, but I haven't actually worked with any of these fibers before. My hands like soft. They can find alpaca, no problem. They looooove alpaca. Rhinebeck is usually all about me touching something, liking it and then discovering that it's, yup, alpaca. It's never a bast fiber, I can tell you that! But it was cool to finally read about what bast fibers are and how they are produced because I've been reading this Czech book to the boys for years about Little Mole (Little Mole cartoons are shown on a popular German kids' program) and how he gets help from all the animals in the woods to make some trousers out of flax. Flax - a bast fiber!

Look, he combs out the fiber on hedgehog!

The spiders spin it, the hardworking ants build and work the loom, the crayfish cuts it and the weaver bird sews everything together.

Yarn makes people (and cute woodsy creatures) happy.

It occurred to me as wee one and I were walking the boys to school one morning and the chill was turning her little hands pink that I could knit her some mittens. I should knit her some mittens. It's a little bit embarrassing that she doesn't have any mittens.

I quickly pulled out some leftover Kitpicks Swish and Zoe Mellor's Adorable Knits for Tots and whipped up these stripey little hand warmers. The green will go well with all her wee pink jackets and sweaters. I really like this pattern because the mittens are knit flat (I'm all lazy like that) and the smallest size is knit without a thumb because you can't get babies' thumbs into those thumb holes anyway. Plus, they knit up super fast - I cast on last night after all the kiddos were in bed and all I've got left to do today is seam up the sides and weave in the ends!

So naturally it's going to be 80 degrees today.

To close out a week of green here at the blue blog, we've got my big green self-healing mat. We spent some time together last night cutting strips so I can start making a quilt!

We're strip piecing in my quilting class, which means that we're sewing two long strips together first, then cutting them into smaller pieces. The paired pieces are combined with other pairs to make four-patches, which make up the majority of the quilt top.

I wish I was one of those random-is-best, just-grab-two-and-put-them-together types, but I'm not, so I've sort of planned out all my little four-patch squares ahead of time. Ooooh, I just love 'em! After the four-patches are sewn together, they'll be framed by more strips. And I'll have to plan those out too. It sounds a little fiddly and annoying, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Playing with the fabrics is definitely a big part of it. It's like putting together 20 of my favorite yarns from my stash. When do you get to do a knitting project like that?!

My mommy made me a dolly that I love to cuddle with.

And my mommy sent me my new favorite, favorite, favorite sewing book Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. I pretty much want to make everything in this book. Everything! And thanks to my quilting class and my success with the Bend the Rules Sewing book, I've become deluded enough to think I could make most of them too.

And here to celebrate Leif Erikson Day....

we have intrepid living room explorer, baby L, discovering new worlds (like the camera case),

and looking super cute in her new baby brunhilde hat.

The hat was really fun to make, the details like the bobbles, wings and braids are very well explained in the pattern and the final result is just adorable. I made wee one's hat extra big so she can wear it all winter long and next year too. My favorite part was doing the braids. As I was braiding the i-cords, I thought, this is the first time I've fixed my daughter's hair. Awwww. (Yes, I've made her hair before, but that was just one big hair helmet - this time I got to actually give her a hair-do.)

Now I hear that the real Vikings didn't actually have wings or horns on their helmets and even I'll admit that the blond braids are really more Helga the Horrible and Monty Python Spam than anything genuinely Viking-y. But I can't help myself, I love it!

Yes, wee one is a chubby girl. She's got the cheeks and the big baby legs and big hands to go with 'em. So the mittens I knit for her one night last week while she was sleeping ended up being ridiculously small.

I went back to the book and knit the next size up. You know, it's only been a week, but I had totally forgotten how soft and squooshy this Knitpicks Swish is. It's sort of made it a pleasure to go back and reknit these mittens.

But before I get ahead of myself, I still have to try this new one on her before I knit its mate. Fingers crossed that it fits! Big fingers.

Remember all those hats I made for wee one from Itty-Bitty Hats? Now that it's chilly again, I've been putting them on her. And here's how she wears them.

Not at all. What she does is immediately take them off and cuddle with them. I think all those nights snuggling with her blankie has made her very fond of the feel of knits. (Oooooh, something I understand very well!) But she might just be a little too fond of them if it means she won't ever wear a hat! Oh, she'll wear a store-bought jersey hat, but all these knit hats have simply become head-shaped loveys. She'll play normally with the fabric turtle buddy I made her, but she only wants to snuggle with her knitted dolly. I can't wait to see what she does with the mittens!

The quilt pattern instructions say to assemble the blocks in a "pleasing manner". Now who would have thought that that one simple sounding step would take so long?! I was up late last night pairing up four-patches and frames on my first quilt and I've only sorted about about half of the blocks.

I haven't even begun to think about how the completed blocks should be arranged, but I can already tell that this is going to be some kinda crazy patterns-and-colors-all-over-the-place quilt! I think I'd have preferred to use about half the number of fabrics and repeat the same four-patch combinations throughout the quilt, but this is the quilt I'm making in my beginner's class and they called for us to choose 18 different fat quarters and to mix them up pretty randomly. I love all the fabrics I chose, but all together, there's a lot to look at.

As a little antidote to all this randomness and chaos, I'm also putting together the pieces of the Easy Lap Throw from Bend-the-Rules Sewing.

Okay, it's not exactly un-busy, but it is controlled and I am totally in love with these super cool ruler fabrics from Moda (you'll notice that some of their multi-color ruler fabric worked its way into my class quilt above. The colors were just too perfect not to use it!!). I found these richer, monochromatic versions online at purl patchwork. Amy Karol suggests choosing three solids and three coordinating prints for this quilt. I immediately knew that I wanted to use these fabulous rulers for the "solids" and then I thought that the coordinating flower bow fabrics would be super sweet. Unfortunately the rulers ran crosswise from selvage to selvage, so I couldn't cut them running lengthwise down the quilt top, but I still love 'em like this - the colors are just so vibrant. Now that I've settled on the placement of the coordinating patches and see the whole thing as a unit, I can decide on the best fabric for the binding and the backing. Which means one more visit to purl patchwork online. Grin.

And speaking of purl patchwork, they are selling a fat 8ths bundle to make the amazing color wheel quilt from Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts! Swoon. This is something I soooooooo want to make someday. It's like the Dale ladybug sweater that is so captivating that it makes you want to start knitting just so you can be good enough one day to make it. Well, I made the ladybug sweater and now I just want to keep quilting so that someday I can be good enough to make that freaking awesome color wheel quilt. And if I can get the fabric bundle from the quilt creator herself, then maybe I'll save myself an hour or two when it comes to design time!

Ha! The solution to the knitted-hats-are-only-for-cuddling problem: the adorable woodland elf hat from Bend-the-Rules Sewing.

Made of wool felt (Amy Karol even recommends making this with an old sweater that you've felted!), this hat was super easy to sew up. The felted wool won't ravel, so turning up the edge all around is totally stress free (Amy says no pins!), and the flower is just traced onto felt, stitched right onto the hat along the traced line and trimmed. Couldn't be simpler! My seams didn't quite meet up at the tippy tippy top, so my version isn't as pointy as the book version, but it still came out cute, cute, cute. Like the other Bend the Rules projects, it's pretty much foolproof.

If you make it, don't worry if it doesn't look like much after you first sew it together. Once the edge is turned up and the flower and ties are added, it's fabulous!

Gotta go....

Today I was hoping to show you some pics of a new finished project or maybe share a little review of a big new knitting book I've been enjoying, but then life got in the way. An after-school playground accident, a trip to the ER, one brave little boy and one worn-out mommy means there'll be no knitting post today. But we do have stitches - three to be exact!

B is back at school telling his story to all his little friends and I'm recovering at home with wee one, some crappy tv and a big bag of hershey kisses. Knitting to resume tomorrow.

I'm so relieved to have finished this just in time for the fall weather. The shrug is a perfect way to keep the chill off of wee one without adding too much more bulk to the whole baby bundle. She's usually wearing a dress over pants and so really only needs some covering on the sleeves and upper body anyway. This pattern - Sirdar Baby Bolero #1676 - was discovered by one of my best buddies, Shannon, who knitted a tiny version of it for wee one when she was still a work-in-progress. Now that wee one is seven months old, she needs a larger size, so it was up to me to make a bigger one. And get this, now that I'm making a baby bolero, Shannon is making her own wee one - go congratulate her!!

The pattern was great. It was simple and the result is really cute. As with most all Sirdar patterns, that pattern pic you see on the cover is probably the worst picture you'll ever see of the garment, so don't go by that. After watching Shannon and Johanna make many very lovely Sirdar things, I've learned that you just gotta trust that it's going to look way better than their kinda blah version of it.

And how much do I love this Rowan soft lux yarn? It is so snuggly soft and the sparkles are just right for a classy and sassy little baby garment. It was such a pleasure each time I returned to this project and picked the yarn up again. It wasn't the exact right gauge, so I had to play with the numbers, as per my usual. I think I ended up making about a 1 yr size, which means that there's a good bit of extra room in the body and sleeves for wee one to grow into.

So how does wee one like it? Let's see...

Hmmm, what's this?

Wow, it's got sparkles.

Hey, you have a camera... me wanty....

Fact: my Rhinebeck sweater is a failure. The body (and that crazy green color - aaaaah!) just won't work for me. Poop! I've still got some ideas and more Shelridge Farm yarn to make it work, but not for Rhinebeck.

Fact: all my recent (and best) finished knits have all been for wee one. Exhibit A: the pinwheel sweater. Exhibit B: the wee hallowig. Exhibit C: the baby viking hat. Exhibit D: the baby shrug. Need I say more?

Conclusion: The little cutie may look innocent enough, but she has clearly stolen all my knitting mojo. And if I can't get it back this weekend at Rhinebeck, I'll have to resign myself to knitting only fabulous baby knits from now on. I know, not the worst fate ever, but still I haven't given up yet. I've packed two new projects in the knitting bag for the trip just for me!

Hey, come visit me in the authors' tent at Rhinebeck on Sunday! I'll be working on a project from Charmed Knits and would be happy to sign your book, talk Harry Potter, or just knit with ya for a bit. I should be in the tent around 11:30 for about an hour and again at 2:30, so stop on by!

You may have heard there will be a few other cool authors there like Yarn Harlot, Mason Dixon's Ann & Kay, Sharon Turner of Monkeysuits, and Clara Parkes of Knitters Review. Can I just say that Clara's new book, The Knitter's Book of Yarn: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing, Using, and Enjoying Yarn, is awesome!! What an incredible book. I wanted to give you a nice, long review of it yesterday (because there is so much in it to tell you about) but yesterday was about wee one's worst day ever and I didn't get anywhere near the computer, so let me just real quick say that you should definitely check it out. And if you're at Rhinebeck on Sunday, you can get Clara to sign it for you, then use it to figure out what to do with all the amazing yarns you bought. I'm bringing my copy!

See ya there....

What a beautiful weekend we had at the sheep & wool festival in Rhinebeck! Sunshine and warm temps meant that knits were mainly for shade.

Wee one never needed to wear her pinwheel jacket and I certainly didn't miss my failed Rhinebeck sweater. Me and wee spent Saturday casually touring the barns and occasionally playing on the grass with the Knitsmith gals.

We drove up with Johanna and her baby and met up with Lisa, Dana, and Dani and a whole busload of Bostoners that Peta drove up on the Yarn Safari bus!

I didn't take many pictures at all (see why below) and absolutely none of yarn. It was funny to look back and see what I actually decided to snap a photo of.

A cutie patootie dog sweater display.

The llama lovables at a stand that always has cute things (I took a pic of their bunny slippers two years ago).

And one of the lovely quilts that many of the vendors had in their booths. That's it. That's all my photos from Saturday. I did buy some yarn though.

Handspun, colorfully dyed angora/merino from my favorite vendor, Jamie Harmon. Looooove her yarns! This should someday become a little poncho-ish something for wee one.

And this fun hat from Morehouse (can you believe that they're closing the store - only online after this year - so sad). I bought this for me, but I have a feeling that the boys will want one when I'm done with mine.

On Sunday, there was the big author book signing sponsored by Merritt books. What fun! So many cool authors. I really hope they do this again every year. I got my book signed by Ann & Kay and saw all the amazing samples from their incredible book. I saw Clara, who had the loveliest booth ever (everything she does is lovely!). I had to visit Stitchy's booth, which was intentionally a bit less attractive with all of her hilarious kitschy stitches finds like beer can crochet hats. Wee one was strangely drawn to one of those ridiculous and slightly creepy yarn clown things on her table. Yikes! At my booth, I sat next to Sharon Turner of Monkeysuits (still one of my favorite kids' knitting books ever - and have you checked out her latest monkeysuits patterns? so cute!!) and Teach Yourself Visually Knitting and Teach Yourself Visually Knitting Design. She was so cool!

I had all my samples out and wee one wore one of the elf hats and yelled for folks to stop by. My favorite thing was when kids would wander into the tent with mom or dad and glance disinterestedly at the tables until they saw mine - 'oooh, I love Harry Potter!'. The samples and books were repeatedly mobbed and mauled by little gangs of preteens. It was funny. I enjoyed getting to meet all of you who stopped by. I'm glad to hear that so many of your are enjoying the book.

So did I find my lost knitting mojo while in Rhinebeck? Report tomorrow....

PS - Wee one found and broke the camera the day before we left for Rhinebeck, so I had only the cell phone, which had no reception up on the fairgrounds and kept telling me that its picture memory was full (too many pictures of wee one on there, I guess) and the old camera, which takes crappy pictures (thereby necessitating the purchase of the now-broken new camera). So please excuse the minimal quantity and quality of the pictures here in this post and in the near future. Thank you!

Maybe, just maybe I've regained my knitting mojo. I brought two projects to Rhinebeck that were for me me me and I actually knit successfully on both of them. Woo hoo!

First, I started one of my favorite projects from my book, Ron's animal crackers hat. Last year I dyed some bulky wool I got at a yarn swap in some fun colors. Turns out I've got the right number of colors with similar variations as in the animal crackers hat. I had no idea when I was dyeing it, but the yarn is perfect for this hat!

On the drive up and sitting in the author tent, I managed to make it a little more than halfway through the colorwork around the bottom of the hat. I can't wait to get to those crazy fun braids!

Next, an actual me-sized sweater: Frances from Laines du Nord "Simple Knits 5". I fell in love with this sweater as soon as I saw it. I think it'll be flattering and has the cute button collar which is crucial while I'm still nursing. I cruised through all that ribbing in the car in the dark and am now on to the stockinette. This is fabulous no-brainer, fool-proof knitting!

The yarn is Jaeger luxury tweed that I found at a Wild & Wooly clearance sale. It felt nice in the bag, is a lovely pink, and was on sale - can't beat that! But now that I'm knitting with it, I'm loving it even more than I thought I would. It's an alpaca/wool blend and the alpaca makes it all soft and snuggly and the merino makes it all sproingy and squooshy. It's so cool. And best of all, it's just for me!

Mojo back, knitting on.

Remember those little (too little!) green and white striped baby mittens I was making for wee one? Last time we checked in on baby's cold hands, I had one little mitten still to rip out and one big mitten all done. Well, finally I've got a finished a pair, but they're all white now.

I love the green stripes and will finish the striped pair, but I felt like the white would go well with everything so I made a plain pair first. I did feel a little stupid after a week when I had one big stripey mitt, one small stripey mitt, and one plain white mitt, and no pair at all. Luckily, it was warm last week! It's not warm anymore, so we'll be having a trial run some morning very soon.

If you're anything like my boys (and you are, aren't you?), you've started to get a little worried about the status of those Halloween costumes. Never fear, Spongebob and the friendly ghost costume are well underway!

I stayed up late this evening piecing Spongebob's shirt and pants together and sewing hems and edges everywhere (uugh, is it ever a pain turning up the edge in this sparkly slippery "ghost" fabric!). Both costumes are pretty much done now though, with only details like big eyes and a tie for Spongebob left to add. I scored a great red plaid fabric on sale at my local quilt shop for his tie - I'm so excited about that find! Oh and B still wants a big oversized hood to cover his head and I've got to try to make up some kind of Krusty Krab hat to top off S's costume.

I've pretty much made up both costumes so far. The ghost is based on a fun poncho from Simple Gifts to Stitch and really was very simple to make. S's costume was a little trickier since Spongebob is so boxy, and yet I didn't want to just stick S in a giant box. I finally decided to make him an open-on-the-sides Anouk-style garment, like a soft Spongebob sandwich board. Two layers of flannel should give it enough weight and ties on the sides should help the front and the back stay lined up properly. We'll see....

Try on is scheduled for tomorrow and then I've got, what, like five days? No problem. Everyone reassured now?

The boys couldn't be happier. They stayed up to watch some of the game every night of the ALCS as the Sox came back against "the Clevelands" and the World Series, sweeping "the Colorados". Poor B though was so tired last night that we couldn't wake him up to see any of the game. We seriously could not wake him. (They'd spent about two hours yesterday afternoon playing baseball on the playground.) B finally woke up at about 5am in a sleepy daze, crying - not so much because he'd missed the game, but because he felt it wasn't fair that S had seen some of the game and he hadn't. Twins! Once he was fully awake and understood that the Sox had won, he cheered up pretty quick. And both of them were all smiles on their way to school, where they met up with about 500 other grinning kids wearing Red Sox shirts and caps. A big thanks to the Red Sox for all the smiles!

No time to knit today - I'm off to buy more Red Sox gear. The boys requested one Lowell and one Big Papi shirt, so wee one and I are off to get 'em. Woo hoo!!

Today's the day! I've been busy transforming the felt and satin fabrics into Halloween fun. The boys' classes are having a Halloween party at school today and visiting a local senior center in costume, so they got to wear their costumes this morning to school. And I got to get some preview pics...

B "loves his ghost costume" (direct quote!!). After the basic shape was done, I added some big black eyes to the hood and then he asked for some spiders and spooky details. I rushed out to JoAnn's Fabric yesterday morning and grabbed the last two pieces of black felt that they had in the store to make some spiders and a big "BOO". I'll be making more spiders today while he's at school and tonight I'll hang some of that fake cobweb stuff all over it, so he's even more ghosty. He walked at least half the way to school with his arms up and you could tell he loved being a ghost. I had sort of poo-pooed it as a kind of boring costume idea at first (bad mommy!), but he is such a character, he is totally making it work.

Spongebob was a absolute blast to make! I used the sewing machine to draw on all the face details and just stitched down the top of the tie (since fabric will stick to flannel on its own). S put it on the first time and giggled, saying, "the tie is right near my penis." Ha! He's such a goofy kid, a perfect Spongebob. The Krusty Krab hat wasn't done in time to be a part of the school costume, but it's looking great and will be the perfect final touch to add to the costume for this evening.

This year has been a real experiment for me in coming up with costume patterns and details all on my own. It's been fun and freeing to try things out in this low-pressure, no-fit, just-for-fun project. I've learned a lot, feel so much more comfortable with the sewing machine and am excited to get back to my other sewing projects. Right after I change my needle of course - layers upon layers of felt and flannel and satin and this one is DONE!

See ya tomorrow with photos of the whole family, including wee viking and mommy....