the spring blocks (March thru June) of my 2007 block of the month quilt

We're doing our best to summon spring to Boston. I've sewn up the entire season of spring and the boys have hung spring pictures on the front door.

April showers and May flowers

Today's the first day that's felt even remotely spring-like, so maybe it's working!

I've been playing with little monkeys on the bed all weekend! I waited until I had a whole evening to dedicate to sewing, arranged all the pieces of my funky monkey quilt on the bed and sewed them up into 16" blocks.

I love this part of the process. All those little bits come together to make big bits and then the big bits come together to make even bigger bits and so on and so on. It's so satisfying. Way more so than, say, sewing up the pieces of a knitted sweater. Sorry, I love to seam up sweaters, but it's just not as neat and geometric in its progression as this is. Plus, it would be way hard to knit a little monkey butt as cute as this into a sweater!

As you can tell from the last two posts here, I've turned into a quilting dork. We're not too surprised though, since I was pretty much of a knitting dork already. The latest sign of my descent into dorkdom is the quilting book on my nightstand. It's not a beautiful pattern book, like my recent faves, Kaffe Fassett's Kaleidoscope of Quilts and Quilts in the Sun which sit on my sewing table, or a useful book of techniques like Diane Gaudynski's Guide to Machine Quilting, which sits on the microwave so I can browse through it while the baby smears her lunch in her hair. No, it's this book.

we knitters and quilters aren't that different after all, are we?

Stash Envy is a funny little book of articles about funny little things that happen when you're a quilter. It's very much like Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Yarn Harlot book (still my favorite of hers, by the way), with chapters on a wedding quilt that was started much too late ("try making a quilt for the bride and groom. You will find that, instead of an entire year, you will only have 12 months to finish it!"), or the complex algebra of ufo's (for every two good quilts, there's one bad one in need of finishing, mitigating factors include the gf - guilt factor - and the amount of chocolate one has in the house), and, of course, stash envy ("I do not have a wing of my house devoted to tone-on-tone fabrics. I think my husband's unreasonable insistence of having somewhere to sleep is cramping my style."). The author, Lisa Boyer, is a self-proclaimed dorky quiltmaker. Her first book was called That Dorky Homemade Look and is full of silly reasons why your imperfect creations are perfect just the way they are ("you should plan on cutting off about half your triangle or star points. Any more than that is showing off."). Very consoling reading for a beginning quilter like me! And proving that we crafty dorks are all alike, get this, she kniiiiiiiits! And when she's stressed out about quilting, she crochets intricate doilies - omg!

See, I haven't strayed too far afield here with this quilting thing. And if anyone else out there wants to become a quilting dork like me (and some folks have asked for some suggestions on where to begin, so don't think I'm assuming you do!), here are some ideas. Now, I am not a fan of those huge encyclopedic reference books, certainly not for brand-spanking new beginners, but many folks, in response to my own beginner-type questions, have recommended that I get these books: Your First Quilt Book (or it should be!) and Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! : The Complete Guide to Quiltmaking. If I were a total beginner now, I might buy a new book, Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way, which seems to have great pictures, step-by-step info on how to make your first quilt, and tips for making many traditional blocks. Oh heck, I may still get it!

What worked for me is taking a class and that's what I'd really recommend. Quilt shops are wonderful and unlike knitting shop owners and employees, who are, I'm sorry to say, often less than nice, I've found quilt shop folks to be universally open, helpful and friendly. I also watched a ton of those old Simply Quilts episodes too. There's a lot of info in there, especially for beginners. And there's even an episode with Lisa Boyer!

Gasp, I just thought of something. If there are mediocre knitting mystery books out there, there must be mediocre quilting mysteries! Must. go. check. now....

click for video!

In the last few years, I've come across a few knitting books with some awesome baby boy sweaters. But with the boys so big now, and everyone I know having girls, I've had no boys to knit for. The spiral geek sweater, the denim hat and the football hat are the only boy things I've made in years! (And the first two were made for the same kid!) But now friends of ours have adopted a little baby boy. When they adopted a girl a few years ago, I made her this sweater and they were very appreciative recipients, so they're guaranteed another sweater. Especially if I can finally make something out of this book!

Jaeger JB29 (now discontinued)

A few years ago, four or five of us knitsmiths all fell in love with this book at the same time. We had to have our lys order a whole slew of copies because none of us could live without one, or so it seemed. Shireen and Dina actually made several items from the book. Well, now that I have rediscovered this little gem on my knitting bookshelf, I'm determined to make some of these beautiful patterns. Starting with George for our friends' new baby boy.

Former Knitsmith Colleen took almost the same picture when she knitted this sweater!

I have a good amount of "boy yarn" in my stash leftover from sweaters I never made for my boys, so I quickly found this navy handknit dk and got started. I love it so far! I must admit I've missed the blue.

I hope you're wearing red today because it's Red Sox Pride Day! All of Boston is celebrating the home opener today by wearing their Red Sox gear (or red) and donating money to the the Jimmy Fund's Rally Against Cancer. The boys' school participates every year, collecting donations in honor of two students with cancer. The kids all wear red and bring in a dollar each. (If you would like to contribute, you can donate to the kids' team here or directly to the Jimmy Fund here.) The boys went today in Ramirez and Ellsbury shirts and wee one is wearing not only her little pink Red Sox shirt but also her new red pants that I finished up just in time.

 
baby bell bottoms in Knitpicks Shine Sport

Go Sox!

Are you sock monkeys ready for another round of sockapalooza?! I am pleased to say that I am finally feeling ready to start planning number 5. My master webmaster has just had a baby, so the organizational phase here will still take a while. So how about we think about a summer start? It was sort of odd that we were always starting in the spring and finishing in the summer anyway. This year, we can start in the summer and finish up just in time for knitted sock weather! Watch the sidebar for more details in the next few weeks....

The itty bitty football hat (from Itty-Bitty Hats of course) now has a friend: it's an itty bitty football! I sort of tweaked my golden snitch ball pattern from Charmed Knits, spacing out the increases and decreases a bit more and voila, a football. And I stuck a little bell inside with the stuffing so it's like a baby rattle. (This was all Seanna Lea's idea by the way, left in the comments when I first posted about the hat. Brilliant, thanks!! Oh, and as you can see, I went with no pompom on the hat - thank you everyone for your opinions.) Now hat and football are on their way to new baby boy.

But before they go, and just because you gotta see how cute this helmet-style cap looks on a baby, wee one will model the football hat for you.

Isn't that the cutest thing? If she were a boy....

Two boy projects and I go running for the pink yarn again! While working on george the other night, I started thinking of a precious little baby cardigan that Dani made a while back. I couldn't get it out of my head. It's the Bonbon cardigan from Rowan Classic's Mother & Baby.

I had to get up that instant and check the pattern info to see if I could knit it. I got a little shock when I saw that the sizing only went up to 12-18 months. Then I remembered I have 4 balls of a discontinued colorway of pink Calmer in my stash. I did the math and figured now is the time to knit this thing before the baby's too big for it and 4 balls of Calmer isn't enough to make her anything!

I am loving this pattern so far. It has cool bat-like dolman sleeves which are knit right off the body section. The front panels are knit separately and then you join them across the top of the neck and work the back down to the ribbing. Neat, huh? And it has the sweetest little bobble design around the button bands. Of course, knitting with Calmer again ain't too bad either. This is one of those projects I'm going to be sad to see finished cause I just want to keep knitting it!

Puddin' and pie. Showed the girls he only had one arm and made them cry.

George from Jaeger JB29 progressing

Good thing he didn't mention that his cables were crossed the wrong way!

It's the back of yet another wee project, just begun.

This will be the little red smock from Sublime's The Luxuriously Exotic Soya Cotton Handknit Book. (Question: how annoyingly long and pretentious are the Sublime book names going to get?! And then after all those insane names, every other pattern is called "smock". I've actually got two other "smocks" from different books on my to-knit list!) Anyway, getting back to the project/problem at hand, that's Tide, George, Bonbon, and this little thing all begun in the last few weeks. Anyone noticing a trend? My only excuse for this knitting ADD is the fact that all of these projects use the exact same needles. The needles are out, the yarn is about (wee one is now getting into my yarn and dragging it around) and so I start something new. Plus, they've all been such fun and inviting little projects.

The yarn for this one is some Rowan denim in white that I was using to make a little pinafore dress for wee one.

from Erika Knight's Simple Knits for Little Cherubs

I finished the back of the dress last year and put it aside until wee one was closer to the right size to wear it. But now that she's big enough for it, I've decided that she doesn't really look so good in that style dress. She's much cuter in something a little poofy like the smockie I just finished for her (yes, another Sublime "smock" pattern). This smock cardigan pattern caught my eye right away. Although the smallest size in the pattern is 2 yrs, I'm hoping that with the shrink of the denim, I'll get something that wee one can wear now. The cardigan shape should still work well as a little dress, and the three-quarter sleeves as long sleeves should the thing stay a bit long.

So, full of the giddiness of a new project, I'm back at the beginning again.

Bonbon from Rowan Classic Mother & Baby in need of finishing

Aren't those wing sleeves awesome? And the pink. And the Calmer. And we all know that I love making bobbles.

bobble-y front awaiting embroidered flower details

So I'm pretty much in knitting nirvana with this pattern. Although I suspect that might be just about to change. The pattern calls for holding the button band stitches until after the body is knitted, then placing those stitches back on the needles and knitting "until button band, when slightly stretched, fits up front opening". Only slightly easier to read than do, right? I have encountered these instructions before (in another Rowan pattern) and had the foresight to ignore them. Not this time. But I'm not going to worry about that yet. For now the pretty and the pink and the bobbles are enough to keep me flying high.

In a vast conspiracy, anti-blogging forces have prevented me, until now, from showing you my progress on the little white smock cardigan I'm knitting for wee one.

now it starts looking a little smock-y

First, my server was down (or at least my connection to it), then hubby, having just returned from a business trip, gives me my computer back all extra firewalled so I couldn't connect to my photos and then it was the kids' turn. Right now wee one is struggling to keep herself awake to prevent me writing these very lines. But I will stay long enough to report that I have indeed finished the first front piece and have encountered no pattern silliness so far and have no complaints to register. And even in the face of the conspiracy against me, I will endeavor to smock on!

Some recent art and paperwork that the boys have brought home from school....

B's handwriting practice from Red Sox opening day

S's best baseball diamond (attached to fridge with matching green magnet!)

some free drawing in art class

I was a little skeptical about this one until I saw the back.

Heh. Heh.

I spotted the boys on tv as they watched Lance Armstrong run in the Boston Marathon today.

click for the big blurry version

Go Lance! Hi boys!

The wee Tide cardigan from Miss Bea's Seaside is almost done! I finished the sleeves and that pretty pretty edging along the button bands and neck.

This is such a delightful little knit. The lace pattern is quickly learned and fun to knit. And the rest is quick, quick, quick. I have yet to meet a Miss Bea pattern I didn't like.

Totally my own damn fault.

I've been knitting along on the little white smock cardigan ("little red smock" from Sublime's Luxuriously Exotic Soya Cotton book). I completed the back and fronts.

love that little smock-y detail!

I need yarn to start the sleeves so that means it's time to unravel the denim pinafore I'd originally started with this yarn. I frog. I wind. I soak. I hang 'em up to dry.

And then I take a closer look.

Aaaaaack! What's that brown crap on my white yarn?! Okay, I guess my lazy and hasty decision to use some scrap pink yarn to tie the skeins together was a bad one. Doh, doh, dope! Thank goodness my lys still had the ecru denim yarn in the same dyelot. Phew!

Still, my own damn fault.

There hasn't been much talk of my block of the month quilt here lately because, after completing half of the blocks, I was starting to get annoyed with some of the fabrics. The block of the month kits come all packaged from the store with instructions and small bits of fabric just large enough to make the block. I loved a lot of the fabrics and thought that I could live with some of the others, but as things progressed, I noticed that the fabrics I really liked weren't reappearing and those I didn't like kept showing up again and again. I spent some weeks shopping around for some reasonable substitutes for the duds and now am finally tackling the task of picking apart the finished blocks and adding in the new bits.

It was primarily the green fabrics that I was dissatisfied with. In this block, I've chosen to replace the green with some orange that appears in a later block.

Because this is last year's block of the month quilt, practically none of the fabrics is still available in the store, which means that I can't simply get more fabric and sew up a new block. I need to keep the parts of the old block that I do like by taking apart the block seam by seam, carefully removing just the pieces I'm replacing. So this Dutchman's Puzzle block now looks like this.

And the Card Trick block...

...looks like this.

I found an awesome green Kaffe Fassett print to replace this one!

The Spools block also had some yucky green in it.

More blah greens in the Kansas Star block.

I'm switching so many things in this block that I had to completely take it apart.

The Mosaic Tile block was the block that put me over the edge.

There's the wishy washy green, the black with the almost flourescent fall leaves, and then that sparkly lilac in the corners. No, no. I couldn't go on. Not after that. So it too is in pieces, awaiting reconstruction.

Whether this will actually result in a new and improved block of the month quilt or I'm merely rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship still remains to be seen.

This last week has been school vacation week around here so I've spent my time trying to find ways of entertaining all three kids all day long. We'd wake up, play games.

playing Hullabaloo in the morning

Then take off for the playground.

baseball!

Rinse and repeat.

doing the slide all on my own

Miraculously we had amazing weather for the week. And just as miraculously, I actually got some knitting and sewing done. In fact, I sewed up two new block of the month blocks (both including some of the newer fabrics I bought to substitute for the original fabrics I didn't like).

the "Corn and Beans" block

the "Contrary Wife" block

Who makes up these block names anyway? Despite the name, I think that last one is my favorite so far. And the redo of the first six blocks is already underway.

february - new and improved!

Now just five more to do. Again.

A new project for me. Really, this one's for me!

Thea's original vintage cardigan

It's Thea's little golden vintage cardigan. Thea (a fabulous knitter and fellow knitsmith) came up with this cardigan a while ago. She's always just making up her own awesome designs like that. We begged her to write down the pattern for this one and she has! Me and a few others (like subway knitter Colleen) are test knitting her first version of the pattern. It should be up and available on her site this summer!

The yarn I'm using is Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. I had a couple of skeins of this in my stash and thought it had just the right look for this vintage-style cardigan. I've never knit with the Silky Wool before and am thrilled to discover that it's just as lovely to knit with as it looks. It's soft and light with so much depth in the color. And it's showing the design details of the cardigan - Thea's own baby cables - very well.

It's a lot of knitting though. After knitting only baby items for over a year, I'm a bit overwhelmed with how big an adult garment actually is. I'm going to try to knit this one as quickly as I can for fear that if I stop, I may be tempted to start six or seven new baby projects and never finish it. Go, go, go!

The little white smock cardigan is all knit and ready for washing. I substituted Rowan Denim for the original Sublime Soya Cotton, so I have to go through the extra step of pre-washing the pieces before seaming them up. Washing them all together before seaming (along with some extra yarn for the seaming) gets them to do that shrinking thing that denim does all at once, so there's no surprises later on. The only surprise is how much the pieces actually do shrink. I didn't adjust the pattern at all, figuring that the smallest size (2 yrs), after shrinking, should work for my 1 year-old wee one. But this denim thing is not an exact science. Oh, I suppose I could have knit a swatch and measured and washed and remeasured it, but have you really ever seen me do anything like that? I like surprises. Plus, in my years of knitting, I've found positive thinking to be just as reliable as making a gaggle of gauge swatches. So, here goes....

Knitting as much as I can each night - as much as I can without getting my sometimes achy wrist to start acting up again - I'd made good progress on my babycables vintage style cardigan (Thea's soon-to-come little golden vintage cardigan). I was determined to finish the back last night, but couldn't quite get it done. So, this morning, I put aside the laundry (folding laundry would have surely hurt my hand - wink, wink), and instead knit the shoulders to complete the back.

And that's it. That's my two skeins of Lavold Silky Wool that I had in this colorway. I am recklessly knitting from stash these days, regardless of required yarn amounts. Start it and the yarn will follow, I say. And it did. I found more Calmer for the bonbon baby cardigan. I found more Rowan denim for the little white smock cardigan. And after mentioning to the knitsmiths that I needed more Silky Wool in color #24, I found that Johanna had two skeins just down the street.

It's not exactly the same dyelot, but I'm continuing to think positive. Except that I'm pretty sure that the laundry did not put itself away during naptime.