The house hat is done! Soon it'll be on it's way to my contest winner. And I say, a year that starts with a house hat cannot fail to be a good year!

PS - The 12 days of Christmas go until the 6th, but this crafter was only making 6 gifts of Christmas this year and the last one hasn't even been started yet! So we may have to end this season's version of the song like this... For the fifth gift of Christmas, my crafter made for me: oooonnnnne hoooouuuuuse haaaaaat, a swingset tunic, three placemats, foods that you love, and a frame and a pair of booties!

...let me present to you: twelve days worth of crafty christmas gifts all rolled into one... my new serger!

I set aside a couple of hours last night to figure out how to thread the thing and sew, er, serge a seam or two. I'd once watched a serger how-to video that made the whole threading thing seem shockingly complicated, but I had this lovely, delightful little machine threaded for the first time in mere minutes. And the test seam was like buttah!

And sooo fast. I'll be sewing up those dresses and tops for wee one in no time now. Wheeeeeee.....

I will make socks this year.

I didn't knit any socks last year! Not even a pair of worsted weight socks for hubby, who loves to wear thick socks in the house in the winter. I'm ashamed to say that all of his handmade socks have had holes in the heels for a year and I still haven't picked up the needles to knit him a few new pairs. Until last night. My new knit year's resolution was to make him some socks (and possibly bribe him into helping me get the sockapalooza database back in shape so we can finally get sockapalooza 5 up and running). A week into the new year and it's time to get going on that resolution!

The yarn is Yarn for Sox, a good sturdy wool/nylon blend. It's a bit scratchy, but hubby likes to wear his winter socks over thinner ones, so it's all about the warmth. I've made socks for hubby with this yarn before and he's liked them, so I picked this and another color up at a Wild & Wooly sale a couple of years ago when I spotted it. Pretty much all of hubby's socks are 3x1 rib - I can't even imagine making another pattern on his socks! - so all I needed was Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns for the numbers and I was off. The yarn knits up fast on US8's!

Here's to resolutions! Here's to socks! Here's to hubbys!

Wee one's zigzag girl dress before and after.

Can you see how much better those armholes and sleeves are? I took out multiple inches there. On each side! I kept the skirt the same since I'd already added the bias edging to it and I kept the sweet cross-over bodice as well. (Thanks to Shelli for encouraging me to just keep it!) After being frustrated and disappointed with the way this dress came out at first (as well as the second and third times), I think I'm finally happy with it now. The skirt is still very poofy with those giant pleats, but that is the idea of the dress and now, at least, the bodice looks right. If I were to make the dress again, I'd probably cut the skirt to fit the resized bodice and leave out the extra yardage in the pleats. Luckily, wee one is girly enough not to be bothered by having like a yard of fabric around her torso!

pretty poofy, pretty blurry, pretty pretty

Wee one's been wearing it all day and we've already received several compliments - that skirt fabric is so fab, it just makes the whole thing - so I'm gonna finally call this one a success.

Presenting princess wee one. She loves this hat, happily letting me put it on her for photos and wearing it through the rest of the Dora show she was watching.

Let me tell you, there are quite a few beads on that Tilli Tomas Flurries yarn! I used all but a couple of yards of two skeins and pushed every one of those beads to the front of the work, so the hat would be as sparkly as possible. For the crown section of the hat, I used this free online pattern and the body of the hat was Ann Budd's basic hat pattern from Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. It couldn't have been easier to knit and it really does look like beautiful snow crystals covering her head. She's a snow princess!

If you were a purple person would you like these?

I sewed up these simple four-patches (there's 63 of them in total, for a 7 by 9 block quilt) in a couple of nights. I'm making a quick quilt for a friend of the family who likes purple. I didn't want it to scream purple - you know how it is when people figure out you like something and then every gift you get is about that and just because you like cats doesn't mean you want to have cat posters and cat mugs and cat brooches and cat plant holders... - so I chose these batiks in a variety of purpley tones. I love the splashes of orange and green in there too!

So purple people, are they okay?

(Want to see some more purple fun? Check out this video wee one and I spotted on Jack's Big Music Show yesterday.)

Progress on hubby's socks is embarrassingly slow (although, compared to last year's record of sock knitting, this much progress is literally an infinitesimal improvement!). Instead of knitting, I've been indulging in a little light reading, a little lazy websurfing, and a little extra sleep.

One and a quarter is also, not entirely coincidentally, the approximate temperature outside. Isn't that the reason why I started knitting these socks in the first place?! Once I started though, the cold left me wanting only to cuddle up under blankets or keep the warm computer on my lap. Luckily - har, har - this mean cold spell is supposed to last well into next week, so there should still be plenty of time for hubby to enjoy his warm socks in the cold nights to come.

Okay purple people and non-purple people... what do you think of these?

These rail fence blocks are for a second quilt I'm making for other friends of the family, whose taste I'm not so sure about. Well, the thing is they don't really seem to have any particular tastes, no favorite colors, no specific style. Add to that the fact that it's a rather masculine household and I decided the best thing I could do was to go neutral. When I was choosing the fabrics, I was focused on selecting not too fancy, not too stylized, not too threatening beiges and blues. I'll be framing the blocks with a simple sashing of a very neutral but warm golden beige. I want it to be something that can lie around in the corner of a non-descript sort of room and just look like a warm quilt your son would thoughtlessly pull over himself if he got chilly. Neutral but nice.

B, after school: "Did you see the inauguration?"
Me: "Yes, I did. Did you get to see it?"
B: "Yeah!"
Me: "And what did you think?"
S: "It was sooooo boring."
B: "I liked the singing."

Yes, the singing was good. And sometimes even boring things can change the world.

click for a bigger view!

It's the top of the beige/blue neutral quilt! I spent this weekend arranging all the blocks and sewing them together with the sashing and I'm thrilled to see that it came out looking just as I had hoped. I'm working really hard to get these two quilts (this and the purple one) done quickly, so I can send them off as soon as possible. They are for friends and neighbors of my 90 year-old great aunt (I actually made a quilt for her last Christmas), who have been helping her out for a few years now, doing more and more for her as she's become older and less able to take care of her home and herself. I thought they deserved something as warm and comforting as the care they've given her, something that will last at least as long as the time they've spent with her.

I'm off to put together the purple one now... Hope you purple people won't be disappointed!

Wee one has me watching a lot of Dora the Explorer these days. So when I finished hubby's winter socks last night (the first pair of socks I've knit in over a year), I was overcome with the desire to sing "lo hicimos! we did it!"

Hubby slipped them on for the photo and then, like when you've just bought a new pair of shoes, asked if he could just keep them on. Guess he likes 'em! And since he was so appreciative, not to mention patient in waiting for new socks, I immediately cast on for another pair for him.

no time to wind hanks - I've got socks to make!

More on these next week...

S helps by holding the quilt from his top bunk
click for a BIGGER version!

Alright purple people, what do you think about the background color?! I tried out so many different fabrics for the sashing and borders on this! Every one I chose ended up taking over - it was a pink quilt with purple blocks or an orange quilt with purple blocks, or, surprisingly, even worse, a really purple quilt with purple blocks! Then finally, a full five minutes after the store was supposed to have closed, we tried this teal-blue-gray fabric. It was stunning! The purple blocks suddently started to sparkle like gems in this rich bluish sea.

Arranging the blocks took a while. I tried to keep the same fabric from meeting itself either vertically or diagonally. Luckily, I used batiks so even in the few spots where they do meet, they don't match. Of course, there are many spots where different fabrics meet and do seem to match but when you look closer, you see that they have different prints or patterns. I took the most time arranging the little splashes of orange and the pale lilac (almost white) patches so that they would move your eye across the quilt. I liked the orange so much I even put it in each of the four corners and also placed it in the very center. And I just love how the dark purple patches stand out and form their own sort of pattern, dancing around the in the quilt.

I have to say that although none of this is exactly my color or my taste in fabrics, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out. I found a wonderful coordinating print for the backing, which is awaiting piecing right now. Tonight I pin and then it's time to start quilting!

Lookie, Evan Rachel Wood (never heard of her!) wore almost the same colors as in my quilt at the SAG awards on Sunday and it looked good (so said the E Fashion Police people). Very reassuring.

This purple top is the Flower Toggle hat from Lucinda Guy's Handknits for Kids. I'm teaching another beginning knitting class, where we make hats, so it's ANOTHER hat for wee one! I had just seen Lille-ursus finish one of these hats and was inspired. I've had this wonderful book since wee one's baby shower - it's about time I made something from it for her! And there just happened to be this Debbie Bliss Pure Cashmere in our sale bin. Yuuummm. (And on super-sale, it doesn't even matter that there's really only like 35 yards on the skimpy, lying little hank!)

The pattern is lovely, the pink is the exact shade of wee one's coat and I know she looks good in purple. Unfortunately, it's too small. Grrrr. The pattern calls for a laughably small number of stitches for size 2-3 yrs. I knit about two rows of that and knew instantly that it was more like a newborn size. I added several more stitches and knit the above in class this week, but it's still not large enough. I should have looked it up on Ravelry first, then I would have known that I'd need at least 30 more stitches than the pattern called for! Double grrrr.

Well, it's a good lesson for my beginners to learn: everybody rips, everybody reknits. Even the teacher.

I made Sally (a Knitted Babe) for wee one last February for her first birthday, along with two little outfits for Sally to wear. Sadly, Sally was neglected for many months. But when wee one received a Haba Lilli doll from Oma and Opa this Christmas, I realized that Lilli's clothes fit Sally and some of Sally's clothes fit Lilli. Wee one had so far only been interested in removing their clothes, so I tossed their little clothes together in a bag next to them. Today, she found it and decided to dress them.

She insisted that the pink and white striped dress was a hat, so I popped the bodice part to the inside and slipped it on Sally like that. She had me put Lilli's overdress over Sally's dress and Sally's undies on Lilli.

She was so proud of her creations, she wanted to be in the picture with them.

Such a girl!

There must be some sort of baby boom going on, because the great baby knitting books just keep on coming!

The latest one I've spotted is The Expectant Knitter: 30 Designs for Baby and Your Growing Family by Marie Connolly, who is the owner of Stitch DC. (I actually visited Stitch DC - the store on Capitol Hill - a couple of years ago. It was a lovely store and she is very nice. I have no idea how she managed to run three stores, be a mom to two kids and write a book, but brava!)

I knew I was going to like this book the minute I opened up the Table of Contents. The projects are arranged in chapters according to Trimesters. So clever!

And I was tickled to see that the very first chapter, "Planning Ahead", contains several projects to knit even before you're expecting! 'It's never too early...to start your own hope chest," she says and I think she must be right. I learned to knit while I was pregnant and I remember knitting all my thoughts and dreams of a new life into those first projects. Why not take the time before you're pregnant or have adopted to make heirloom projects like the stunning christening gown or delightful knitted pinwheel quilt?

The next chapter focuses on the first trimester and all those lovely little things you instantly want to knit for a little one on the way. There's cutie patootie sweaters and vests, a sweet baby dress and a way fun leggings set.

this Baby Racer Set is so cute - you gotta check it out!

There are also several pages of advice and information for the first trimester, quite reminiscent of the classic What to Expect When You're Expecting. She recommends taking your vitamins, "some ginger tea to soothe your stomach," "some indulgent knitting time," of course, and helpful ideas to start picking out a baby name. Even though I'm not pregnant now, there's a sweet nostalgia to reading through these milestones of pregnancy and remembering how I experienced them when I was.

The Second Trimester chapter focuses on some more practical considerations. There's a discussion of diapering, along with excellent looking patterns for diaper covers and leg warmers (which always seem to go together in the cloth diapering set, but look good on all chubby baby bottoms and baby legs!).

The chapter also talks about older children and how they might feel when the new baby arrives and offers patterns for them as well, including a charming hoody for the big brother, a lovely little lady sweater for big sis and a even a doggie sweater for the pet pooch.

The final chapter (rather too appropriately named, "The Final Stretch"), recognizes that those last few weeks of pregnancy can be difficult, when you're feeling large and tired. She recommends lots of rest, massages, and keeping your knitting simple. This chapter is chock full of patterns for small accessories like washcloths, bibs and hats.

You can tell that the author of the book is a real mom, who loves knitting for her kids. Her genuine enthusiasm and joy in knitting and in being a mom are present throughout. It goes without saying that this book would be a perfect gift for a knitter's baby shower. But there's still plenty there for the knitters whose friends and family always seem to be expecting! Most of the patterns are sized up to 24 months, so there's even a few things in here I might hope to make for my wee one. Whether you're expecting, or expecting to be expecting, or expecting a friend to be expecting, or already expected, I expect you'll like this book!