With shells on an orange beach. And butterflies.

This sweater for wee one kept me sane last night while we awaited yet another snow storm. It's all white and wet out there now and the boys are home for a snow day. Having spent the evening with my lovely, happy yarn, I may just be able to muster the strength to go out in the snow with them later. (With wee one too, as she is now as active as ever after her fever came down Friday night.) The bright bright yarn is keeping me so cheery in fact that I reworked these first few inches of the crochet section three times without complaint after a few failed attempts with gauge problems. Thank goodness for small, orange, yarny pleasures!

All the orange of wee one's buttercup baby sweater got me thinking of my own orange Rebecca sweater that I began on last summer's trip to Germany where I picked up the Rebecca magazine and the yarn. Some yarn reorganizing caused me to stuff the unfinished sweater into a bag and the bag into a corner shelf and there it waited until last week. When I pulled it out again, I was amazed to see that it was almost done. The neck had been finished and it lacked only the orange sleeve cuffs and the final seaming and finishing.

It's all done now. But I'm not finished with it. I'm sorry to say that it doesn't fit very well. It doesn't have any waist shaping, something that I know I prefer in my sweaters but had thought I could live without for once. And the neck is not flattering on me. I can't stand a boatneck. Again, I was hoping that in this instance, it would just work. It looks good enough in the pattern picture, but that girl's got a lot more up top than I do, if you know what I mean. Nope, if I'm gonna wear the thing, it needs waist shaping and a proper neck line. I'm toying with the idea of steeking it to get the right fit. I'm sure as heck not reknitting it all.

The sleeves though, I adore them. They are singularly ridiculous but I love 'em!

My eight fat quarters from Sew Mama Sew's Fat Quarter Swap and look 5 of them are yellow! What are the chances? The swap was totally random without any of us swappers and swappees knowing anything about each others' preferences. (Yellow is not a preference I would have stated, but I don't dislike it.) Still, it's generally considered a difficult color and I'm stunned by the fact that 5 of my fellow swap buddies sent me something so completely yellow. (Of the eight I sent out, I had chosen one yellow fabric.) Each of them is very pretty though.

Now the question is what to do with them. There is a yellow-fan in the family (my son B, whose coat, backpack, socks, crocs, t-shirts, and bedspread all speak of his love of yellow - in fact, when wee one sees a yellow car or bike or toy, she says "B's car"), but these fabrics are a little too flowery to be turned into something for him. Hmmmm... As much as I'd like to keep them together, since they came to me together so serendipitously, it's a lot of yellow. The first one would work in my civil wary quilt though. And the third in a little wall hanging I'd planned for wee one that uses the same line of fabrics. The fifth, with the bumblebees, could become something wee and adorable for wee one. And I just looooove that blue animal print under that one...

What fun!

Wee one is two!

Yesterday, she had little friends over for birthday cupcakes and an impromptu dancy party. And today we opened presents, including her new dolly.

She was a little disturbed when she first opened the box and found a dolly that wasn't quite her dolly. But once we got her old dolly and she realized this was a second one and no terrible fate had befallen the first one (something horrible like having her be her original pink color again!), she was okay with it. "New dolly," she said. And then, "two dollies!" Uh-oh. I'd originally made the new dolly so we could wash the old one, but I fear she may have other ideas!

After three days of birthday fun, things are getting back to normal and I'm getting back to my projects, specifically the back of wee one's buttercup baby jacket. I've finished the crocheted bodice and can now move on to starting the front pieces. I'm looking forward to getting to knit again (the bottom skirt sections are knit just like on the back) because that crochet got boooooring. Strangely, although I can revel in hours and hours of stockinette, doing that crochet pattern over and over and over almost did me in. Perhaps it is because I have to pay more attention when I'm crocheting and can therefore really feel every minute that's going by. I don't have to look when I knit, but if I didn't look while crocheting, I'd, well, I don't think you could call what I was doing crocheting anymore. But when I do pay attention...

...now that's crocheting!

Because for the first time in the whole history of my knitting career, I'm actually able to keep track of my rows and increases/decreases while working on a project.

don't you just LOVE the shoes on this girl?!

Whether it's because the little gray cells don't work as well as they used to or because they've finally kicked in, I can't say, but I have been a paragon of organization while working on this buttercup baby jacket. Although I've always told my students to keep track of things with a row counter or piece of paper and pencil, I've also had to admit to them that I have never found myself capable of taking my own advice. I've always been too stupid to use a row counter, never remembering if I was clicking at the beginning of a row or after it, if I'd just clicked or not, or if I'd just clicked twice to make up for a row I'd forgotten or in anticipation of the one I was just about to do. Aaaaah! I would end up having to count rows on the actual garment anyway, so I saved myself the extra work of maintaining some sort of count, which in the end had very little chance of being right. But those days are over. I can count! I can crochet! I can do anything!

Enough of this procrastination - it's time to put the binding on this quilt and get it sent out to its new home! For the binding, I chose a tone on tone, deep purple print that was in the quilt already. I wanted to frame out that blue/gray sashing and re-emphasize the purple. It is, after all, supposed to be a quilt for someone who loves purple. This rich purple works well with the backing as well as the many purple/lilac shades in the four-patches on the front. Lucky for me, I don't like purple all that much. Otherwise, it'd be very hard for me to part with this one!

What do you call a group of butterflies?

My swarm so far consists of a butterfly-bedecked back, sleeve and right front. Plus one little girl who wishes she were a butterfly.

She flies around all the time with her arms, uh, wings, out behind her (sometimes adorned with a few accessories, like the boys' crocs), saying "fwuh-fwy, fwuh-fwy!"

The purple lover's quilt is all done and she's a beauty! I only hope that the recipient (who I am sure is no Price fan) likes it. I particularly love the backing on this. I really like having one large piece of beautiful fabric on the back, especially for a quilt like this that is meant for snuggling on the sofa and not for covering a bed or hanging on a wall.

All it needs now is a label and a wash (gasp!) so it gets that wrinkly, crinkly old quilt look and it'll be on its way. Into the purple rain...

We've had all of two nice days here in Boston, so naturally, I've jumped ahead in my mind to spring and summer knitting! I've been looking forward to making some things for wee one from Barefoot Knits for a while now and just got my hands on some Brown Sheep cotton fleece at our most recent yarn swap. (All the Barefoot Knits patterns are written for cotton fleece.)

I was about to charge ahead and cast on for the tank top on the cover when I happened to find this adorable pattern from Knitting at Knoon at my lys.

loooove the sweater, but I think my wee one would wear the skirt more

Before I knew it, I'd cast on with the cotton fleece for the skirt! It's knitting up lightning fast and is adorable. But it's just a warm-up for the Barefoot Knits knits. Anyone else got a few of those on their to-do list? We could barefoot-knit together.

Sitting on the sofa, wearing my robe turned round Snuggie-style, sewing the waistband of wee one's springy skirt.

Wee one's new spring skirt ("Comfort Zone" skirt by Knitting at Knoon, knit with only one skein of Cotton Fleece) fits her perfectly! Wee's never really had a skirt before, so I was relieved when she happily wore it around the house this morning. She even stopped to admire herself in it. Very ladylike and all.

We both love the little ruffles on the bottom. They become even more pronounced after some rolling and crawling around too. And the skirt is great for twirling!

Bring on the Spring. We're ready!

I had so much fun knitting wee's little red skirt, I couldn't help casting on for another skirt for her. (Even though hubby thinks that knit skirts are silly and refuses to admit that the red skirt is the cutest thing ever!)

The Twirly Skirt by Christine Schwender, who co-wrote Barefoot Knits, is a four-tiered skirt which gets wider from top to bottom and is supposed to be very twirly when it's all done. (The pattern is not in my copy of Barefoot Knits, despite many folks' claims that it's in the book. It was available in InKnitters magazine and there is a version of the pattern available on Ravelry.) I chose four different colors of Rowan handknit cotton, since my lys had more color choices in the handknit cotton than they did in the cotton fleece.

I'm only on the second tier, but the knitting is already getting dull since it's just stockinette stitch in the round, interrupted only for the eyelet rounds at the color changes. It's turning out to be a little hard keeping my motivation on this one, especially as it's gray and chilly outside, but I've got to keep knitting, if only to prove hubby wrong! Hee, hee.

Tier three of wee one's twirly skirt and it's starting to look like it'll be able to earn its name. It's getting wider and poofier and cuter every row. There are A LOT of stitches there though, let me tell you. I am so not looking forward to knitting tier four! That's gonna be a slow twenty rows for sure. I'm going to need a long, engrossing movie for that section. Any suggestions?

Thanks to the delightfully distracting company at Knitsmiths and the charmingly engrossing little film My Neighbor Totoro, I'm almost through the last tier of wee one's twirly skirt. After all this stockinette, I'll be just about ready to get back to the crochet on wee's orange buttercup baby jacket. I hope wee appreciates all this!