I'm a fool to keep reading these, but it's April Fool's Day, so I'm giving myself permission today.

Dyer Consequences is the fifth in Maggie Sefton's knitting mystery series and it's as formulaic as the rest (in order to keep my blog from being as repetitive as these books, I'll simply refer you to my earlier review of the fourth book). I'm barely into the book and it's already perfectly clear who's number is up. It's like one of those old Columbo shows - as soon as you see the guest star, you know he's the one who did it. Except I liked Columbo: the show; the stories; the character. I don't really like these books. I don't really like the main character. And I find the mysteries themselves forgettable (I don't remember any of them, in fact). So why am I still reading these?

Just foolish, I guess.

Oooh, don't you just love that soft fluffy angora and that pretty, pretty shade of peach?! This lovely little skein of Lush will become a Hermione Cable & Eyelet Hat for the first knitalong project of the Harry Potter Crafters Group on Ravelry. The group is knitting the Hermione Cable & Bobble Hat & Mittens from my book, Charmed Knits. But for those who have already knit that hat, like me, or who don't have the book, or just like the new hat better, we're including this pattern in our little Hermione knitalong. It looks like a pretty hat and I'm excited to try out the pattern. We're planning a whole year of knitalong projects, possibly including a funny swap and a surprise project. What fun!

I can't wait until May to see the flowers. I must have them now! So I've started a flowery Sunday Brunch Jacket (pattern from Oliver & S) for wee one. I first saw this adorable little jacket last year on the purl bee blog and immediately bought the pattern. I chose this lovely Joel Dewberry Ginseng print and cut everything out months ago. I put it aside when Winter hit hard, but now, with the slow onset of Spring and ever so slight increase in temperatures, I've decided it's time for flowers. And if I can't grow 'em, at least I can sew 'em!

I'm loving this pattern so far. Just like the Swingset Tunic I made last year, this Oliver & S pattern is excellently constructed with high quality pattern pieces and clear instructions. I was worried that after a several month break from sewing, I'd have some problems getting back into it, but this has come together easily thus far. I still have the sleeves, the hems, and the buttons to do, but I'm excited by the results so far. Perhaps wee one can have her Sunday Brunch jacket done by Easter Sunday. Maybe it'll even stop raining by then!

Wee one's twirly skirt (pattern on ravelry.com here) screams out "twirl me!" It's got rounds of increases, ripples of fabric, and tiers of color just begging to be spun around and around. Look at how big and round it is when you lay it out flat!

Unfortunately, wee one wasn't in a twirling mood today. The skirt fits her great and the 4T length is perfect for her but the sheer size of the flounces means she's got to work up some real speed to get a good twirl going. And today wasn't a high gear sort of day, if you know what I mean.

She does love it though.

It's spring! Don't you just feel like treating yourself a little?

Here's my pile of lovely little spring treats: Kaffe Fassett's Country Garden Quilts (thanks mom!); Marvel Comics' version of Pride & Prejudice (I couldn't resist!); a spring color mini-skein set from Sunshine Yarns (soooo pretty!) and a Twilight-inspired mini-skein set as well (Vampire Baseball... love it!). And this afternoon the kiddos and I are treating ourselves to big bowls of popcorn while watching the Red Sox opening day.

Spring is here! Treat yourself.

Oooh, this cable and eyelet hat looks so scrumptious I just want to eat it! Doesn't it make you think of sherbet? or Easter eggs? The cables really stand out in the Lush yarn and the eyelets add such a sweet feminine touch to the hat. I'm enjoying this one very much despite the fact that I'm not quite sure about the sizing. I'm shooting for a 5 yr size and am following instructions for the child size, but am beginning to suspect that the hat will be a bit long. So far everyone in the house (except for hubby) has tried on the hat in my Goldilocks-ian quest for getting the size just right: me, wee, S and then B (even though his head is the exact same size as S's - wee one had caught on to my mission and insisted that "B try hat" too!).

Hermione's cable & eyelet hat (free pattern here) came out just right after all! The child sizing is perfect for the 5 year-old I made the hat for, the little eyelets are delightful, the Lush is sooo soft, and I used up almost every last yard of the one skein. I think wee one is going to need one of these for the Fall.

Thanks to Jackie for the awesome pattern and to the Harry Potter Crafters Group on Ravelry for the opportunity to knit along with them!

I avoided it as long as I could. With the temperature approaching 50, I had to admit that it was time to for me to start seaming wee's buttercup baby jacket together. Not that I had the slightest idea of how to join the v-shell crocheted shoulders or set the knitted sleeve into the crocheted armhole. I asked a few experienced crocheters about a special technique to seam crocheted pieces, but apart from telling me not to crochet the seams together, they didn't really have any sort of secret tricks to reveal. A peek at Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet seemed to confirm the fact that crocheters are kinda winging it, either backstitching, whipstitching or doing some muddled approximation of mattress stitch with various parts of the knots, er, stitches. I decided that it would be slightly less difficult for me to just make up some sort of seam than to understand the pictures in the SnB book, so I went ahead and grafted the two shoulders together and stitched in the gathered sleeve as best as I could. If I can avoid an inspection by the crochet police, I think I may get away with it.

And what buttons, too! When it came time to finish wee one's Sunday Brunch Jacket, I couldn't resist the bright orange buttons and the cheery color they bring to the jacket.

I can't say enough good things about this Sunday Brunch Jacket pattern from Oliver & S. It is such a classy, finished looking garment, but was really very straight-forward to put together. I spent a mere three nights actually sewing it up, all without a single hitch (until I discovered that the sleeves were too narrow for me to hem them on the machine, but they were easily blindstitched by hand). In fact, I found this pattern easier to make than the much simpler looking swingset tunic that I made last year.

I honestly cannot believe that I made this thing! Either one of these things, for that matter. (I apologize for the excess number of pictures, but I simply can't get enough of the jacket or the model.)

what's next, mommy?

We've been enjoying the kids' April school vacation, visiting friends in DC.

We stayed at one end of the Mall and saw the kids' favorites: the White House and the Washington Monument.

Then we hit some museums. Everyone had their favorites:

The boys loved the SR-71 Blackbird (the world's fastest jet!) at the Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles. (That's where they keep the really BIG stuff. There's even a Space Shuttle there!)

Wee one, a total sparkle girl, got to see the ur-sparkle shoes, Dorothy's ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz at the National Museum of American History. She liked them.

Even I got to see a favorite American icon, Stephen Colbert!

The kiddos also particularly enjoyed the (creepy, crawly) insect zoo at the National Museum of Natural History. Wee one spent an entire hour watching bees and water bugs, the boys were delighted by the butterflies in the butterfly exhibit, and I was horrified by this display of moths eating some red yarn.

there's real moths in there: eeeeeeeekkk!

Naturally, souvenirs had to be bought:

We drove back through the night, through the rain. Yuck, yuck, yuck. But worth it for a wonderful vacation. Bye DC and DC buddies!

very cool picture taken by the very cool Jason!

(PS - I've still got three more days of school vacation week to fill. Wish me luck! It's going to be hard to follow all that fun.)

On our thirteen hour drive down to DC (we had to stop to run the kids every couple of hours, ya know), I did a whole mess of knitting! The kids were so good that my knitting was only interrupted by occasional requests for juice boxes and Joe-Joe's cookies. And so I finally started the tank top from the cover of Barefoot Knits.

I've been wanting to make some barefoot knits for a while - my latest two knit skirts for wee one were a warm up to doing some things from the book. And I've had this mango colored rowan handknit dk set aside for a summer knit almost as long. The only bump in the road was that I'd fallen in love with the ruffle on wee one's little red skirt so much that I'd decided to work the same ruffle at the bottom of the tank top instead of the simpler garter stitch in the original pattern.

That, however, required casting on hundreds of stitches and counting decreases for ages, which I couldn't bear to do at home or at knitting group. But being confined in the car for hours made it conceivable, even enjoyable. And my reward for getting through the ruffle... miles and miles of stockinette in the round. Perfect! I could even knit while resting my eyes.

Now that the ruffle is behind me, I'm on track with the original tank top pattern. And I even have a couple of knitting students working on the same project with me. I swear I could spend the whole summer making cute knits from this book!

I've almost started to think of this buttercup baby jacket as Little Dorrit, since about 75% of it was knit and/or crocheted while I was watching Little Dorrit. Most of the early knitting was done while watching the 1988 version with Derek Jacobi on DVD and the latter pieces were done while watching the latest BBC version on PBS Masterpiece Classic. With its bright color and fun style though, it may truly be more of an anti-little Dorrit. It certainly was the perfect antidote to the dark and difficult themes in the story. After knitting through over twelve hours of Dickens, I completed the final piece of the jacket while watching the final episode last night. All that's left now is the seaming and the big crocheted fan edging all around the bottom and the cuffs.

I have high hopes that wee one might like this one. She caught me putting it away after taking the above picture and yelled "try on! try on!" And so we did.

Only one sleeve in and the second front piece not even attached, but she's smiling.

I'm spending my time this evening searching the net for a pretty little charted butterfly pattern. Know of one??

I've made it to the armholes of wee one's Barefoot Knits tank and have suddenly decided that I need to put a little butterfly on the front. Because she loves butterflies!

"butterflying" around the playground this weekend