It's true. She likes pink stuff. A lot. So much so that she constantly uses this line to justify all sorts of things like getting her pink nightgown out of the dirty clothes to wear again, having strawberry flavored milk instead of regular milk, wearing her pink sparkly mary janes in the snow, or having some children's tylenol when she's not sick. "But mommy, I like pink stuff."

Since a pink hat is unlikely to harm her in any way, I thought I'd indulge her passion for pink by making her a pink snowflake hat to match her pink winter jacket. I had planned to use pink and green (the lining in her jacket is a fabulous green), but when I did a little practice swatch, I didn't actually like them together in the hat. In the meantime, wee had pulled out several other pink yarns and was playing with them in the living room. I spied a lighter pink that I thought would look nice with the darker one I wanted to use so I instantly decided to do the hat in two pinks.

Now that I'm into the lighter pink, however, I'm not so sure about it. I really like the two pinks together, but I'm feeling like there isn't quite enough contrast between the light pink and the white to show off those beautiful snowflakes. And now I'm thinking about just doing the hat in the dark pink so those snowflakes can really pop and maybe adding a green pompom.

What do you think?

Oooh, love the snowflakes on this snowflake hat! And how 'bout that Maine Coast Blue color, which is almost green and totally fab with the Deep Sea Blue below? This hat came out just as I had imagined it. What a fun and easy little colorwork project!

The only change I made from the pattern was to shorten the top of the hat. It looked too tall in several of the photos I'd seen on Ravelry and as I was working the decreases on the top, I could tell that mine was going that way too. So I worked the decrease round/plain round combination only five times and then just did decrease rounds until I was at the very top. It fits me great - nice and snug and warm - but also sits nicely on wee's little head. (She's a much better model though!)

Which got me thinking that I should make her one of these. She helped me dig through the yarn in my stash to find some yarn that matched her winter jacket perfectly. (The bottom two were the winners!)

She was so excited! One snowflake hat for my little snow flake, coming up!

she's making snow angels in the foyer (in her snowflake pants, of course!)

It's time for a breaky-break from all those stripes! I wouldn't want to knit anything too easy, however. Soooo....

A little stranded colorwork hat - the snowflake hat from Newton's Knitting - is like a mini vacation after dealing with all those balls of yarn in wee's stripy sweater. This hat will be a sample for a stranded colorwork class I'm teaching in March. It's such a lovely, simple pattern, perfect for beginners trying out stranding for the first time. And it makes a gorgeous hat!

I'm right up to the point where the background color changes and will be switching from "Deep Blue Sea" to "Maine Coast Blue". Awesome names, right? The yarn is Julia (from Nashua Handknits), which I totally love. In a perfect world, they'd give you more yardage on the ball, but otherwise the yarn is a dream.

Dream yarn. Fabulous colors. Easy to knit. This project just makes me smile.

It took two weeks and considerably more television than I'd expected, but wee's stripey Mandarin Petit sweater is now together, with two sleeves and incipient raglan shaping. I'm nearing the end!

Very slowly.

When wee turned one (almost two years ago now), I knit her a doll from Clare Garland's Knitted Babes. I named her Sally and made her two dresses and little pair of undies.

Sally in her underwear two years ago

No idea where Sally is now (toy chest, maybe?) but now that wee is almost three and is potty training, underwear is a big deal in our house. Wee wears her underwear all day while at home and only changes into a diaper for sleeptime or when we're off somewhere where I'm not sure of reliable facilities. And when wee one puts on her underwear, dolly, wee's constant companion, has to put on hers. Um, well, Sally's.

(this week, wee's sporting a flute tattoo!)

Can't knit. Can't sew. Must read more...

How fabulous is Lily Chin? I remember being impressed when I caught her Knitty Gritty episode back in like 2005, called "Tips & Tricks." Well those tips & tricks are all here - plus all the knitting basics - in Lily Chin's Knitting Tips & Tricks: Shortcuts and Techniques Every Knitter Should Know. You will find brilliant tips here, like exactly how much yarn you need for the long tail cast-on (three times the width of your piece plus 10%), the best way to work with ribbon yarn (hang it up like toilet paper so it won't twist while you knit with it), how to make the perfect left-slanting decrease (twist the stitches on the row before by wrapping like Combined knitters do then k2togtbl on the decrease row), and a foolproof way to space buttonholes evenly (evenly mark dots on a strip of waistband elastic and stretch it to fit the buttonband). These little bits of genius are interspersed in what is on it's own already an excellent overall guide to knitting.

When I started knitting, a friend gave me a copy of the old Harmony Guide of Knitting Techniques: Volume 1. It was a slim volume that touched on all the major stages of the knitting process with large, helpful pictures. It was my go-to guide when I was learning, since it was not encyclopedic or chatty, but a bare-bones, just-the-facts-ma'am reference. That volume is now out of print, but if I were starting now, I could totally see myself using Lily Chin's book to the same end. It's much more thorough with a lot more explanation (hooray!), but Lily Chin is no-nonsense: she gets right down to it and tells you all you need to know, no bullshit. And it's in a super handy little format. It's no bigger than your Vicki Square Knitter's Companion but there's so much more in here than in that book! (And - bonus! - for crocheters, she's even put out a companion book of Crochet Tips & Tricks. It'll be a must-have for any future crocheting projects of mine, I can tell you!)

Thanks to all my sewing for wee one (with Pink Fig and Oliver & S patterns), I am proud to say that I skipped Wendy Mullin's first book, Sew U: The Built by Wendy Guide to Making Your Own Wardrobe. It's a great intro to home sewing and approaches the topic with the same sort of demystifying, you-can-do-it attitude that was in Amy Karol's awesome book, Bend-the-Rules Sewing: The Essential Guide to a Whole New Way to Sew. And whenever I feel ready to make something like pants for myself, I'll be sure to try out some Built by Wendy patterns (maybe then I'll get the Sew U book), but for now, what really mystifies me, what I'd really like a course on, is sewing with knit fabrics and using my mega-intimidating serger.

Enter Sew U Home Stretch: The Built by Wendy Guide to Sewing Knit Fabrics, Wendy Mullin's second book all about sewing those scary-seeming knits. She says making projects with knits is easy, easier in fact than making things in woven fabrics, in part because stretchy fabric means there's no closures like buttons and zippers to deal with. Yes! I hate putting in closures. They're like seaming a knitting project: that last step that is totally fiddly, seems to take nearly as much time as the rest of the project, and has a disproportional impact on how good the final piece looks - no pressure! The only difference is that I'm good at seaming knitting projects; sewing in zippers and making buttonholes, not so much. So none of that sounds good to me! The book starts by going through the most important stitches the serger makes and tells you when you'll need to use each one. This is precisely what my owner's manual does not do. It's all super technical, giving me just as much detail about the never used stitches as the two or three I'll be using and putting everything in a multi-page chart translated into four languages. Uh, not so handy actually, thanks (danke, gracias, and merci). Wendy also explains how to sew knit fabrics with a standard machine for the majority of sewers out there who don't have sergers (well, I could have used that info before I got a serger!). Then she offers a quick and easy guide to the different sorts of treatments knit fabrics will need, in particular different hems and different neck finishings like ribbing, and finally there's patterns, like a t-shirt. A what?! I can make a t-shirt?!?! Well, sign me up for that! I'll be keeping this book right by my serger and - alert: new year's resolution, right here - together we will make a t-shirt!

I've just started Iceland: Land of the Sagas co-authored by Jon Krakauer (the Into Thin Air Everest Disaster book dude). It's a beautiful book about Iceland and the authors' tours of its unique and spectacular landscapes. I've kinda had a little crush on Iceland ever since we started taking our yearly trip to visit the in-laws in Germany via Iceland Air. It's pretty neat what with geysers, lava fields, glaciers and freaking fabulous knitted sweaters. So when hubby and I started thinking about taking a trip - just the two of us - for our tenth wedding anniversary (coming up in just a few weeks!), the first place we thought of was Iceland. We never had a honeymoon and we never travel anywhere without the kids. (We go out to dinner, alone, on our anniversary and the in-laws have often given us two days in Germany for a kid-free mini-vacation, but that's it for us until the next year.) So this year, for our tenth, we're getting greedy and planning a week-long trip to Iceland! We won't go until the summer - the in-laws will be doing the kid-sitting in Germany - so we haven't made any plans just yet. We're still in the exciting, we're-really-going-to-do-this stage. Any suggestions??

Oh, it's all so thrilling it makes me want to do crazy things like read sagas. Or make a t-shirt. Or seam my cardigan while knitting it. Or learn Icelandic.