A few of my favorite things...

In a recent post, Nova talked about working to make her new house feel like a home. It made me think about my own goal to create a happy home for my family. After the move that never was, we finally got the motivation to paint our dining room. It was a chocolate brown before which was a perfectly fine color, but did nothing to show off the lovely mahogany antiques B & I found back in the days before children took up all our time and money.

So now it is this lovely greenish blue color. Very bright and colorful compared to the rest of my house and I love it. This is now one of my favorite rooms in the house. Thought I'd use this post to highlight a few of my favorite things about my dining room--the things that make this house feel like my home.
I love the furniture itself (well except those chairs, but that's another post). I especially love the corner china cabinet and the buffet (that Brian so painstakingly refinished).


I love the cool pulls on the buffet. They give it a little vintage funk that adds so much to the piece.
I love the lovely little runner I found at Target with it's fun textures and great pops of golden yellow and orange--a nice contrast to the blue green walls.



I love this print that my sister gave me my first Christmas in our first house. It goes with the larger one (in the first picture above) that B gave me for our first Christmas as husband and wife the year before. I love the colors and the romantic feel of it and I love that it reminds me of the people I love.


I love that I have this doll in my china cabinet. She was my grandmother's doll and I still remember my joy when my grandmother gave her to me.
So these are just a few of my favorite things. Thought I'd share. Happy Friday, everyone!

Thank you, Teachers!

My boys are both in preschool this year and they both have wonderful teachers! As an end-of-the-school-year thank you gift, they decorated reusable water bottles and made snack mix for their teachers.

I didn't take any pics of the water bottle decorating, but here is a picture of the snack mix making:

Our snack mix was really simple. It includes Honey Nut Cheerios, Chickadees (cheesy bird-shaped crackers), Pretzel Goldfish and M&Ms.

We did equal parts Cheerios, Chickadees and goldfish. I did a smaller portion of M&Ms (about 3/4 the amount of the other ingredients).
Here's a copy of what I wrote on the note I made to go with the snack mix:

A special snack mix to thank you for all you do!
Cheerios to thank you for always cheering on my child.
A school of Goldfish to thank you for making school a place my child loves.
Chickadees to thank you for teaching my little chickadee so much.
M&Ms to thank you for your sweetness.

I really am so thankful for all that these teachers do.

WIP

Another Peacock Tail and Leaf Scarf. This one is a gift. Am enjoying the interest of lace but also the mindlessness of repeating the same ten rows 32 times. 7 repeats down. 25 to go.

Baby Gifts

This weekend I went to a baby shower for a good friend who is having her second little girl later this month. I decided to make her a few things for her new baby.

First, I made a little lovey blanket out of this fun pink fabric and backed with super soft pink minky. I also embroidered it with a fancy K (for baby Kenzie).


I also knit this sweet little short-sleeve sweater.

The pattern is a free one by Carole Barenys. It's a simple easy little baby sweater. My only complaint about the pattern is that there is no gauge and no length measurement so not sure what “size” I made.

I made a few mods. I moved up to a size 5 needle because I felt the fabric was too stiff on size 4 needles. I also moved the placement of the buttonholes. After the first one, I placed the buttonholes every 8 rows so all 5 buttons are at the top of the sweater. I also replaced the recommended buttonholes with a 2 row buttonhole. Cast off one stitch (3rd from end) in one row and add it back in on the next row with a Kfb (2nd st from beginning). I also did short sleeves. I picked up all stitches on hold (36) and then 7 additional stitches along underarm. I then knit 3 rows, then did a garter stitch border (P1 row, K1 row, P1 row, K1 row, P1 row, bind off in knit). I did not do any additional decorative rows on the sleeves or at the bottom of the sweater. Decided to keep it simple.

I did short sleeves since this is for a Texas baby and hopefully this will mean she can wear it more.

I followed the numbers for the smaller size in the pattern, but with size 5 instead of 4 needles. Chest circumference of about 21”. Length from neck to bottom of sweater of about 11”. I think this is a 6-9 month size.

Pattern: Seamless Yoked Baby Sweater by Carole Barenys

Yarn: About half of a skein of Bernat Baby Softee in White (120g/ 330yd/ DK/ 100% Acrylic)
Needles: Size 5
Gauge: Didn't measure
Mods: See notes above
On Ravelry, here.

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter today!

We had a great one. Both boys were thrilled with their Easter baskets this morning.

J quickly got to work building a small Lego fire helicopter from his basket.

N was excited about the cat grooming toy he got.

But he was even more excited about the CHOCOLATE! He jumped into eating his candy right away.He has been anxiously awaiting the arrival of his chocolate. On Thursday when I went to preschool for the boys' Easter parties, N came running up to me and told me, "The rabbit is coming and we get CHOCOLATE!" It was pretty adorable.

We did not travel to see family, but got together with our good neighborhood friends instead. We like to think of them as our adopted family. We also invited our new next door neighbors who just moved here from Seattle. We had a wonderful meal and then a really fun Easter egg hunt. All seven children seemed to really enjoy themselves.

B, 3 years old

K, 5 years old

J, K and B

B, N and K

B, 11 years old (the lone older child and wonderfully patient with all the little ones)


Our new neighbors with their almost 4 year old and almost 2 year old


Opening eggs!

And inside some of those eggs were these little cuties.
A free pattern from Anna Hrachovec of Mochimochiland.
I used DK, Sport and Worsted weight yarn and size 2 doublepoints. I made ten between Friday night and Saturday night. I did a few extra rows of i-cord on the ears to make them a bit longer.
On Ravelry, here.

Hope you all had a lovely Easter day!

Finished: Mars

Just in time for the first day of pool season, I finished my turtleneck sweater which my sister has helped me to name Mars. The lovely rust-colored yarn pooled in areas and it reminds us of the spots on Mars.

(blocking)

Anyway, this sweater took me WAY longer than it should mainly because I just haven't been knitting very much. This is my first pattern from Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits and I can tell you that I love her topdown, seamless approach to sweater knitting. I loved the technique for picking up sleeve stitches and using short rows to create the sleeve cap. It did take me a few tries to get the stitch ratio just right, but I feel like any future projects will be much faster because I have a better understanding of the technique now.

My only other roadblock was the turtleneck itself. First, I was doing knit 3, purl 1 for the ribbing for about an inch and a half before I realized that when I turned the turtleneck down the wrong side of the ribbing would be showing--so then I had to frog the turtleneck and redo it as purl 3, knit 1. Then I rushed to bindoff and just did a typical bindoff which was NOT stretchy and thus the turtleneck did not fit over my head. Finally, I didn't measure correctly and the turtleneck was too short so I had to add another inch before doing the final stretchy bindoff of *P2tog, put stitch back on left needle* and repeat.

I really like the simple shape of this sweater and think I will wear it a lot next winter.

(It's a little windy today. Thought I might just blow away.)

Pattern: Tang by Wendy Bernard
Yarn: 4 skeins of Araucania Nature Wool in Color 26 (100% Wool/ 100gr/ 220m/ 240.59 yd)--I was worried about this yarn being too stiff, but it softened up a lot with a quick Eucalan bath. Thanks, Jill at the Woolie Ewe!
Needles: Size 7 (for everything except second half of turtleneck); Size 8 (for second half of turtleneck)
Size: Smallest
Modifications: I adjusted the waist shaping slightly by doing one extra decrease and one extra increase. I also did both slightly closer together than called for in the pattern.

On Ravelry, here.

Royal Wedding Hoopla

I can't say that I care all that much about the upcoming royal wedding, but I do find all the hoopla somewhat entertaining.

Today I saw this story about the royal wedding recreated in Legos. The detail is amazing. Click on the link and check it out. It even includes wedding guests like a very pregnant Victoria Beckham and Elton John with his husband and their new baby.

But my favorite is this book that someone in my local knitting group found and shared. It's called Knit Your Own Royal Wedding. Check out this article about it. It has great pictures of the dolls. I love that it includes extra patterns for you to knit yourself as a wedding guest. The corgis are adorable! LOVE it! Get your copy here.

I just hope that Kate Middleton and Prince William have a sense of humor about it all. And that they snap up some of these hilarious keepsakes to look back on fondly one day and laugh at all the craziness.