Green Leafy Tea

Well I reclaimed my yarn from that sweater pattern whose name must not be spoken.

I looked up the yarn in Ravelry and found something that I liked, the Leafy T-Shirt.


I used size 6 needles and knit until the sleeves were 14" in diameter. I just think it's amazing how the diameter of my upper arm pretty much gives the rest of my upper dimensions. Reminds me of when we bought clothes in the store with my grandmother. She would have us stick our forearms in the waste band. If that fit, then the pants fit. This only works for kids by the way. That was back in the 70s and early 80s too so I wouldn't recommend it. The sleeves on this garment were tight at first but stretched with wear. This is unblocked.


I used Lion Brand Cotton Ease. I think the colorway is Lime, or Leaf. I'm sorry, I just can't seem to remember to note this. :(

I meant to include waste shaping, but as usual, I forgot. I just be wanting to knit, and can't remember things I plan that are not written down sometimes. Siigh.

Anyway, I like the results okay I guess.

I don't like how it looks in the back and will start to make a point to make sure all of my close fitting tops end up with a stretchy bind off. It's very tight around my voluptuous hips. I don't know why it's taken me this long to come to this conclusion. I've thought about it some and will be ripping back to do just that. This will probably eliminate that back bulge too. Then again, probably not.


The bottom curls a LOT. I've pulled it down in the pictures. I like the curly look, but not this much.

I'm trying to venture out when it comes to colors. I think I've chosen wisely.

Ballet T-Shirt, A quickie

This is a real quickie. Took all of two evenings in bed after the kids had gone to sleep. If you want to experiment with manipulating sizes of patterns, this one would be great to get you started. Teddy Bear measures 23" around the chest.

Unfortunately, this top won't make it into the school pictures. Teddy Bear woke up with a horrible "crook" in her neck. I thought she had a sinus infection or meningitis or something. The doctor said that there were no major knots in her neck and recommended Motrin and warm compresses. Let Teddy Bear tell it, someone was trying to decapitate her. She had me very scared with her crying. She was inconsolable. She's doing better now, I had to come into the office for a little while.

Can you tell which side hurts?

FRONT

BACK

Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, Held Double. Not even two full skeins were used.
Color: Ya'll know I have a hard time keeping track of this for some reason.
Needles: Size 11
Size: Made to fit chest size 23". One extra increase included to eliminate cropped look.

Ballet T

Kelso is not going well. The pattern is too confusing, not clear. The author has answered whatever questions I have, and that's great. But, isn't it best to have a pattern that requires no further communications with the client? I'm going to finish it, because I love the sweater. I want one of my own.

I worked half way up the neck line and realized that I had chosen the wrong type of raglan decrease for a particular row or forgot to omit a YO when I was supposed too and ended up with an odd looking lace repeat. I considered just moving on, but no. Won't do it. I may even rip back past the life line so that I can incorporate the waist shaping that I forgot to earlier. I believe waist shaping is oneof the differences between frumpy and sexy.

Needless to say, I have to step away from the Kelso for a while. Nope, it's not going into the abandoned pile. But in the mean time, for some instant gratification....

Got the notice in the backpacks yesterday that picture day is Friday. Thank for the heads up...NOT!!!! But since I love to torture myself, I'm going to whip up a hand made top for TeddyBear (whose grown 2 whole kids sizes since I last posted a picture of her) by Thursday night. It will be done. I will also be taking those tiny 2 1/2 week old braids out from the other half of her head.

I can do it.

See.

8:46 PM - 11:00 PM

Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece held double, size 11 circulars. Ballet T-Shirt Pattern from the Loop-D-Loop patterns book.

FO's, FO's Everywhere

Ok, just a couple of FO's. First let me start off by saying that I must cherish every moment left of blogging with images as my camera is failing fast.

This is me giving it a good talking to on the way to Teddy Bear's Christmas program.


You'd better not piss out on me now. You better not.

Second, I've been finished with the Mini Anthropologie for a while now. When I finally got in the groove it only took like a day. I'm using a studded hair pin to hold in closed. I would have preferred a brooch, but I couldn't find one proportionate to Teddy Bear's size. This worked well too because I could pin it to the dress without poking through the fabric and therefore keep everything in place.

Teddy Bear was supposed to have a semi-solo (her and two other kids) but chickened out at the last milisecond. When she got up to the mic she just turned right back around and went to her teacher. Darn. She then played this game of hear no evil, see no evil. Oh well.

Oh, and I love my up do. I am well pleased, can't you tell? I've tried to capture every angle for your viewing pleasure. I know there may be naturalists out there who'd like to criticize my meticulously groomed locks. So sorry to disappoint. You WILL be seeing more of these creative endeavors.

The gathered pullover is a wrap. When I first saw it I thought that it would be perfect for a recycling project. I was right. It looks good on, but I must say that the sleeves look a little wonky when laying flat. Imagine my anguish when realizing that the sleeves may be too small for the sleeve holes (I know there's a technical name for this but I just can't think of it right now). The designer should have put a little note saying something like "Warning, the sleeves may look too small but they are not. You will have to work carefully with them but they will fit. We recommend crocheting them in with a slip stitch." I always crochet my sleeves in, but this method was especially useful this time. By the way, Banana Republic sews all their seams with a crochet slip stitch. Just a little interesting tid bit of knowledge. I just like the rolled edge look in general and it seems like everything store bought with this feature is a little pricey. I wonder why? I also like my sleeves long, so I didn't adjust them.

Happy Mother's Day

This one especially goes out to the single mother, the mother who just lost a child, the heartbroken, the mother who has to plan her own mother's day celebration (cause God loves a cheerful giver and so do you) or has no celebration at all, and the mother who won't stop giving even though that child could care less. Happy mother's day, ya'll. I feel ya.

I let this heffa at my not so LYS calculate the amount of yarn I would need for my Sloppy Joe sweater. I was like wow, what customer service! I should have known. I ended up with two more skeins than I needed. I mean, I could understand one, but two? Well, now my stash has grown by one skein of lavender Cotton Fleece. That's right, I said one. I took this opportunity to make me and HP a matching set. Oh yeah, I sewed up the side seams completely.

HP went for her "first" retouch this weekend. I quote first because I had to do something before our next appointment. Her new school has this sand box that she just loves. I'm a germaphobe and am extremely concerned about ring worm and the baldness that it could ensue. She's been rolling around in the sand like an animal and the staff seems to think it's soooo cute. Ew, gross. I've threatened to withhold her after-school snack if I find her dirty from head to toe one mo gin. This and putting skirts on her seems to have worked. She doesn't like the sensation of the sand directly on her skin for some reason but doesn't mind getting her pants and new locs encrusted with this sand that doesn't exactly look brand new.

Anyway, I've tried to wipe the sand out but just had to scrub her head on Monday. I tightened the locs the best I could, but she doesn't like to wear a scarf either. So, this is what it looked like by Friday night.


Shannon put it back together on Saturday, and she slept with a scarf for most of the night. A long night it was with two pee-pee accidents and all. Pray for me ya'll, and I'll pray for you.

Now that there are two loc'ed heads in the house, I'm going to have to perfect my self-maintenance techniques. I've done it myself before, but you know how that goes. This time it wasn't too bad. I got pretty much all of them tightened. I thought I'd try to give myself some braid crinkles. Wrong idea. What could have been a good thing, ended up being a display of disorganized frizziness. That's why you see me with the up do in the above pic.

Big Catch Up

A lot has transpired since my last blog. First off, I've finished Sloppy Joe. I think that I've done a pretty good job. The only mod I made was to the sleeve increases. For my size I began to to increase every 5th row after 68 stitches. The other way would have produced sleeves way to long. I have to also give a hand slap to the designer, Louisa Harding that the width of the sweater be 44 inches. What a typo!

The design does include these split sides, but looking at the picture I don't think this suits me. I may consider sewing them up.

I mean, I like the way the sweater fits and all. It's very comfy and I love the yarn, but it's not as sloppy looking as it was on the model. I studied the picture of her and noticed that she wasn't very blessed in the boobs area. Although the sweater does not fit me tightly at all, I definitely think that it's not as loose as it was supposed to be. However, going up one size would have been a mistake. I guess I'm just not that into sloppy. The rib pattern is very cool.

I am also performing a major experiment. I mean, after the post before last you probably new this was coming. So, here's the beginning of my journal on Locking Tots. Hmmm, is this a good idea? Well, here are some pics on how it started out. Here's HP sitting on the couch. She felt very cute on this day and asked me to take a picture with her rocking the fro.

About a week later, she's sitting in the chair of my stylist, Shannon. Every day debris was stored up in the fro.

Here's HP Getting her neck and head massage,

Please take note of the glamorous-ness of Shannon. These perfectly groomed back length locs are exactly what we're going for, so HP is in good hands.

She's just been shampooed.

She didn't fidget or anything the entire time (about 1 1/2 hours).

Here she is half way clipped.

And now almost completely clipped (the reason I pay to have my hair maintained, Shannon is very meticulous and never neglects a single hair.)

Getting her under the dryer was a different thing, we eventually got the 4 pillows to stop slipping.

And, voila. HP loves it, and so do I. She's feeling it.

I must admit though, that after one week, she looks quite scruffy. But she's still just a beautiful.

She started pre-school. Where we live, pre-school is not free. You have to shop around for it like a daycare. She flipped out when I didn't let her out at the same school her brother went to. He-he-he.


Here she is with her new principal. You can tell the locs have shrunken back and stuck to her head a little. I tried to dress them up with barrettes.

She's already made a friend.And, believe it or not, she's sitting in circle time (in this case square time). She asks me everyday, if she's going to school. I'm so happy she loves it!

I think it's soooo cute. I wore it out of the house to Walmart as soon as I pulled it off of the needles. I can definately visualize this little ditty in other colors.

Happy New Year! I hope that in 2007 finally realize some of the desires in your hearts. Whatever those may be. Whew! I can't believe I've let a whole month get by without any new posts. Well, that doesn't mean that the yarn hasn't been between my fingers. I've finished that cable sweater for DJ.

It's interesting though. The kid in this picture from The Yarn Girl's Guide to Knits for Older Kids has a sweater on with boxy shoulders. But on DJ, the shoulders look way too broad. I think that I oversize him too much. Let's wait and see how it look on him in a couple of months. For now, I'd probably have to beat him to get him to wear it.

I made HP another cardigan to wear on Xmas. It came together really quickly. I swear, as soon as we locate the other 3 dragonflies, we're going to put them to work keeping this sweater closed. It still looked cute with just 3 buttons, and she enjoyed choosing them herself.

And for me, this is my adaptation of the Bell Sleeve Tunic featureed in the December issue of Better Home's and Garden's Simply Creative Crochet. I added length and width (in a maternity like way - I'm NOT pregnant). Also, I added the trim to the bottom to make this sweater, which on the model is loose fitting, hug me the way it does. I hate to admit when I don't get a pattern, but after a while, I just started doing my own thing. I have a lot of yarn left over. This picture is of the unblocked version. I'll be calling upon the magic of immersion blocking to lenghthen, flatten, and straigten.

I didn't have any pictures with my last entry, but there are lots today. First, let me assure you that I have been doing what my kids call "yarning." First, I want to start off by showing you the toddler sweater that I adapted from an adult pattern. It wasn't such a smart thing to do since it was one of my first knitting projects, however, I'm very adventurous. What went wrong? The head hole is too small, I think. HP's head is in the 75th percentile, so I am going to make sure to try the sweater on a narrow headed kid before throwing it in the reject pile. I've also kept up with the On-The-Side Cardigan from the Hip To Crochet book. I think it will be cool for kicking around the house or running errands. It looks so cozy to me. I've slipped stich the side seams together and am pinning in the sleeves now. I even saw the shell buttons at Wal-mart, and the acrylic yarn I've used worked well. The stiches are a little more plump, but I think it's working out. Outside of yarn world, like I told you last post, I baked HP a teddy bear cake. She loved it, and that makes me happy. The indentations came out a little better than they did for the car cake because the pan instructions required a one hour baking time. Unfortunately, this doesn't make decorating the darn thing any easier. You need pure skill for that. Also, the extra 15-20 minutes baking time made for a dry cake. Once again, I was supposed to blot stars on, but that didn't work out so I just spread the icing on there. At least you could tell what kind of bear it was supposed to be. Poor thing. It doesn't know what's coming to him. When I asked her what piece she wanted, she request that I cut off his head and later bit off his toes, elbow, and left paw. I also made some cheesecake cupcakes for the daycare. For her gift I got her a trunk full of dress up clothes, which she also loved, and they came with these "bling-bling" plastic pumps which she can't get enough of. I got the trunk from Costco for $29.99. The clothes seem like good quality, but unfortunately her favorite outfit has enough glitter in it to make our house look like a disco. Her birthday was a week and a half ago and we still have glitter in our hair. Ta-ta! Decorations complete! Cheesecake cupcakes.
Your wish is granted!