Tail bone

Top 5 things that rock about baby sweaters?

5 - So many great free patterns to choose from. 

4. Getting to knit in colo(u)rs I would never use otherwise.
3. Babies are small, and the sweaters knit up so quickly.

2. Babies look cute in practically anything - even when your sweater isn't perfect.
1. The awesomeness of giving someone a gift to celebrate a little person. By far the best.

Headlights

Oh dear. He looks a little like a dear caught in the headlights, doesn't he? Or maybe he's thinking: "Mom. Why did you put me in this pale yellow sweater?! I'm a BOY."

Well, sorry Jacob darling... But when I made this sweater I didn't know you were going to be male! But here is your baby sweater anyways. But now that my nephew is a little over 2 months old (and big for his age) he fits into it quite well.

This is the sweater pattern I used.
... Honestly, I'd never use this pattern again. Too much sewing. And I didn't like the sleeves or the collar in general. And, seriously, when it's not on a baby as cute as him, the sweater looks pretty horrid. Luckily for me, Jacob can pull it off.

And Jacob? I promise the next sweater will be more manly. (maybe.)

Stripes stripes stripes

It's been awhile. I know. But I'm done another knitting project! For now, this is all I can show y'all. 

The stripes didn't exactly turn out how I thought they would when I bought the yarn, but that's okay. It still made a super cute sweater. Or at least I think so.

traditions

Does two years a tradition make? Is twice of something, enough? Because if so, then stephchows and I definitely have a few traditions. 1) We go on a camping and hiking weekend in the summer. 2) I make her a I've seen and loved from craftgawker for our birthday. 

Last year I made her this bag from and old shirt. This year I made her a skirt!

Okay. Yes. This is also a skirt made from a shirt. Coincidence? Not really...

I saw a bunch on posts via craftgawker and really wanted to try making my own. It was dead simple. Well, unless you take into account that I had to a) sew and b) iron. Two things I don't love doing and am not great at.

The changes that I made:
1) I sewed down the button edge so that the skirt can't be unbuttoned. (No need for an embarrassing situation!)
2) I sewed a band along the top in which to put the elastic. (It's being strategically covered by a cute belt)

And that's it. It was really that simple. Some cutting. A little sewing. And now hopefully Steph will have a lot of fun wearing it.

Cupcakes, anyone?

It wasn't so long ago that I was making other cupcakes for a wedding. 

Well, I'm at it again. This time the favours of choice are chocolate raspberry and ginger. 9 dozen cupcakes down, 4 dozen to go. Phew.
Then I just have to decorate them... Easy? ... Right?

Peach Afghan

If you've been around the blog before, you should be well aware of the fact that I love the Olympics and I love my grandma. I can (and have) watched the Olympics all day. If it's an Olympic sport, I can and will get pretty excited about it. Rowing? Hells yeah! Swimming? Of course. Diving. Did you see that inward three and a half tuck? And don't even get me started on Gymnastics!

So what better thing to do than pick up an Olympic knitting project. A while back my lovely 97 year old grandma was telling me how she was sad she'd never finish the afghan she was working on. Well, hello! Perfect project for me! So this time when she came to town to visit I told her to bring the half done afghan. So here it is:

 I have three afghans in this exact pattern. I love them. I got one when I was born. All my siblings and cousins did. You can't really tell from these pictures, but the yarn is peach. Not my favourite colour... but for grandma I will work on it.

So, here's to many (too many?) more hours of Olympic excitement and afghan knitting.

Hope y'all are enjoying the Games as much as I am!

Cross my heart

Summer is for weddings. Or at least that's the way it often seems around here. And this year there are two weddings at the end of the summer that I'm really looking forward to. One, for my younger brother. The other is for a friend who I've known since I was 8. We went through middle school and university together. (yup. different high schools.) We aren't best-ies or anything, but we've stayed in touch and I truly respect him as a person and am really excited that he's getting married!!

The other exciting thing about his wedding? It's going to be almost completely homemade. The bride's mom is making her dress. The bride's father is weaving material for the groom's shirt. The wedding is going to take place at the family cottage and everyone is going to pitch in for making food and decorations and everything. It makes my crafty heart sing.

So, I couldn't just go out and buy them a card. That would be against the point. A slap in the face. So, I made them a cross stitch card.

 I won't lie. I didn't come up with the idea on my own. I saw this only a few days ago, and just change the idea from embroidering shoes, to cross stitching paper.

It's so easy! What you'll need:
- Paper
- embroidery floss & needle
- ruler & pencil
- cross stitch chart.

So, I just googled "heart cross stitch" and in 0.0 seconds had images of what I was going to put on the front of the card. I randomly decided that I was going to make my grid 5mm x 5mm to make the math easy, and then figured out where the center of the card was and went from there.

If you look at the first picture you'll see that I made a grid of pencil dots that could get erased later. Then, you are off to the races! Cross Stitch and go!

 Some tips. 
- Make your holes in the paper before you are doing the actually cross stitching. Much easier that way.
- I thought that 5mm grid was a little big and would make it smaller next time if I did it again. But it was very easy on the math
- tough paper is probably better. (I've had this stuff sitting around since high school. Waste not, want not!)

I'm kinda looking forward to trying this again!