a baby for a baby who loves babies

My niece is turning two (I think - if her parents wanted me to be able to remember all their ages, they shouldn't have had 5 kids!) and she loves baby dolls, so I made her this little stuffy.

she's got a lot of hair! I think her name is Matty.

1st mention and it's finished!

Well I never even got around to posting this as a project on Ravelry before it was finished! I'm still in my tired-of-fingering-weight spell, so I cast on for this hat using the apple cider colored alpaca that was one of the colors in the 1st plaid scarf I wove. I think the set will be a gift for my mom.

In the picture above it just sort of looks like a watchcap, but it's the one that best shows the cool stitch pattern with the little bubbly things. Really it's more of a semi-slouchy thing - I modeled it here, but it's not such a great picture either because having one's hair up in pigtails sorts of wonkifies the way any hat fits. duh. Here's the Berroco picture of it - obviously they know what they're doing when it comes to photos!

In process rather than finishing news, my quilted thing is growing and I think it intends to keep growing until it becomes a quilt top! I have no objections - I'm still having a grand old time working on it!

Ok, so maybe that picture doesn't look a whole lot different than the last one you saw. This is the part that's different (a panel at both ends with a star in the middle of each):

Then, because I had so much fun with the stars (see how they're all unique and uneaven? I love that!) I made 6 more and I'll work them into panels that'll go up the long sides. That's how I just keep adding to it - sort of medallion quilt style. Whee! I wish the subtle prints showed up better, but it's either a closeup of one, or a shot of the whole stack. Trust me - they're swell! :)

stranger than drinking cow's milk

Sometimes it feels good to cut perfectly good fabric into bits then sew those bits back into a piece of fabric. I don't know why.

This might turn into a quilt top. why knows. Here it is with too much flash. That's what happens when you decided to take a picture at 9:30pm.

details on the parcel

Ok, this post is for Catherine who may be the only person not content to just hear that I got a package of cute stuff from China (care of Buttons and Such.) Or rather - she's probably the only one who gets as excited about this stuff as I do. Feel free to bail on this post now if you don't care to hear about more crap I've snatched like a magpie just because it was shiny! (oh wait, there's a bit about some lace I'm working on at the end! No, I'm not doing that just to drag you through all this!)

So this is what I got:

Ok, so leaving stuff in bags is kind of a bad way to photograph it! Here's a close up of some of the cute trims! Look at those little apples!

I also got a bag of 20 hair pins with a flat part at the top for decorating! I made myself a few flowery hair bobs so far! Because when you spend all week in a hard hat, you want to wear flowers in your hair on the weekend!

And to prove that I am still knitting, here's a shawl that I recently started! It's a free pattern from Elann.com called Moonlight Sonata - I just love the circles! It's a crappy picture because of the flash, but the non flash pictures didn't seem to show the stitch pattern as much.

when I say cute, I mean SUPER cute

Oh man, I stumbled upon the best Etsy shop ever a few weeks ago - I don't even remember how. It's Buttons and Such and she's got the cutest trims and vintage buttons and whatnot - all at really great prices! and she's from China, so you get the fun of getting a parcel in the mail from China (yeah, that kind of stuff still excites me!) So I bought some stuff and it came in the mail today! I got a couple little cuts of fabric because it was just out of this world stuff, and I had to do something with this cat print right away! So I made an apron (and still used only half of it!)

Tell me that's not the cutest fabric you've ever seen!

Oh, the rick rack (which is de rigueur for all aprons, and don't let anyone tell you different!) is also from her. The ties in the back, which I didn't get a picture of - I mean seriously, how many angles do you need of an apron?- are green and white stripes.

Like I need a hole in my head

Seriously, I have a lot of bags. Unfortunately that leads to me hopping from one to another because it just strikes my fancy, I suppose, but then I abandon the majority of stuff in that bag and just start fresh with the new one. It's great and all, but then I'm left with bags all over that are filled with that time frame's stuff - so if I'm looking for something I have to mentally figure out some time landmarks and then work backwards to the bag I might have been using then to find the stuff. I'm not so good at that, which is why stuff gets "lost" - not technically lost, just in the bottom of one bag or another. Anyway, the fact that I know this does not explain why I decided to make myself a new bag. However, I wanted to make something, had new fabric to make that something with, and thus creatively decided to make something I already had plenty of! Do I care? No! I love it!

Wow, that looks really out of focus when I compare it to the picture below. Ugh. Also, it's super difficult to take a picture of a bag on a person. I know that sounds stupid. Perhaps if I rephrased and said "picture of a bag on myself." first you have to both keep your arm from blocking too much of the bag, and also have it in a position to not accentuate arm fat (I did not succeed at that) - I just sort of ended up looking like I was doing some stupid muscle flex - ignore that - it wasn't the intent! Ok, I think the un-modeled picture below might actually show the bag better - I'm certainly less distracted when I look at it! Oh, I forgot to take a picture of the lining, but it's black and white gingham!