CDing again

I had planned to cloth diaper Missy, but really wasn't looking forward to having to do an extra load of laundry ever 3 or so days. I used 'sposies for the first few weeks to get me back in the groove again and still use them for overnight (till I get my courage up, lol). But getting back in the CDing saddle again wasn't as hard as I anticipated. It's really rather fun to cloth diaper and you get to be so much more creative than you can be with "go 'n throw" dipes (which really have zero room for creativity). And while babies are 100% breastfed, you don't have to "scoop-the-poop" as there are no solids, everything gets nicely washed away, so it's really no trouble. I wash about every 3 days, and have an ever revolving supply of soft, fluffy non-landfill-clogging diapers. And as far as the creativity side of things, here's what I've gotten to do so far:

The diapers are made from a large, soft sheet using the Rita's Rump Pocket pattern (I managed to get 10 from one large, flat sheet; queen or kin size, not sure). They were so fun to make and super easy too. This tutorial helped immensely when it came to adding the elastic. I can't wait to get a hold of some more flannel to make some more! I'd like another couple of sheets' worth at least. I stuff them with a trifolded small prefold (I have used premium diapers as stuffers too, but they're kinda big!, might be good for overnight) and they aren't too too bulky, easy to get on and off (just use one pin), I love 'em!

Update, here are a few more:















The pink (acrylic) diaper cover is my rendition of a Flapper Bottom soaker which turned out nice, but I still don't like it as well as the Warm Heart Woolies plain wrap that I made from recycled red wool. It's so pretty and so easy to get on and off, also is a good fit (this pic is so far from doing this soaker justice it isn't funny. It's a much deeper, darker red in real life and the color is nice and even, not faded looking like in this sub-par photo).








I also made an Ottobre soaker (.pdf; the Ottobre is my favorite pull-on soaker, very quick and easy to make, easy on/off, contains wettness well...) out of some chunky recycled wool which is my bullet-proof diaper cover (the blue and green one above is an Ottobre soaker, but the one I made most recently is a cream color). That with a premium stuffed RRP might be the ticket for night time when I run out of disposables.

Projects

Here are a couple of my fairly recent projects that I hadn't had a chance to blog about yet. The first one is the bible cover I made out of old jeans for Geo's 7th birthday. I stayed up into the wee hours of the night the night before finishing it. Gigi has already requested one, but if I do, I'll start it months in advance, lol.


The next is the Cinderella Topsy Turvy doll (a la Jean Greenhowe) that I made for Gigi's 5th birthday. I'm really happy with how she turned out. Still need to make some little flowers to go around her bun, but otherwise she's done.


Here are a couple that Geo made for his sister's birthday. The bunny finger puppet was knit in the round using the magic loop method (ears knit by me, whiskers added by me), The pink bunny was knit in the round (magic loop) too, I think I did the ears for that one too, but pretty much everything else he did.

Sansa Cozy

I wanted a way to carry my mp3 player around with me so that it was accessible for me to pause it as needed, and also to keep it safe so I knitted a quick cozy. I cast on 20, knit st st in the round, till I was about an inch from where I wanted to end, then I switched to 2x2 ribbing. I attached a belt loop on the back as well as a belt loop loop (if I'm not wearing a belt, I can still loop it thru my belt loop and button it on, if that makes any sense at all). Here's how it turned out (I should have a pic of me actually wearing it):

Blog-a-day challenge

Inspired by the Thing-a-Day challenge, and not feeling like I could actually create a new thing every day of the month but also feeling very bad at my lack of posting for the last eon, I've decided to take on a Blog-a-Day challenge and make myself blog at least once a day for the next month (hopefully I'll develop a good habit and it'll continue).

GRR #1 for the day: my yarn going to my Shetland Triangle shawl (a pretty example pic here) got broken by some little native so I spit-spliced it back together, ... all better :) (at least until GRR #2 happened and another little native or two pulled out my knitting needle out of half of the shawl and causing me to drop a stitch somewhere. Oh where oh where did that stitch go?)

Happy for the day: I learned about using CVS Extra Care Bucks to my advantage. I messed up by buying an extra toothbrush and toothpaste that didn't give me ECBs (because I didn't look at the offer closely enough, I'll keep better notes next time!), but I ended up spending a little over $14 for 12 rolls of TP, 2 tubes of toothpaste, 2 toothbrushes and some maxipads. I used two different CVS coupons that I found which came to $5 off my purchase, I got over $12 in ECBs which I can use toward my future purchases, and I have a gift pack coming in 8-10 weeks which will include 2 boxes of Cheerios, Colgate Total toothpaste, CVS brand pain reliever tabs, Benefiber, Execedrin Migrain sample, a pen and a pill sorter so I think all in all I did pretty good. I can't wait to get next month's sales flyer and start figuring out what goodies I can get next.

Geo went and picked up a free personal pan pizza for the Pizza Hut Book-It program. He read a whole book that wasn't part of school this last month. For February I'm going to have him read a few more books or a bigger book. We got started a little late in January and since it was the first month I tried that, I went a little easier on him.

He is really progressing in piano, he has started playing Away in a Manger and when it get's to the word Manger, he inserts a B flat in the left hand (no one showed him how) to make it sound nicer. He's really got an ear for it.

Eli has started calling me Baba. I say "say MMMMMM" and he goes "mmmmm." Then I go "ahhhhhh" and he says "ahhhhhh" and then I say "Mmmmmmaaaaaaaammmmaaaa" and he says "Mmmmm Baba!" He insists on calling me Baba even though he can make the sounds in Mama. What a funny monkey he is. He is also jumping like a frog, jumps pretty high, both feet off the ground, lands well, amazing.

Gigi is doing great with her cast. We have her bath routine downpat. I wash her hair in the sink (she lies on the counter and leans her head back into the sink). This way her cast is in no danger of getting wet. Then when her hair is dried off, I move her to the bath, wash her body while she keeps her arm raised so the cast doesn't get wet. I use a bucket to pour water over the soapy parts and quick as a flash, she's done and getting out again. This is not to say that I really look forward to the day that cast is taken off! But all in all she's doing very well. Hasn't slowed her down one bit. She has also start tinkering on the piano. She's learned how to play Jesus Loves Me on the black notes, and twinkle twinkle on the white notes. So it won't be long before she's rivaling Geo. She wants to learn how to read SO bad so she can get a free pizza too. I told her that I'd enroll her next year when she's in Kindergarten and she's excited about that.

Knitted Chicken Egg

I'm knitting up a bunch of eggs for play food for the kids for Christmas and here's the pattern I came up with. I wanted a knit version of the cute Egg Babies (crochet). It's roughly based on the Curly Purly Egg pattern, but I found that that pattern knitted with worsted weight yarn on size 7s or 8s was giving me a goose egg size rather than chicken so I adjusted it slightly.

Cast on 9 stitches over 3 double pointed needles (3 st per needle), use a 4th needle to knit in the round.

Row 1: K
Row 2: K1, M1 (lifted bar increase), K2 (repeat for remaining 2 needles)
Row 3: K
Row 4: K1, M1, K1, M1 (around, will have 6 st per needle)
K in stocking stitch for 9 rows, begin decreases

Decrease Row 1: K1, K2tog*, K1, K2tog* (around)
Row 2-3: K
Row 4: K2tog* (around)
Cut yarn leaving a long tail, thread it onto a large yarn needle, weave through loops on needles, remove needles, stuff egg, pull thread snug and sew up tightly. Hide ends. Shape egg with needle.

* I think I might have invented an "invisible" decrease, or at least slightly less obvious decrease. Slip 1 knitwise, move that stitch back to the left needle (purlwise), knit 2 together thru back loops.

Yarn Harvesting

Yarn harvesting, sweater recycling, whatever you call it, it's great fun (at least for this nerd) and super thrifty. I have a thrift shop near my home that sells sweaters for $0.25 each on Thursdays (1/2 off day) and I can usually get 5 or 6 skeins worth of yarn from one sweater. I never measure the yardage, but you can make a pvc niddyy noddy or rig up any of several other ways to figure the yardage if you want.

The first thing to note is the seaming of the sweater you are looking at. There are two ways that sweaters are seamed, one is the material is knitted on a machine in large sheets, the pieces are cut/serged and serged together (like any other article of commercial made clothing). The other way is the sweater is knit on a machine, but with a precise pattern and one long piece of yarn is used (going back and forth up the sweater) and this long piece can be unraveled and wound into balls.

Here's what a serged seam (not useable for yarn harvesting) looks like:













And here's a chain stitched seam (what you want to look for):









The chain stitch is similar to the type of stitching that is done in the top of dog food bags that allows you (if you can find the tail) to rip the string right off the top of the bag and open it easily.

Here's a drawing of what to look for when getting ready to separate the pieces of your sweater. Find the side of the chain where the rounded part of the chain is closest to an edge. Slide a seam ripper under one of the chains and cut it (try not to nick the sweater yarn). You may have to loosen one or two more chains before you can start to pull the string from the other side of the seam and rip the whole seam out. Sometimes as your ripping it out, the chain might snag, just give a quick tug to both sides of the sweater and it should break free and you can continue ripping out the seam.

(more to come as I have time)

How to wind a center pull ball

First take the tail of the yarn and hold it, tail pointing down, in your non-dominant hand (for me that's my left hand).













Start winding in a figure-8 motion between thumb and pointer finger while continuing to hold the tail with your last 3 fingers.













Pull the figure-8 off your fingers and fold it in half, then continue winding over it.
















I keep my thumb over the place where the tail comes out from the ball so I don't wind over its escape route. See the little hole my thumb leaves?
As I'm winding, I turn the ball to the right and keep wrapping around. At first I'm almost going from south to north pole, but after there's a bit of a ball, I turn the ball a little off its axis and begin winding from the bottom right hand "corner" of the ball, (ha, is that an oxymoron?) to the top left of the ball which serves to make the ball a little more flat on top and bottom which is great for keeping the ball from rolling all over the place when it's finished being wound.

When I'm done, I tuck the tail in to the ball with a crochet hook. Notice the tail coming out of the center of my center pull ball.








See how nicely they stack (well if you tilt your head, lol)?

Pocket Ballerina

A little girl from Gigi's Sabbath School class had a birthday last week and we went to her party at an inflatable jumping place. I didn't have anything to take for a gift so I started knitting some Little Dudes. The problem is that I forgot to bring hair color (I was making them in the car on the way to the party) so I couldn't finish them in time (also my older 2 have since played "I spy" with them and have forgotten where they hid them, grr). I told the mom I was sorry but that I was making something. So I came home and made a couple more little dudes, then started on a Pocket Ballerina. I had some trouble with some of the directions, they really need to be revamped (I totally went with different hair, loopy crochet hair), but got her finished last night at around 12:30. Yawn. I think she's cute, hope Alyana thinks so too :)





(closeup of face)

I've got the Blu's ... finished!

The 2nd pic shows how I ended up doing the stitching. I did a dashed line, then when I got to the end, I turned around and filled in the blanks.

I had all the pocket and fly stitching done when I discovered that I had it all turned around. The back pockets were sewed on the front and the front pockets were sewed on the part of the jeans where I had added some short rows to add to the rise. So, snip-snip , I had to do it again. They are very soft (due to the 20% nylon content in the yarn) and kind of light-weight so not for night-time, but nice day-time longies. I think I'll make some more out of this yarn (actually I know I will), but I think I'll do Aubrey Doodlepants next time. I could still add some faux stitching if I feel like it to make them seem more jean-y. Pros about this pattern: attention to detail, looks very much like little jeans, Cons: no crotch gusset, no short rows (I didn't make enough either), no give in the seam stitching. All in all I'm glad I made them, I think they are really snazzy :)

Blu progress

Here's the right leg as far as I have it done. I didn't have a lighter color of yarn for the cuff so I did mine all the same color. They will still look like jeans with all the stitching when I am done. This is the part where you have to drop one stitch and unravel it all the way down, then pick up the stitch ladders by 1 and by 2 back up to create a faux outside seam. I did that part with a crochet hook, peace of cake :)

Little jeans for my little guy

Well, I finally scored a sweater, the yarn of which will make terrific Blu jeans (maybe even 2 or 3 :). It's an American Eagle Outfitters sweater, a really nice blend of 80% wool, 20% nylon. I hope that much nylon won't be a problem. I don't plan for them to be nighttime longies so I think they will be fine. The resulting yarn is very soft, they will be so nice and comfy! The color is a dark blue with lighter blue/gray specks which gives it a nice denim appearance. I know it looks almost black here, but it's more of a blue in real life. Here are the pics of the sweater and then after it's reincarnation (at least till it's reincarnated into longies :).






















This is as many balls of yarn that I was able to roll tonight. I have one more sleeve to go so probably 2 more balls.











Here is my improvised nostepinde (in my case a 18" length or so of 1/2"-3/4" PVC pipe). It actually worked really nicely and I think I was able to wrap more balls than I would have been able to otherwise. Also, I was able to wrap them flat on top and bottoms so they will stack nicely (for what it's worth, lol).

I learn new things every day

I recently learned what spinning swifts are for and then today learned about Nostepinne, Scandinavian yarn ball winders. I just recently learned how to wrap a center-pull ball, but the I bet a Nostepinne would make them look purt-near perfect. I am trying to figure out how to make one since I can't buy one. Someone mentioned you could use a fat marker which I do have so next time I need to wind some yarn, I'm going to try this. Ah, just found a gal who used a plastic part from a Play-Doh set as a Nostepinne and turned out a lovely ball, see, it can be done, lol.

Fantastic finger puppets

I was searching for knitted finger puppet patterns and came across these cuties. Boy, do I wish I could knit like this! (or rather wish I had patterns).

Ok, now I'm done... really.

I ended up cutting off the old waist band and the next two rows where I made all the increases, put it back on circs and knitted up to the waistband, then hand stitched the last row down to the inside of the pants. I left a little hole where I could add the elastic. Now I just need to put them on Eli and see how tight the elastic needs to be.

Eli has been very vocal when he nurses over the last day or two. He makes growling, grunting noises, almost like he's trying to poop, but he doesn't. I'm wondering if he might be a little constipated or if he's reacting to the dairy in my diet. Last night we had what I feel to be successes. When I went to bed around 1 a.m., I went to change Eli's diaper and it was only slightly damp so I took and peed him in the shower which he did right away and without complaint. Then when he woke up again around 7 a.m. I checked it again and it was a little wetter, but still not soaked so I took him again and he went almost immediately and again without complaint. So that was very encouraging to me. I hope we can keep that up in the nights to come. That would be very nice. It would be awesome if he could get to the place where he could stay dry (with potty trips) all night.

Eli's getting really good about sitting on his little potty, his balance is getting much better. He is starting to grab things and reach out for things. He wants the phones, remotes, anything he shouldn't have, lol. He spits up a lot and I'm a little worried that he has acid reflux. He doesn't spit up much if at all at night time tho.

Argh!

I guess it's par for the course that the pants won't even go above Eli's chunky thighs. Sigh. I guess that means I'll have no choice but to rip out the waistband and do that over. At least it won't be too much, but I was really hoping I was DONE.

Cargo ... done.

Whew, finally... thought this day would never get here. But, I'm done with the pants. I think the legs are too long and I really don't like how the grafting came out, also not so sure about the short rows, but do you think I'm going to take them apart and do it over again? Not on your life. I think I might do this pattern again [or a variation on it anyway], but next time, I'll do it from the top down, no kitchnering (well, the gusset, but not the legs anyway) and it'll just be easier for me. I'll have to hand sew the cuff seams, but that really doesn't bother me. I'll probably do the waistband bigger next time too, I cast on 80, then increased to 100 in the first 2 rows after I closed the waistband and I think it made the waistband a little too snug and also I don't like the puckering. So I'll just cast on 100 (or whatever number gets me gauge) on smaller needles, then go up in size, rather than increasing stitches. I'll have to try the new dipe and the pants on Eli tomorrow and see if they fit.

Longies that won't die

Not that I want them to die, mind you, but I can't seem to finish them. I had to frog them back down to cast on again because I decided that I really should single strand the elastic casing part because the front and back of the casing will equal double stranding. Then I'll pick up the 2nd strand when I start the main soaker part. I think I'll probably add 20 stitches to bring it back up to 100 as that works better with 50 stitches per leg plus an added gusset when I get closer. I might just stay on my tiny (like 2's I think) needles if it looks like my gauge is going to be too big on larger needles. I'd really love to finish these so I could start working on other things!

Longies in reverse

I frogged the Cargo longies down to the legs last night. I decided I'd try knitting down from the top, meeting the legs and Kitchnering the legs on. I sure hope that's going to work! I cast on 100 because I thought (from the gauge I was getting before I frogged), that that would be the right number for gauge, but it was still coming out too big (I'm aiming for 10" across) so I am trying it with 80 stitches. I also started on really small needles, but I'm ready to switch to the bigger ones now (4s I think) because my fingers are cramping up something fierce. I hope that works itself out soon!

Progress Bars

Well, I think I've found something I can be happy with as far as my progress bars go. It's still based on the Bare Naked App code, but I altered the percentage bar image to allow for different images of what I'm working on. I still think it might be possible to get Indigirl's idea to work with CSS using a sliding door technique, but I can't figure out how to make the doors slide up and down as opposed to left and right.

Testing

I'm trying to get some of those nifty knitting progress bars to work on my page. So far I've been able to get the ones from cogknition to sort of work. For some reason Blogger isn't wanting me to move the page elements around or I'd move the status bar to the bottom of the sidebar. It also won't let me embed the javascript into the HTML of the page. I have to host it offsite somewhere. That is less convenient for me. What I'd really like is to get Indigirl's status bars to work in Blogger (anyone know how?). Hmm, it's dawned on me to try hosting Indigirl's script in a .js file offsite and see if that works.

[later that day...] Nope, didn't work, or at least I wasn't able to figure out how to make it work. So for the time being, I'm using the status bar css code from Too-biased. I also have an idea in my head of making progress bars similar to the pregnancy/TTC/children's ages/aniversary ... tracker bars that are out there, except the little knitting project images would move across the bar. I'll have to look at them a little closer to see if I can figure out how they are done. It's probably way over my head, but it sounds cool.

10/7/06 - Ok, well, now I'm on my 3rd experiment, this time going with Bare Naked App's %-age bar. Now just wish I knew what he meant by "In our case a PHP script handles all the math for us." Wish I could figure out an easier way than to figure it out in Excel.