i have a terrible habit of procrastinating–especially when it comes to purchasing fabrics that i don’t have a very explicit use for, even if i love, love, love them i tend to put off buying any because i don’t know how much i’ll need or it seems awfully pricey to buy and have it just sit in my stash waiting to be used… (mr. happy stuff might argue that this is not necessarily a bad type of procrastination) but sometimes it gets me into trouble.  like when a beloved print sells out or goes out of print and becomes impossible to find.  and then i experience this sinking feeling of (really ridiculous) regret.  i have to say that i’m really rather ashamed of both this procrastination and this regret (i think the only cure would be to completely stop looking at new fabrics, but that’s not likely to happen soon) and so it was only in a moment of panic, after reading this message three days after it was posted that i wrote to my dear common threads friend amber.  she always buys the most awesome fabrics and a few years ago i had been able to make a deal with her to get a bit of the elusive heather ross goldfish-in-bags print, so i wrote and asked if maybe, possibly, she might have bought any of the aqua paper boats print and if she might have enough that i could buy a bit from her.  she replied that she didn’t really have a half-yard to spare, but that she could send me maybe a 5″ swatch, but she wouldn’t accept payment or even a trade for it.  humbled by her generosity, i was even more surprised to open the package she sent and find that she’d also sent pieces of the other prints in the “macaroni love story” fabric line.  swoon!

her generosity has inspired me to not hoard the fabric, but instead to actually (gasp) use it!  i knew my first project would incorporate those fantastic aqua boats into a new daily-use daycare totebag for the happy baby.  a few months back, i’d purchased some chalkboard fabric with the intention of sewing this bag, but i wanted to sew it with the back of the fabric facing out.  i love the loose criss-cross of white threads on the backside.  i might regret this choice later when the bag begins to fray, but for now, here it is, in all its crisp, brand-new glory:

i love that this fabric doesn’t fray (no hemming!), but i did add a dark gray twill tape to the top edge of the pocket and the top of the bag since those edges will get extra wear and tear.  i laminated the boat fabric with iron-on plastic lamination and added a layer of chalkboard fabric to the back of the pocket too, so the boats are easy to keep clean and it doesn’t matter if they get wet.  i also added a little oilcloth to the inside bottom of the tote to make it extra sturdy and easily wipe-able.

chalkboard fabric is so stiff that i think i made some permanent creases in it when i turned it right side out at the end of sewing it up.  i had originally thought that maybe the bag could be reversible, but if it gets creases every time we switch back and forth… maybe not.  good thing i love the outside!  it makes me smile to see those boats peeking out of their windows every time i use this bag (which is pretty much every day).

many thanks, dear friend, for sharing your fabulous fabrics with me!  now to dream up projects for the remaining pieces….

the latest “boring-shirt-to-cutie-baby-clothes” transformation (i really should remember to take “before” pictures of these shirts).

this time i finally got a good method for the leg snaps.  if you want photos, let me know and i’ll put together a tutorial, but the short, text-based explanation is this:

ingredients–1″ twill tape, hammer-on snap sets (5-7 sets), hammer

step 1:  finish the raw leg seams with ribbing (same as collar).

step 2:  hammer the snaps onto your twill tape, making sure that the spacing is even and that the snap sets will match up.

step 3.  sew the twill tape to the leg seams (don’t forget, one side on the “wrong” side of the outfit, the other on the “right” side of the outfit, so they overlap when snapped).

this works much better than trying to hammer a snap through your rib-knit edging (my first attempt.  too many layers!) or sewing on those strips of snaps they sell already attached to twill tape (my second attempt.  that tape is too narrow and there’s not enough room to move even your zipper foot beside the snap).  this solution seems to be the most sturdy and the most tidy solution.  if anyone else has a different solution they’ve come up with, i’d be glad to hear it!

oh, i also used new rib knit yardage for the long sleeves because all of my scrap knit is stripey or reeeeeeeally the wrong color for this outfit.  i kinda like the way it turned out and it allowed me to get a nice match of the neck trim to sleeves.  and that long sleeve/short sleeve thing makes it look slightly less like pajamas (at least i think it does).  now if i could just get the collar to rest a little lower on his neck…

gotta love his rooster tail hair here!

*if the title confuses you, click here.

before christmas, one of my knitting friends (the same one who made me the happy baby this monster) gave us this wonderful, magical knitted baby blanket.

i had been wondering how in the world we were ever going to transition out of swaddling him to sleep and the first night i got this blanket, i laid it on top of him instead of swaddling and… like magic, he fell asleep!  it has a yummy weight, but because it’s knit, i didn’t feel like i had to worry about him getting it stuck over his face (knitting has lots of holes!).  it’s made of cotton yarn (easy, peasy washing!) and the pattern has polka dots on one side and stripes on the other.  could this blanket have been any more perfect for us?  the only way i can see would be… if there had been two of them instead of just one.  or maybe three.  my friend was so thrilled by the blanket’s positive reception that she agreed to make us a second blanket, but it might take awhile and so… i decided to try my hand at making one of the blankets myself.  eep!  me!  knitting!  a blanket, for crying out loud!  why not something small like a hat or even a scarf?  well, this project has the most incentive behind it, so it was the push i needed to dive back into the world of yarn after being gone since my undergrad years.  i’d been wishing for a good, portable handwork project anyway, right?

i asked my friend about the pattern and yarn she used and asked if it was difficult (it looks pretty complicated to me!) and she assured me that it was very simple (‘yes, but you’re a knitter,’ i told her.  ‘will it be simple for me?’).  she pointed me to the free online pattern and i looked it over and realized it was just knit and purl (and i know both of those!) but then it was also something called “slip stitch” … hmmm… new stitch.  might be scary.  plus, it looked like there would be counting involved and a pattern i’d have to pay attention to.  i began having some doubts. then some wise knitter friends explained that slip stitch was just slipping the yarn from one needle to the other.  oh.  not so scary then.  really probably the easiest stitch of the whole blanket.  i can do that!

my friend then told me that she’d used inexpensive but really wonderful cotton yarn from hobby lobby.  i had a sense that many knitters would be pretty skeptical of cotton yarn for a blanket and even more skeptical of cheap cotton yarn (this was on sale for $2.44/skein) but whenever i show it to knitters, they finger the blanket and say, ‘this is 100% cotton?  it’s so .. soft!  and … stretchy!  and…. squishy!’  yes, it really is a very nice yarn.  and i’m thrilled that it was cheap too!  (at least that way if i mess up, i don’t feel too guilty about investing tons of money into the project.)  after some needle research, i decided to invest in a set of nickel-plated “addi turbo” circular needles.  my friend’s only complaint about these needles was that they were “too fast” for her… i didn’t think that would be a problem for me.

i got started just before christmas vacation and worked on it in the car and whenever someone else was in charge of taking care of the happy baby while we were visiting family.  it turns out that this simple pattern is actually kind of addicting.  because it’s not just the same thing over and over there is incentive to knit “just one more row.”  and since the whole thing repeats in just 12 rows, it’s pretty easy to set these little baby-step goals (just one more dark blue stripe and then i’ll quit).  and yes, there is some counting , but never higher than the number four and i can usually manage to count that high even when i’m watching a movie (as long as it’s not subtitled or something).

so here’s what it looks like so far:

and here you can see the stripes on the back:

and the only real problem so far is that due to some initial miscalculations this is way too narrow to be a blanket by itself.  and rather than ripping out the first 50 rows i’d knit when i realized this problem, i decided to use this as an opportunity to learn how to seam or pick up edge stitches or something that will allow me to add more big chunks to this blanket to make it larger.  i’m thinking about using some “bee stitch” that alicia raved about here if i can only figure out how to do that stitch (yes, i’ve seen instructions for it online, but so far, whenever i try it, it turns out looking… wrong.) because i think it looks nice and because i love the idea of using bee stitch + something that looks like honeycomb (who in the world thought “spice island” was a good name for this blanket pattern?!) and maybe making my own whole new pattern and calling it the “honey pie” or “honey cakes” blanket.  can i do that?  is that copyright infringement?  stay tuned to see how this project develops!