this post is brought to you by grand theft auto 4 which arrived on our doorstep this afternoon. hallelujah!
thanks to everyone for your warm wishes and support for the launch of popknits. it's been a labor of love for some time now and i'm really excited and especially nervous to see it live online and getting pattern proposals already! haven't seen any sock proposals yet, hint hint, but you never know what's going to come in the door in june.
anyway, let's get back to blog business. i have a small amount of progress to report.
mmmm, i love this fabric
flair is coming along nicely. i had one hiccup and had to frog back a little but not much. i did end up putting short row bust shaping in...
and i think it was a good idea! it fits well and will be even better once it's blocked (everything's a little tight right now.) i'm feeling positive about it.
one leg done, the other started
the peanut pants are creeping along slowly. i was on leg island there for a while, but i feel a renewed energy to knit them. they seem HUGE right now but according to the swatch they will shrink considerably.
garter stitch cuff
i opted for an easy peasy garter stitch cuff. nothing big here.
in other crafty news, i hope to sew this weekend! i've been meaning to drag out my sewing machine for over a week now but it just hasn't happened yet. i got some great fabric for skirts at brooklyn general.
new fabric
and i also have one from the stash that i'm using (sorry no pic.) tonight, i'm casting on for elijah (ravelry) as well. there's a certain baby being born right now that will be lonely without it. hopefully i'll have some pics later this week.
here are a few peanut pics to end the post.. i love shots of her eating!
cheesy!
this is what she looks like after eating mac & cheese. the hair! yuck. i can never give her mac & cheese for lunch. it always has to be dinner so that she can be bathed afterward.
messy
i gave her lentils recently. she sorta liked them but they ended up everywhere. next time, they will be mashed.
books!
and she could spend hours looking at her books. it's one of her favorite activities!
only two more days and the peanut will be ONE YEAR OLD! holy crap. we managed to make it through her whole first year without any fatalities. amazing. i'll have photos to post after this weekend. tomorrow we're heading upstate to my parents' place for some R&R before the big party on saturday. KP's hoping to golf with my parents and i'm hoping to get a little knitting done. we'll see. it's a whole new house to explore now that she's crawling.
mobile!
here she is in action. i can't stop her now! good thing i ordered a baby gate from amazon yesterday.
in honor of the peanut's big day, i made myself that skirt. the drafting turned out pretty good and i got to work last week on the actual sewing. had some problems with the zipper, of course. i guess you can't install a regular zipper like an invisible one like i thought i could. lesson learned.
skirt done!
here it is! it fits reasonably well and it's lined with the cotton sheeting that i used as a template. check out that blind hem stitch! i used this tutorial to figure it out. in the end, my zipper looks passable.
my zipper install
but here's what i'm going to do different for the next skirt.
install the zipper along the center of the seam. i used this video tutorial to install it and she had it placed to the side of the seam. well, it didn't turn out that great and i think that my stitching would be straighter if i placed it on center. if anyone has any tips, please pass them along.
i'm going to make the rise the same in the front and back. currently, my pattern has an extra .5" rise in the front and 1.5" rise in the back. this is what my measurements said to do but i think that i can cut it back to .5" on both the front and back and just use one pattern piece.
i'm going use this technique for hemming a curved hem. MY GOD i wish i had seen it before i tried the first time. my first hem was ATROCIOUS. so much so that i ended up hacking off the damn curve along the bottom. i made the hem straight and, while it doesn't look bad, i think that it would look better curved.
still gotta cut out a little more on the hips. man this patterner's got HIPS!
i'll make the next one a little shorter.
so all in all, a good experience and i like the outcome. now what? i think it's time to cast on for the second sock. this one's a little lonely.
in randomness, one of my favorite authors, arthur c. clarke, died this week. i distinctly remember reading childhood's end and rendezvous with rama as a teenager. ah, summer reading on our sun porch back in michigan! these two books really ignited a spark in me for great science-based fiction that has yet to die out. i really loved this article at wired about him. he was a truly great man and will be missed.
i don't know why i have so many problems starting a project. i can think of at least ten things that i'd like to cast-on for but then i get all nervous and think, "what if it doesn't work out? what if i wasted all that precious free time on it and it turns out to be crap." yes, i really do think that. lately, it HAS to be a sure thing. so i'm waffling. i really think that i should swatch and cast-on for flair but i hesitate. ugh.
in the meantime i've done some other crafty things. i'm working on a simple A-line skirt for myself. i've had this bonfit skirt patterner for years (i remember buying it at my old apartment so we're talking like SIX years now) and i've never used it until now. i think that i was a little intimidated by it seeing as my sewing skills are less than stellar, but i've got a little more confidence now and i gave it a shot.
my first drafting of the skirt (yes, i'm drafting on leftover christmas wrapping paper) didn't work out well in the hips. WAY too much hips. so i figured out how to cut them back and re-drafted the pattern. i'm working with some cotton sheeting that i bought at BG for my muslin, which i'm going to turn around and use as a lining when all is said and done.
fabric and zipper for my skirt
i also got this at BG. i saw those pink and red turtles and had to have it. should be cute when i'm done. so i'm thinking about installing this non-invisible (does that make it visible?) zipper as an invisible zipper. i know that i'll sort of see the zipper teeth in the seam but i don't care. will it work? i think so. i just ordered and received my zipper foot from sears the other day so i can get started tomorrow maybe.
i didn't want to be without something on the needles (and those miters? my god, i'm having trouble working on them. i think that i'll save them for our early summer trip to the NC outer banks.)
peanut knit pants
i'm making these knit pants for the peanut (ravelry) using the itchy fingers pattern i found through ravelry. i did all the measurements and the math and i think that we're on the right track. i even swatched! i took the swatch when i was done and threw it in with our regular wash and dried it. i'm glad i did this because there was a significant change in the gauge seeing as this is a cotton/linen blend yarn. so i have to count rows while doing these pants not go by inches.
under the hem
sorry this image is blurry but i wanted to show my waist mods. i did a turned hem instead of ribbing and i picked up all the stitches and knit them in except for this inch or so pictured here so that i can put in elastic. i'm waiting waiting waiting on a shipment from joanns. god, they are slow to ship.
that's what's going on here! oh yeah, and the peanut is crawling now and giving me all types of strokes and heart attacks as she does crazy stuff. i stopped her from killing herself at least three times today. but who cannot love this face?
so i'm just back from a good drilling at the dentist and in a FANTASTIC mood and thought that i would write a blog entry. thankfully for all of you, i will be writing it over the next few days for a wednesday post and you will be spared most of my bitching.
i've been obsessed with finding "new" and interesting TV lately what with the writer's strike still going on (COME ON!! i'm sick of reality TV!) everyone who knows me knows that i despise all reality TV but project runway. i'm so glad it's back on the air! i was actually sorry to see elisa go last week. she had really grown on me. it's too bad that the challenge itself was such a snoozer. god, can we get a little more creative please? pour on the pressure, apply the heat! i wanna see these designers sweat!
in an effort to get more project runway into my veins, i started (and finished!) watching project runway canada (don't click on the link unless you want to know who won!) which is the greatest thing since sliced bread. i've gotta be honest here. i actually LOVE iman and brian baley more than heidi and tim. iman is amazing as a host. she really has strong opinions and i totally agreed with her on every decision. she also strikes me as being very sweet and caring.
brian baley and iman
brian baley, the mentor, was great too. he actually MENTORED. he had opinions and real words of advice for the designers. where i feel that tim gunn has pulled back from giving helpful commentary (maybe at the behest of the producers?) brian would come out and tell them what he thought was wrong (or right) with a garment and steer the designer in the right direction. mustache aside, i really adored him. i can't wait for the second season! too bad that it's not available in the US. watch it on youtube. trust me, you won't be sorry you did.
amongst all the PRC watching i was knitting on koolhaas finished koolhaas. this took me FOREVER to finish but it's because i was really only able to fit in a few rows here and there amongst all the other things.
large koolhaas
hiding
i made it large so that it would fit my dad. if it's a little too big, he can flip up the ribbing. looks great right? uuuuhhh, what's that? let's zoom in...
oops
ooooooops! forgot to cross one there! oh well, it still looks ok, i think! oh, and i got my new gorillapod. combined with the new camera, i expect my FO pics to be much better.
i also got to do a little sewing this past weekend. i whipped up two new pairs of cloth shoes for the peanut. these will be the last that i make seeing as she'll probably be crawling and walking sometime in the next 4 months.
pair #1
pair #2
i followed the tutorial again but used my pattern for making 6 to 12 month sizes. (i'll post this on the patterns page soon.) feel free to download this PDF and make your own as well. notice that i didn't exactly make right and left foot shoes. seriously, you don't need them.
shoes shoes shoes!
anyway, all in all, peanut has 4 pairs now. i made three of them and the fourth (top left) comes from kaya's kloset etsy store. if you don't want to make your own baby shoes then i highly recommend you get her to make them for you. she does great work.
i leave you with a picture of some highly yummy "mac daddy" from the veganomicon (which i got KP for christmas.)
things are very hectic at chez gleek these days. just when we think that we've figured things out around here, the peanut throws us for a loop and we're screaming for mercy. we had a blessed two weeks when she was technically sleeping through the night. only one feeding around 3AM and she'd sleep till around 6:30AM after that. it was blissful. then she went through her 3 month growth spurt and we're back to two feedings a night now and my body is aching with sleep deprivation. i was just getting used to getting 5 hours of sleep in a row. it was really nice! well, those days are a distant memory.
ew!
we're also finding that getting her to go to sleep is tough as well. i haven't resorted to feeding her to sleep since she was 5 weeks old but she definitely doesn't self-soothe herself to sleep yet. we have to rock/sway/bounce her until she passes out which thankfully isn't a long time but still too long in my opinion.
fun in the mirror
she doesn't suck her thumb or take a pacifier so i'm at a loss at to what to do for her. we swaddle her in a miracle blanket for every sleep period so she doesn't have access to her hands. i'm going to try switching to the aussie swaddle method this week and see if that doesn't help things. it's all a gamble.
mmmmm
but she's as cute as can be! each time she smiles at me or gurgles or follows me with her eyes, i know that i'm in love forever.
ok, enough about the nut. during the all-too-brief naptimes i'm able to get a few things done around here. i've managed to put blackout curtains in both the master bedroom and the nut's room. i bought the fabric on ebay and sewed them up myself rather than pay $50+ for each window which is ridiculous. no photos, sorry. they are very ordinary.
these are super simple and fun and, wow, actually stay on your head! i love them and want to make more but i already put away the sewing machine because the clutter was driving me bonkers.
from the front
from the back
in other sewing news, i want to draft my own skirt pattern and whip up a few skirts that fit my post-baby body. i DID have a few skirts that fit me well until the nut decided to spit-up all over them and now they can't be worn in public anymore. sigh. oh well. i got the sew what! skirts book and am reading it through now. just need to get some large paper (maybe i'll just use some of the crappy christmas wrapping paper from last year) and get going.
the miters are coming along too. i now have the pattern memorized so i knit them much faster.
pile o miters
and i started a pair of socks but i don't have a picture yet because it's a total of 5 rows. as you can see, the knitting is coming along but not too quickly. just slowly but surely.
now referring to the post title, in the times when i have time to write, code, or blog, i usually don't have my brain with me. i'm not sure where my brain goes during these times but it's surely not in my head. this moment here is brought to you by sunday and the hubby taking the peanut for a walk. i was very happy when he volunteered to take her out! but wouldn't you know it that the instant she disappeared out the door i missed her. of course!
by the way, less than a month and the new harry potter book is out and in my hot little hands! i can't wait! i've been reading the half-blood prince aloud to the peanut whenever i'm feeling a little too silent and i get excited with each passing page. i can't wait! (oops, already said that. where's my brain? don't know.)
ETA: i did some hard thinking about why the peanut wasn't falling asleep well and realized that maybe she's just not soothed enough when i put her down. in walks itunes and my trusty ipod with jbl soundstage and i've got lullabies going for in no time! what would i do without an internet connection? surely i would perish. she's been sleeping well since i got the music going. also, she's started taking a pacifier to sleep! i can't tell you how happy that makes me!
and for all the nursing mothers out there that have had to give up milk/dairy, almond milk is truly the nectar of the gods. if you're not allergic to nuts, i highly suggest you try it. i HATE soy milk and rather dislike rice milk because they have such horrid aftertastes, but almond milk is really yummy and creamy. tastes great in my coffee!
not that i didn't feel pregnant last week or the week before, it's just that after a whole weekend of working on the apartment, i'm starting to feel tired to my bones. that and i'm not sleeping well. i got up this morning before the sun was even up so that i could make it to an early dentist appointment. and the dentist? not fun while pregnant either. it's just one of those things that they don't tell you about until you're in the chair and scraping away. trust me, you don't want to know the details.
thankfully it was a three day weekend for me so even though i spent saturday and sunday cleaning, reorganizing, and plugging up every last little hole into my apartment with triple expanding foam and steel wool (ah, NYC.. anyone who tells you that they naturally do not have a mouse problem is a big fat stinking' liar) i got a chance to camp it on the couch most of yesterday.
but before i got to do that, i did get to give bedtime bear a little scrub.
scrub a dub dub
more soap please!
what you see there is after TWO soakings and one scrubbing. the second scrubbing was the most successful. then he was thrown into the wash and the dryer and came out looking brand spankin' new. don't even ask how he got so filthy in the first place. he was well loved by KP and now he will keep the peanut company and will hopefully teach her that bedtime is good.
in response to all of the questions about the baby knits from the last post, all of those were made by family members for me when i was a baby and my parents stowed them away. i didn't even know that they kept them! it was a nice surprise. every one of them will be cared for put to good use. no, sorry, they are not for sale, but i'm sure that if i love one over the other, i may come up with a pattern for it. we'll see. everyone seems to love the poncho!
on my day off yesterday, i spent some quality time watching 24 saved from the previous evening while knitting on the 3-hole shawl. i redid the math and determined that i need at least two more balls of noro silk garden, putting this project at a whopping 13 balls needed. i ordered some from ebay (this is well within the guidelines of knit from your stash 2007, by the way) but the lot is different so i'm holding off working on it anymore until the new yarn arrives. i want to see if there's a real difference or not, and if so, i'll want to work it into the current panel.
the pirates hat also got some time yesterday and i'm about 6 rows from completing all the colorwork.
but i wanted to make good on my 2007 goal of "sewing more" so i decided to whip up a sewing machine cozy. this was a quick and dirty project which i totally made up as i went along using some stash fabric i had lying around. since my sewing machine does not have a permanent home (no room for it) it tends to get all dusty hanging out in the corner or on a shelf so this cozy was needed..
my scandalously naked sewing machine
much better!
the little bag off to the right is for the pedal and power cords (ignore my gatorade on the left.. love that fruit punch!) i even managed to put a slit in the top where i can grab the handle to get it off the shelf.
and here it is, sitting in its new home on the newly reorganized shelf with all of my craft books.
it's nice to have it accessible now with all of my craft books which were also hidden away in the corner until the major reorg of the apartment started happening last weekend. things are looking up! but damn am i tired! only a few more weekends of this sort of work to go before everything is ready for the peanut's arrival.
to come? a new desk, changing table/dresser, storage unit from ikea, new table and chairs from ikea, other assorted storage goodies from ikea, a crib and rocking chair from my parents, stuff from my registry, etc etc. wow, there's still a lot more to do and cram into the apartment!
sorry for the week long blog absence. i really want to be good about posting while i can (before the peanut arrives and sucks away all my spare time!) but last week was incredibly busy as was this past weekend. the week that we all return to work after an extended vacation always seems hectic. yeah, i was at work between christmas and new year's but not many other people were so getting back in the swing of things was tough on tuesday and wednesday. then the rest of the week flew by in a big blur! i didn't get to do as much knitting as i had hoped but this weekend was full of progress at chez gleek.
without even a prompting from me, KP got going on house clearing and storage early on saturday morning. i was surprised and very grateful! we both worked on going through our massive library of books and sorted out the crap from keepable. about twenty books ended up on the curb (but they didn't stay there long thanks to the wonderful weather and abundant street traffic in the slope) and half of our collection ended up in the storage space in the basement. we ordered huge plastic storage containers last week for this very purpose. needless to say, it was very cleansing to me. i love a good purge of household items.
from there we cleaned and rearranged furniture in anticipation of moving items out of our second bedroom (formerly know as "the office") to make room for the peanut. i was exhausted by the end of the day but managed to knit a little and cut out some fabric.
on sunday, after a trip to babies "r" us with kaitlyn, i spent some time in front of the sewing machine and whipped up these two drawstring bags.
i got the formula for making these from jess. her instructions were quite clear up to the point of "sew the squares on the bottom of the long rectangle" at which point my pregnant brain completely checked out. for about an hour, i just couldn't figure it out! i tried pinning the square along the bottom but the darn things never matched up. i was beginning to get frustrated when i decided to go at them in reverse order and it worked! sorry this description is so vague but it's her pattern and i don't want to give away all the secrets in case she wants to make a tutorial. if she doesn't, maybe i'll do one. we'll see.
anyway, the bags are reversible. i picked some fabric for the insides and will still probably never turn them inside out.
inside out? maybe not
i really want to buy a fat quarter collection or two and make more! these were so easy once i got the hang of it.
in knitting news, i finally started some fair isle, though i'm beginning to wonder at the practicality of making winter items with the climate being all crazy lately. dude, it was close to 70 degrees here on saturday! beautiful but freaky.
aaarrrrr!!!
here be pirates!! my very first fair isle, and though it's a lot of work, it's fun and i am enjoying it. i've made it totally through the first repeat of the pattern and am now working on the second one. it's slow going but getting faster as i get used to knitting with two hands and keeping my floats loose. i can't wait to see it all done!
when i was just too tired to concentrate on the pirates hat (like after all that moving work on saturday), i worked on the 3-hole shawl which is now one more hole closer to done.
2 holes down, 1 to go
originally i bought one bag of silk garden (10 balls) on ebay to make this. then after working through the first 3 balls, i did some calculations and thought that i would need 11 balls so i bought one more ball on ebay. now, alas, i think that i'm going to need 12 to finish this sucker. either the yardage is just not consistent in silk garden or i've lost my brain and ability to do math. considering that i'm 30 weeks pregnant, i'm going to go with reason #2. looks like i'm going to have purchase another ball on ebay soon (which is the only place that i can find this particular colorway.) oh well, it's in the rules of KFYS2007 that i can do this, thankfully!
some of you are probably wondering about my stupid sock creatures. i hit a snafu last week with my first one being that i sorta sewed the tail on the wrong side of the body and it became not so much a tail anymore. use your imagination. it may be salvageable. we'll see. the second one is still in pieces because i need a lot of patience to sew such tiny things together. patience is something that i lack lately.
later this week, i hope to cast on for a knit for the peanut! i'm planning on making the baby sweater from elizabeth zimmerman's knitters almanac. see this lovely one that carrie made? i'm making mine with some RYC cashsoft DK. it looks like a quick knit so i hope it'll be done soon (look at me hoping for something to be done before i've even started it! i've clearly lost it) then it's on to more peanut knits! she is due on march 15th and i'd like her to be decked out in some of my handmade goods.
it was a busy weekend for me. i got a lot done by spending most of the weekend in my apartment... but sometimes you need those sorts of weekends, no? friday, i stayed home from work with a sore throat that seemed to be a combination of dry air and allergies because it's totally gone now after much rehydration and rest. i had a chance to do all the laundry on friday which opened my weekend for crafting!
mmm, seaming AND pocky
saturday was world pocky day. 11/11 looks like sticks right? so i dug out my almond crush pocky and sewed up the chocolate brown baby ribbed jacket.
yarn: debbie bliss merino aran (5 balls) needles: US8 for body and US7 for ribbing pattern: ribbed jacket from debbie bliss special knits for babies
all done and into the mail on monday or tuesday! then when i was done with that i decided to work on altering some old jeans of mine so that i can wear them during my pregnancy. i got these maternity panels on joann.com a while ago but hadn't the time to install them until now.
here await the jeans for alteration
i hate ripping seams, so tedious
first you have to rip the sides of the jeans down, cut across the bottom, and then sew in the panel on the bottom then up the sides. there was a point when i actually didn't think that it would work. in the end, i'm satisfied with the results. it took FOREVER for me to install it but i think that the next time will go faster.
saturday night, KP and i enjoyed some movie time which meant more knitting and then today there was nothing but star wars on cinemax. you know what that means, right?
more blocking
here we have the mistake rib scarf and a matching headband which i was able to eek out of the last of the yarn... i'm on such a roll, i'm almost afraid to acknowledge it. now, all i have on the needles is the second leg warmer but i can guarantee that won't last long. i have two projects lined up to start: some glittens using knitpicks swish superwash in dark navy and the 3-hole noro shawl.
