News From Around the House

So now we have the mug, and the mug has reproduced. There are now two mugs. I don’t know how this happened. I think it’s voodoo. That’s all it can be, right?

But I think I need to start planting some fabric in my front yard. Or maybe dollar bills. Or sewing supplies. A little bias tape, a little elastic, a few buttons and snaps. Can’t hurt, right?

I’m not doing very well on my “three things for the fair” project. I’ve done about 10 rows on the bunting and nothing on the quilt. I did cut out a new project, though, for the sewing project. And this one is perfect because it’s for a friend’s baby, and comes along at just the right time to also be my sewing project for the fair.

I am using this pattern and making the same outfit the baby is wearing. It’s a jacket, and little coveralls and a shirt. I am using a Winnie the Pooh fabric for the lining of the jacket and the shirt, and a lilac fabric for the coveralls and the outside of the jacket. Then, on the left hand side of the jacket I am going to use machine embroidery to embroider a Winnie the Pooh to match the shirt.

I’ve used this pattern before – a ton of years ago. I really like the way it comes out. Of course, I have to go to Joann’s today or tomorrow to get some bias tape to match the lilac fabric, because I have every color of bias tape in the world (even some patterned bias tape) but I don’t have white.

And depending on which pattern I use to embroider the Winnie, I may need some embroidery thread. I can’t decide which Winnie I want to use – I have it narrowed down to 6 different ones. Go ahead and pick one for me. Keep in mind that the fabric is lilac. (Not that I can’t change colors, but I think you pretty much want Winnie the Pooh the traditional colors.) And I’m using the Piglet with the “C” because the baby’s name that this is for starts with a “C”.

 

                           
          

I did, though, start a new knitting project – I’m just sick to death of the never ending bunting. I’ve made 100 of these things and none of them ever took this long. Of course, with the new knitting project, I spent about an hour going through knitting pattern books and couldn’t find *anything* I liked, so I made my own design. I just combined a few different patterns and made the pattern “a few rows of this, a few rows of that, this openwork pattern…” I’ve never designed my own pattern, but that’s par for the course when I’m on a deadline – sabotage myself.

But this is a totally new design in a lot of ways, because I am using variegated yard. I *never* work with variegated yarn, I always think it’s so ugly on the skein. But my friend Mary over at The Digital Knitter is making a blanket using variegated yarn, and it’s really, really beautiful, so she inspired me to try something with variegated yarn. I picked this yarn up at Joann’s a few weeks ago when they had a yarn sale, thinking that someday I would use it and see how it turned out.

So far, I really like it. And I kind of like my made up pattern. I like openwork and delicate knits for babies. I don’t like chunky and heavy knits for those things. Kids sweaters, yeah, chunky knits and cables and dense knits are ok. But I think baby knits really need delicate work.