Gojira

I've had it in my mind for quite some time to make my little lamb a godzilla costume for Halloween. This year seemed right. She even makes little monster noises all on her own.

Here's some pics of the finished costume.

Worless Wednesday - When My Little Lamb Is In A Drawing Mood My Lace Patterns Suffer

Do You Ever Sleep?

"When do you sleep!?", is a questions I'm asked more and more often these days. With my sewing, knitting, cooking, watching my child, growing a new person inside of me, and cleaning the house for a minimum of three hours a day; you may find yourself calling shenanigans on my ability to do all that I do, and still sleep. And you'd be right.

I barely sleep and usually find myself going to bed somewhere in the ballpark of 2 AM every morning. Then my little girl wakes up sometime around 8 or 9 AM on days where I don't have anything planned. Generally I use her nap times to do whatever is most complicated or cannot be done while my little person is awake and running around the house.

Wordless Wednesday - Wonder Dress

How To Use Up The Yarn You Don't Want Or Use

Recently we got new neighbors, a family of five with one teenage girl, one teenage boy, and one little boy. The father is former military and the mother is a stay-at-home, self-proclaimed, redneck-tomboy. These are not DIY parents.

So when the family saw my house full of crafts it lit a spark in them, each in a different way. The spark was most noticeable in their teenage daughter. A lot of people ask me if I would be willing to teach them to knit, but to date, no one has ever followed up on their request.

A few days later she came to the door, late in the evening; my husband answered the door. She wanted to know if I would teach her to knit. I was busy with laundry at the moment but of course my response was yes. She came back one or two more times while she waited for me to finish putting away clothes. Finally I was finished. I pulled out some pink Red Hart I was letting my daughter play with for a while but that she had lost all interest in and a pair of size 10 straight knitting needles.

She caught on quickly as I suspected she would and I sent her home that evening garter stitching herself her very first hand-knit by herself, for herself scarf. Towards the end of the lesson her mother came over and she excitedly and repeatedly showed her mother her progress.

Before evenings end I had the whole family in my living room. While the adults talked my little student happily clicked away, marveling at her progress and reveling in how relaxing the practice was. Eventually it was time for the family to walk the few feet to their half of the town home, but before leaving I was met with another request. The teenage son asked that I teach him to knit as well. His sister offered to show him what she'd learned that evening. His parents, anxious to get their brood tucked away in bed suggested he come back for yarn and needles rather than send me off into the bowels of my makeshift basement which is actually just our spare room for yarn for him. After they left I did a quick scan on the extra bedroom that I am properly full of southern shame about and found the skein of tan, Red Heart yarn I felt would be best for him. I took the yarn over with the size 10 1/2 straight needles he'd clutched only a short time earlier when he asked for some yarn.

I couldn't think of a better use for a yarn that I'm nearly as ashamed to own as I am of my makeshift basement.

However, the next afternoon my doorbell rang, it was the boy. He handed me the yarn with the needles still poking out as I had them the night before and said, "I'm not allowed." I asked if this was, "Because it's too girly?". Instead of a verbal, "yes", I was met with a forlorn, red-faced, nod of the head and he walked slump-shouldered away.

Turtle Pants

One of my most recent knits for my little lamb. I changed Melanie Hoffman's, Turtle Butt pattern into longies that include the turtle part for the entire pant. These were longies I intended to put away for the future but they have apparently passed the test. Whenever my little girl likes something I'm making for her she either steals it while I try to finish it or insists on wearing it right away.

Let The Ravellenic Games Begin

As much as I like these unofficial posters for the 2012 Olympics in London, I'm still a bit miffed about Ravelry being forced to change the Ravelympics to the Ravellenic Games.

Crafterbation

As if it weren't bad enough that I obsessively knit, my crafting has shifted into overdrive. Recently I fell in love with the concept of clothing that is both knitted and sewn. So I made a couple of dresses that can later be worn as shirt for my little lamb. This didn't sate my crafting appetite so I've set off to do more. Starting with altering a shirt I won a couple of years ago into something a bit more wearable.

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FRAK! I was now at the stopping point for the day. My sewing machines and serger aren't set up at the house and I kind of couldn't even if I wanted to so I had to wait until I could run over to my husbands grandmother's house so that I could make use of hers.

Actually she uses a Husqvarna Viking embroidery machine as her primary sewing machine. The previous night I was thinking about altering some jeans into bell bottoms, but the following morning when I went to try them on I found myself unable to fit the remainder of my pregnancy tummy into the jeans. I talked over my jean ideas with a fantastic crafty friend of mine and set to work ripping seams. However, I was on such a high from all this crafty goodness i accidentally ripped the inseam instead of the outerseam for the jeans I plan to alter. So yet again I have to wait until my next visit to grandmas to fix the mistake and them rip the correct seam. Stalled again. So I broke out a pile of old shirts and stared at them for a while to come up with something else I could do.

Eventually I settled on cutting up an American Apparel skirt that never fit me correctly and a shirt I wore a lot in high school but that I have no reason to believe will ever fit again.

You'll have to stay tuned to see what I have planned for everything and how it works out.