Knitting Iris

Puff, the magic turkey.

Here we go again.  Last year, Henry the gosling wandered up to C's shop.  This year, Puff The (Magic) Turkey found it's way there and almost into the mouth of one of my brother in law's dogs, but he intervened and brought this little critter over to the house.  It was a bit injured by the dog, missing some feathers under one of it's wings.  Remembering last year, I reluctantly agreed to take it in.  We didn't even know what kind of bird it was, poking around at pictures online at first and then bringing it in the car to the local feed store.  Walking in, it didn't take more than a glance through their cages of chicks to recognized it immediately as a turkey chick, or poult.   A ha! Of course: a little bump on the top of it's head, feet not webbed.  I'm not sure why I didn't figure it out myself.   We've been seeing more and more wild turkeys each year and just saw this one with a brood of about 10-11 chicks in the woods the other day.  You can just barely make out some of the babies following at her feet.

Well, they measured out a bag of "turkey starter" food for us and told us to keep it warm for at least the next few days.  So, here he sleeps tonight under a utility lamp, inside a crate, in a surrogate nest of dried grass.  It's no substitute for it's mom but better than the stomach of a dog so it'll work for now.  I'm not so sure I'm interested in having a turkey for a pet.  Thanksgiving dinner? Maybe.  Apparently they can wreak havoc on a garden and the deer already do their fair share of that,  so I'll try to call around to find a wildlife rehabilitation center some time in the next day or so.

Sleep well, little Puff.  I'm not sure we will with all your chirping.

Rosebud Cardigan #15

15!  I keep thinking I'm going to try out a new baby sweater pattern but each time I finish another one I'm so satisfied with how perfectly basic the new one is.  So many people have emailed with questions about this pattern that I've been meaning to do a post about my modifications to the pattern.  I still will do it but this one was started in-between cameras and so couldn't take progress pictures as I knit.  I have two more of these to knit before fall.  C's brother and his wife are expecting twin boys!  O.K.   Parents/relatives/friends of twins out there:  What is the average size of twin babies at birth?  They're due in August but are thinking that they'll be born in July sometime.  I'm trying to determine which size to make so that they will fit in the fall and winter.

For the first couple of these sweaters I knit in the buttonholes according to the pattern.  Either the pattern is a bit off or my different row gauge ends up placing the buttonholes unevenly at the top of the sweater, or both.  Now, I just knit the sweater and put the buttonholes in afterwards, measuring off where they should go to space them evenly, working a pencil point through the knitted fabric within the garter stitch edging, and sewing around the buttonhole using a lazy-daisy embroidery stitch.  In the past I've used the same color yarn as the whole sweater.  This time, the buttonholes are white daisies instead.  I also made the garter stitch edgings one row longer on the bottom and collar and one stitch wider on the front edges this time.   I like it.

The yarn is Dale Baby Ull.  I had knit the whole body, the first sleeve, and was starting in on the second sleeve when I pulled my knitting bag out of the car, smelling something AWFUL.  I has hauled some trash in the car to the dump and the bag had leaked out onto the carpet of the car and up through my bag, staining the finished sleeve beyond cleaning.  ARGH!  I was aggravated but spent that evening finishing up the second sleeve.  Next morning, by daylight, I realized that the bottom edge of the second sleeve had been stained, too! !@#%&!  I tossed them, knitting both sleeves again and needing to buy an extra ball of the yarn to finish.

The recipient of this sweater is now about a month old.  Her father worked in C's shop during this past winter.  I started knitting this before she was born and her very pregnant mom saw me working on it one day and asked what I was making.  I had to try and be nonchalant, answering, "Oh. Just a sweater.", and quickly changing the subject with, "You look great!  So, how are you feeling?  Do you feel ready?" 

I haven't yet met the baby.  Her name is Arnica, so I considered making the buttonhole daisies yellow.  I didn't have any appropriate yellow yarn and preferred the simplicity of the white anyways.

The first flower below is heartleaf Arnica (Arnica cordifolia) that we came across on a short walk with my mom on Saturday to some falls.  The others are from the garden: Trollius (T. europaeus), a double creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens "Flore pleno"), and Euphorbia (E. polychroma).  It's an incredible coiincidence how these all bloom at the same time on either side of the front doorway. 

Check out I came across while writing this post: Botanical stamps from around the world!  I could spend hours there.

Elfines

I liked the socks I received from Bekki so much that I immediately cast on a pair for a friend of mine's birthday next month.  Yarn: Regia Line Steps.  Pattern: Elfines,  a beautiful pattern and well written, too.   The striping in these matched up fairly well by coiincidence only.  This was my first Figure 8 cast on and the wraps at the heel were done a bit differently than I usually do.  I'll probably make another pair of these someday, but now it's on to something a bit more plain.

Tie One On. May.

I made this using McCall's pattern #3247.  It's intended more as a summer tank top, not a smock.  I added 2.5 inches onto the bottom edge and added the pocket.

The fabric is a JoAnn's brand cotton quilting fabric that was on sale and reminded me of the old vintage sheets people have been posting lately.  The pocket is sewn from a couple other cottons from JoAnn's also.  It fits my new blank "list book" perfectly.  There's a bit of bunching in the back if I don't get the ties just right and it's slightly tricky to put on and off even without unlacing the ties.

I wore this out one evening last week for burgers with friends.  It didn't wear well when trying to hang onto and keep a squirmy almost 1 year old entertained during dinner while her dad and grandma quickly ate.   The straps were all out of whack and the front was slipping down.  I do like this though and will still wear it both as an apron and out of the house, but probably not as a tank top.  I can't get away with that quite so well as all the cute, young hippie girls in their calico and corduroy open-backed patchwork ones can!

Pincushion Challenge. May. Fruit.

When Julie announced her new Pincushion Challenge, I was immediately taken with the idea, thinking that this was the perfect motivation I needed to use some wool felt and to give a try at making pincushions like so many other beautiful ones out there. 

Quickly the inspiration faded, however, and I think that the felt crafting I've been up to lately has either been in avoidance of, or leading up to making a pincushion.  I'm not sure which, maybe both.  I was originally thinking of making an apple but all my wool felt colors just seemed wrong and I wasn't about to order anymore.  I was stumped. 

Then, while I was finishing the felt snails, I suddenly saw the colors of rosy, red pears among the woolens laid out on the table and within minutes was drawing out a pattern on paper. 

That evening, while  sewing this up, suddenly my mouth was watering at the thought of juicy summer pears so I went straight for the pantry for a jar of the pears from a friend's orchard that I canned last summer, finishing off over half the jar as I sewed away. 

Inspiration here and here.  The bottom of the pear is weighted down with a stone tucked in near the bottom amongst the stuffing.  The little leaf at the top is a pin.

Thanks again, Bekki

O.K., I promised  Bekki, my pal in the Alison's Sockapal-3-za, that I'd post pictures of these when I could.  I love, love, love these socks, mismatched as they are.  She bought two of the same skeins, only look how different they are!  Both equally beautiful. 

I'm planting almost exclusively orange toned flowers in the pots by the door this year.  Red Durango marigolds not yet planted, pale orange violas interspersed with stones we painted this winter, and more.

Thrifted Summer Quilt

I spent the whole day before Mother's Day hitting thrift stores, quilt and fabric stores, a farmer's market, plant nurseries, and Target....all by myself.  It was the best Mother's Day present I could have asked for.  Then I was renewed and glad to spend all day Sunday at home with my family.

I found this quilt at my favorite little thrift store that day.  We've been using the first quilt I ever made as a beach blanket and it's worn and torn.  This is a perfect replacement.   Even though it's just squares and is only a tied quilt and some of the squares are poly blends, I know the person who made this put alot of work into it.  I hate to put it to such hard use, but the binding is already worn and it was only $8. 

I didn't even bother examining it much until getting it home.  I'm loving looking at and discovering all the different fabrics used in it.  The close-ups are some of my favorite sections.  The center squares in the bottom two pictures remind me the tiniest bit of Denyse Schmidt's new Flea Market Fancy fabrics, and why not? Her website states, "The patterns in this collection are inspired by the vintage charm of some of her favorite flea market finds."
I'm looking forward to lazy hours at the beach this summer checking out all the different squares again and again.

Attempting to live life at a snail's pace

I've been wishing to make some of these wool felt snails ever since I picked up a copy of Felt Craft, by Freya Jaffke a few years ago.  Our excursion the other day was just the necessary motivation. The boys picked out the colors for two of them, R on the left, E in the middle, and I picked the colors for the one on the right and in the top picture.

The snail pictures the boys drew have been gifted away already. 

Serendipity: The art of finding something by looking for something else.

Friday was one of those rougher days where everyone was a bit on edge and snappy.  It was after noon. E could use a nap but the chances of that were unlikely so we hopped in the car and drove up the road to see how far we could get before the road was still blocked by snow and with the hopes that E would fall asleep.  (With the price of gas, I don't usually do this.)  We turned around when I started to hit snowy patches in the road on a steep incline, thinking either we could get stuck or that I'd have to back the car down to turn around.

E still wasn't asleep so, on the way back down, we turned off at one of my favorite spots by the creek and got out.  We couldn't even walk down the steep path to the creek as there was no place to stand at the bottom, only the rushing water of spring meltoff.

Instead, we wandered up toward the main road, seeing purple violets all along the way, new leaves opening on the cottonwood and aspen trees and the red-twig dogwood and alder bushes.  First, we saw one snail shell, then another and another.  Going in for a closer look, we started seeing them poking their tentacles out and slowly meandering around the forest floor every foot or two.  R picked up a piece of birch bark and started filling it with treasures: abandoned snail shells, lichens, twigs, leaves, old cedar branches, dandelions, wild strawberry flowers, and more.  The more we looked, the more we saw.  Suddenly, I noticed there was no bickering!  There were the snails and the flowers, the sound of the river, the sweet scent of the cottonwood trees and so much more...and us together, slowing down and experiencing it all.  I was, of course, playing with the new camera too, trying to find out what it can do.   

We NEED to do this more often, to heck with the price of gas.  This was worth every penny.  Besides, there's only 6 more months before the snow covers these roads again making them impassable for the other 6 months of the year.

On the schooling side of things, when we came home we looked up online about snails which lead to reading stories and poems and more info online about them.  We drew pictures of snails and read Leo Lionni's Biggest House In The World which we just happened to have checked out from the library.  Homeschooling serendipity yet again.  This is a book all of us hoarding crafters could stand reading, too.

Tomorrow: the crafty results of slowing down to a snail's pace.

For Ms. M

I whipped this up for a one year old's birthday party we attended today.  She is the sweet, sweet daughter of our midwife and her husband, dear friends of ours.  They just gave her her first soccer ball last week so I figured that she needed an indoor version, too.   You'd better believe that the first birthday of a midwife's first child has tons and tons of babies and kids, maybe not quite as many as they had flower children at their wedding, though, which was upwards of 30 or 40?!  The boys had a blast running around the house and yard with all of them.  I overheard one unmarried woman saying it was enough to convince her to run home and call for an appointment to get birth control pills.  ;) 

I made a handful of these when R was a baby for him and for other friends, too, and they're certainly suited to babies younger than one year.  My oldest brother had a similar one somebody had made for him only out of some furry synthetic material.  I think it's around somewhere still.  Here's what I do:  Cut 12 pentagons, mark the seam lines on the back and hand sew. For each half, assemble one center piece with 5 sewn around it and to eachother. Then sew the two halves together, leaving one small section open to stuff before stitching closed.  They're filled with polyfill so that they can be machine washed.   Stuff them VERY firmly because they lose their fluffiness with play and washing.   They're a great way to use good leftover scraps.  Blair, I couldn't wait for your scrap bag to arrive so I dove into my own!

If you look closely, you'll see where I messed up and accidentally traced the seam marks on the right side of the fabric.  I didn't have time to cut new pieces so left it, figuring the pencil marks would come out in the first washing.