Totoro Bonnet

I've never actually seen the show, but this is the much-recognized character called Totoro, a tree-spirit from Miyazaki's anime film My Neighbor Totoro. I really ought to rent this sometime. Isn't he cute?


Anyhow, I saw a knitted pattern online for a cute Totoro hat and couldn't resist making it:

It's made with leftover Lion Brand Cotton Ease, knit on US6. I had just enough to make the ears, ties and tassles, and the face details are just white felt and black scrap yarn. The pattern is a free one by Hello Yarn and calls for DK weight, but it's not hard to sub in worsted weight. It's quite a clever little pattern...basically a toe-up sock using a figure 8 cast-on, and then you make a few decreases to shape the back of the bonnet.

I think Totoro's nose should have been a little bigger, and I forgot he had whiskers...oh well. he's still pretty cute as he is. This staircase bannister is the best baby mannequin ever.

Stacked Coins Baby Quilt

Ta-da!! The Stacked Coins Baby Quilt is done! Yay! I love how it turned out! This is a really simple, straightforward pattern for a beginner quilter and the size is also perfect for a not-too-daunting project.

First time at doing mitered corners!

I was able to finish it over four days, working on it about half a day each time. The binding was a bit fussy to do because I finished it by hand, but it looks clean and tidy that way. I also got better at the free-motion quilting as I went along, although it took much longer than I would have guessed. Plus it ate up nearly a spool of thread! I like the look of the squiggly bits over top of the rectangular design...I think straight lines would have looked a bit boring.

Here's the quilt sandwich pre-quilting:

Here it is after. I took this picture last night in bad lighting, sorry:

All you really need is about 1.5 yards of fabric in at least 2 colours for the sashing and backing, plus a few fat quarters to make your coin strips with them. There are 22 coins in each strip, each coin cut to 2.5" x 5" and sewn with 1/4" seams. Now, I think of myself as a decent sewer...I can sew tidy, even seams, install invisible zippers, you know, all round proficient enough. But my coin strips didn't line up AT ALL with the sashing when I was done. Even if you're off by a millimeter it adds up when you iron things out and try to get them lined up. Not a big deal, but it's not perfect. Some chop chopping solved that problem (but I guess I can't do that for more complicated quilting designs). For quilts to turn out beautifully, you have to be ultra precise...when all the corners and seams match up, it looks amazing.

I bet this will fluff up nicely in the wash!

What else but more baby knits!

JJ is quickly acquiring a stylish hat collection....

This one is based on the Gooseberry Hat pattern, except with some heavy mods because I only had 20g of this pretty yarn from Tasmania...I only included 6 sections instead of 8. I still had a few yards left at the end though, so I made a fat crochet flower to top it off.

Leftovers hat using a generic baby hat pattern...this will match the Crossover Top also made with Jaeger Aqua. I cast on 80 stitches on US6, and just alternated stockinette and garter rows. When the hat reached about 5" in length, I decreased 8 stitches every round until 8 stitches remained, then pulled it shut. The bow thing is made of the last couple yards knit into I-cord.

Ok, I didn't make this one...Courtney made it. She is spoiling JJ already. Isn't it cute?! It's super soft. This one is coming with us to the hospital!

Bitty baby socks made from leftover Plymouth Happy Feet...

And some adorable rollerskates and stuffed bunny from two lovely ladies at my knitting group!

Not particularly chatty today...just got back from an all-day Lamaze birthing class and feeling a little pooped. We talked about labour and delivery for almost 8 hours! It was a good class though and we are feeling more prepared for the big day.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Baby Quilt

I'm still here! Blogging had to stop all week because our camera batteries died, so no new pictures...but I ordered some new rechargeables that arrived last night!

This week I suddenly had the urge to make a baby quilt. I started a quilt ages ago, but it's just been hanging out unfinished because I can't decide how to quilt it and what colour backing to make. So, I went online to look for an easy baby quilt pattern. There are so many great quilting blogs out there! I ended up spending hours browsing through them, and admiring all the beautiful quilts...I thought this Stacked Coins quilt by Crazy Mom Quilts was super cute and didn't look too hard, so I made it using some pretty blues and yellows I bought a while back.

So far so good. There are a couple of booboos, but I'm learning as I go. For one, it was a LOT harder to line up the coins than I expected...I thought I cut everything carefully and stitched 1/4" seams on each one, but they turned out as all different lengths! Plus, when I put the cream sashing on (the strips between the coins), I somehow ended up with very uneven edges that requiring some heavy duty trimming. In some cases I had to trim off a whole damn coin. Grrr.

I wanted to try free-motion quilting on this project, so I've been practicing on a little square. It's rather tricky...you have to control the fabric with steady hands and maintain a steady speed on the pedal. It's kind of like learning to drive again, trying not to accelerate or brake too suddenly and not jerk the wheel around. It's turned out pretty well, but I can definitely see my learning curve from one end of the quilt to the other. I have about 1/4 more to quilt, and then I'm moving onto binding!

Baby Crossover Top

Here's another baby sweater I made for JJ, which I started some time back in November and only just finished seaming this week. It's a Debbie Bliss pattern called the Crossover Top from the Essential Baby book.

Knitting a DB pattern always makes me crazy, but the projects look so beautiful it's hard to resist. For some reason, they never seem to put any diagrams in the pattern to show you how the project is assembled. Considering everything is knit in itty bitty pieces that require outrageous amounts of seaming and weaving in ends, you'd think they'd make your life easier by giving you a schematic. Nope. You get weird, awkward directions on how to set in a sleeve, or attach a button loop, with instructions like "starting 4 rows up and 3 inches over from the first point of decreases in the left underarm, attach the band". That's not much of an exaggeration. Ugh!!

I knit the newborn size but my gauge was much bigger, so the sweater is probably closer to a 3-6 month size. I put it off this long because it didn't turn out as nice as the model in the book...the edging seems a little uneven after picking up all the stitches, and the underarm seams seem a little awkward. I'm not sure if it's because I knitted this in cotton (with leftover Jaegar Aqua from my Cherry cardigan), or perhaps because the contrasting yarn was a little thinner that the main yarn, but there's just something a bit off about it.

It's still adorable though, and I made a matching hat to go with it. Doesn't everyone wear matching hats to their sweaters? :)

Anyhow, here's another super sweet knitted baby sweater that JJ received at the shower...I didn't knit it, but it's so cute that I have to show it off. It was made by my friend Courtney in the most beautiful Sundara Yarn. I have only ever oggled Sundara yarns online and in other people's stashes, and now I find myself petting this sweater every time I go into the nursery. It's Elizabeth Zimmerman's February baby sweater without the lace stitches.

And there are booties to match! Too cute. Thanks Courtney!

Mince Pies

Christmas treats were overflowing at our house this year. Shortbread, spritz cookies, caramel corn, pastries, cakes....and mince pies. I was introduced to mince pies and all sorts of other English treats when I met D, and have been eating them every Christmas since. His sister makes them every year, and when we visit Deep River we always look for the green tin (that's where they live) and sneak as many mince pies as we can throughout the day without being noticed. And then have a few more at tea time with everyone else. Did I mention they are delicious?

Since we didn't travel this year, there was no magic green tin of mince pies. So I emailed D's sister and got some instructions on how to make my own. Mince pies are little pies filled with a mincemeat - a mixture of chopped dried fruits (raisins, currants, apples), sugar, spices and traditionally, some sort of suet/fat. Mincemeat may have originally been made with meat, but these days the meat component is probably limited to suet. You can make mincemeat from scratch, or you can buy it pre-made in a jar - mine was a store-bought vegetarian kind. If you go online looking for mince pie recipes, you'll find that a lot of people seem to add extra chopped cooked apples and liquor to spiff up their fillings. I just used it straight from the jar. I'm not exactly a mince pie connoisseur, but I thought they tasted pretty good.


For the pastry, I just used the basic pie crust recipe on the back of a box of Crisco, except that I used a bit of butter instead of all shortening. Each pie was made from a 2" circle of rolled dough, topped with a star cut-out. I made them in a little cupcake pan, but if you are a serious mince pie maker there are special tins you can buy.

As for updates, I think my backlog of blog stuff is dwindling. I only have a couple more things to post about...a few little knitting projects I just finished up. My crafting to-do list includes some curtains (boring) and working on a quilt. D's been working a lot, and I've been volunteering. Plus we've had to run around getting all sorts of errands done. We had to get our chimney flashed because there was a leak. We had to get medical exams for our permanent residency application. This Saturday, we are hosting a book club (The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon...very gripping and beautifully written...) and I am cooking a gluten-free vegan dinner for that. Tonight we're having dinner at my volunteer boss' house.

Oh! We also went on our hospital tour of the birthing centre...the facilities were really nice, the staff seem great, and the program itself seems quite progressive and they offer lots of support to new families. Yay!

That's all for now!

Grey Tweed Cruiser Mittens

Now that winter is here, there has been lots of snow to be shoveled from our walkway - I decided the D was in desperate need of some hand protection this year, given he has been mittenless and gloveless for about 2 years in a row now. Of two yarn choices, and he chose the Plymouth Tweed in charcoal grey, which made a nice slubby texture in the mittens.


The pattern is called Cruiser by Cailyn Meyer (free download on Ravelry) and I cast on for the size large. I made a few modifications as I went along:

• I started the afterthought thumb hole after about two pattern repeats (4" from the cuff) because I didn't like how the cuff looked when you started the hole earlier, and I left 7 stitches on scrap instead of 6.
  
• I still picked up 4 stitches on each side. With decreasing, I decreased 3 stitches every row.
  
• For the hand I had a total of 8 pattern repeats before decreasing the top, and I made my mitten a little pointier and left a total of 10 stitches at the end for grafting.

This is a really quick knit because of the aran-weight yarn. Even though I used US6 needles (to get a denser fabric), I think I started around Christmas and finished in less than a week, which is probably my record for fastest knit in 2009!