36 months of Boo

Dear Boo Boo,

Well m'dear, here we are: yesterday you turned three years old. My overwhelming reaction to this milestone has been hunh? Followed closely by what the fuck? How did this happen?

It's been a big year for all of us, in so many ways. Our last few weeks in Houston were pretty hectic, but you dealt with things with your usual aplomb. As long as you had your a-ni-muls, you were happy. It's still true.

Upon first arriving in England, you were thrown off your game a bit - suddenly you'd gone from hanging with your buds all day to hanging with Mama. This resulted in a bit of an exaggeration in your tendency to separate the world into "Mama" and "not-Mama", otherwise known as "acceptable persons" and "unacceptable persons".

Thankfully, you've decided that other people are also acceptable, which had done a world of good for my sanity.

When you went back to nursery in September, it took you a while to get used to the idea again. Fair enough, but I'm happy to see that now that you've started going to the same school as your sister, most mornings you ask wistfully "Can I go back to Devil's school today?"

Unlike Devil, you are sticking to your Texas-accent guns with a vengeance. Some of your vocabulary has shifted (rubbish, toilet, trousers), but you still say "Mama, I ca-yaan't" with a lovely Southern drawl. The one word that has snuck through, however (your grand-paternal aunties will be thrilled to know), is to-mah-to. Which, given that up until a few months ago, those red things were te-ne-moes, is only fair.

You've become quite the amazing traveler over the past months, happily jaunting off to Scotland, France, Switzerland, the Peak District and North Africa. You've thankfully grown past the stage of not being able to sit still for longer then 25 minutes, which makes plane/train trips with you much more enjoyable.

Yesterday, we had a very low key party for you (poor second born!). T and M (our first friends in the UK) came over with their parents. You made animal masks and ran around the house screaming while we had tea and tried to carry on semi-normal, grown-up conversations. I fed the four of you sausages and to-mah-toes and carrots, and you happily blew out the candles on your (personally decorated) cupcakes. It was a lovely afternoon, and though you were a bit grey by bedtime, you were still your usual cuddly, snuggly self. And when we were putting you two to bed, you chattered blithely away through Daddy's and my's stories until suddenly you fell quiet. Sound asleep in mid-sentence. Well done kiddo.

Much love,

Mama

PS - Sorry about the blanket baby. One of these days I'll get it finished, I promise.

The thing about Boo socks

Is that she likes them and they don't take very long to make. Thankfully.

Pattern: Riverside architecture by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Regia Jacquard that I found at Oxfam for 99 p
Needles: US 1/2.00 mm
Gauge: 8 sts/12 rows per inch
Start/finish: 8 Nov - 24 Nov 2009
Comments: This was my first working of this particular architecture from New Pathways, and it was pretty straightforward. I did a whirlpool toe, eye of partridge heel, and garter rib for the leg. Wove in the ends last night and she asked to put them on with her purple fleece jammies.

Unfortunately she then went to stand on the highly patterned rug we have in the living room, but so be it. You can get the idea.

Feels a bit like a cheat using these for the Sock a Month, but you gotta do what you gotta do. It's been a busy one!

Status update

Well, the good news is that I seem to have broken my standard Halloween pattern, in so much as it is October 29th, and I have two small, un-frillified princess dresses sitting on my dining room table. I have also discovered that I seem to have retained some of the sewing instruction passed down from my mother since I was able to completely wing a "pattern", and cut out these things on the fly.

So, tonight is for putting on ribbons and flowers and other crap. Boo has been invited to wear her costume to school tomorrow, so I need to find a pale blue headband for her to lose as soon as possible.

Unfortunately my other deadline project is still 60+ rows from completion. Lovely yarn, lovely pattern, and they actually fit me, but it may be a rough haul to the finish line.

And just a warning: next month's blogging will be intermittent at best. Not only do I have lots of unbloggable sooper secret Christmas knitting, but I've also taken complete leave of my senses and signed up for this again. Last participated in 2004 before Devil was born, and for some reason, this seemed like the year to start back up again.

Stop looking at me like that!

Hey look! It's the last week in October again!

And y'all know what that means...

This year's costume requests lean heavily towards Disney princesses - Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella to be exact. Devil and I went out fabric store hunting last week, and made it back with all the supplies we need (I hope). We'll ignore the fact that, with the exchange rate, it was over $50 worth of stuff. Yikes!

Anywho...knitting and spinning are on hiatus until these two beauties are finished. The Brits don't really do Trick or Treating, but Boo has been invited to wear her costume to nursery on Friday, so at least one has to be done by then.

I love mittens

At least mittens for little people.

Look at the little fin - so cute!

Pattern: Nemo Mittens by Sigurlaug Eva Stefansdottir (both Ravelry links)
Yarn: KnitPicks Essential, dyed by yours truly. I used 4 gr white, 3 gr black, and ~10 gr orange (works out to approximately 19/14/46 yds respectively of fingering weight yarn)
Needles: US 1/2.00 mm
Gauge: 8 sts/11 rows per inch
Finished circumference/length: 5 inches/5.25 inches (cuff to pointy tip)
Comments/mods: The "only" modification I made was to switch yarn and needle size. The pattern calls for sport weight/size 2.5 (3.0 mm) needles for a 4-6 year old size, but I had fingering weight, so size 1 it was. I probably could have gotten away with US 2/2.75 mm ok, but this gauge will be a bit warmer perhaps.

These were so fast! Done, with fins added and ends woven in after three evenings work. Love it. I hope Boo loves them as well, although I'm not sure what she thinks about mittens...

The yarn for these was recycled from some KnitPicks Essential that I dyed for some socks for my sister-in-law about three years ago. It was my first dyeing experience, so I used Kool Aid and ended up with a range of reds, pink, and purple. I took the largest ball of leftovers (41 g of red) and overdyed it with some yellow Jacquard Acid dye in the hopes that it would end up kind of orange. Some pink (5 g) got overdyed with black. I also had a full skein of Bare waiting around, so I knew I could dye more if needed.

Soaked the yarn, and then put both into my handy dandy crock pot for the dyeing.

The pink to black went into a glass jar in the middle while the red to orange was carefully arranged around the outside.

A few hours later, they were all done. The pink-to-black transition went very well, but the red-to-orange still looked really red. I rinsed them out and discovered that the red was bleeding. Quite a bit in fact. Bleeding enough that I got a bit concerned about what Walrus' socks had done to the rest of her laundry (sorry B!). But...I rinsed until I got sick and tired of rinsing, and then hung it up to dry.

I was concerned that it was going to end up too red, but I think it's alright. The mittens are awfully cute though. So cute that I think Boo will need a matching Nemo hat...