Indigo Mouse

I would say that I am the last knitter on earth to knit the ubiquitous “Baby Surprise Jacket” by Elizabeth Zimmerman, but I know for a fact that my knitter friend, Alison, has not, since I sought out her advice when I got stuck at a certain part. I must admit that I found EZ’s terse, yet chatty directions to be a bit challenging for this project. Luckily, I found a great video series on You Tube to help me through the little speed bump, and everything progressed smoothly from there.

I knit this with Felici Sport in the “Too Cool” colorway (love that Felici!). I tend to prefer brown/warm neutrals to the recently popular grays for my quilting projects, but for garments I do like gray occasionally to mix things up a bit. This was super fast to knit–I was done in a week. I love how it turned out, and I’m thrilled that I got to use these awesome Basic Gray Glazed Buttons that I also got from Knit Picks last month.

I love that Knit Picks has started carrying cute buttons. These are from the Seaspray set, but I also got the Crimson set.

Five days before DD-Day, I’m tempted to say that this is my last FO for a while, but if I do that, I know I’ll jinx it and he’ll be two weeks late. My mom is coming up this weekend and we plan to work together to make him a woodland-themed-embroidered-wool-animal-gnome mobile, so there is that project yet to do. Aside from that though, I’ve been unmotivated to start any new sewing project. I kind of wander around the house with idle hands randomly putting baby things in order or just sit and do crossword puzzles or read. It’s really strange not to feel the strong urge to make anything.

Ten days until DD-Day (due date day)! Alice didn’t seem to be bothered much by her DD-Day, deciding to come a fashionable 2 weeks late, so we’ll see how her brother feels about punctuality! Last week I completed the fastest sewing project ever: curtains for the nursery. These are the first curtains I’ve ever sewn. Living with two cats, has made me hesitant to ever go the curtain route, but since the cats are middle-aged now, and these aren’t full-length flowey things, I thought I’d give it a try.

(On a side note: I never realize what a pain it is to take a decent photo of curtains. Gee, let’s point the camera directly at the window–the main light source. So I had to resort to using the camera’s flash.)

I’m uncertain if I should add tie-backs or something else to these. I kind of just stuck them up there, knowing nothing about curtains and being out of the home decor loop lately. What do you think? The curtains aren’t designed to be functional, since we obviously have blinds, so it’s really just an excuse to use this awesome fabric.

When I saw Patty Sloniger’s new Backyard Baby group from Michael Miller, I knew I had to do something with this fabric in particular–most of the other designs don’t really fit my woodland theme. I stalked the Hawthorne Threads web site until it came in. I LOVE birch trees, and the colors are perfect. In fact, they are so perfect that the green snail print (below) that I also ordered a bit of is the exact color of the nursery walls, making it somewhat useless for decorating with. It’s still cute though. This was Alice’s reaction upon opening the package of fabric:

“Very awesome! So cool! I love them! Wrap me up in the long one like a blanket, Mommy.”
I guess the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.

Coincidentally, I finished up all my WIPs before the year end, and I didn’t start any new ones until the new year. How strange is that? This is what I finished:

A basic newborn hat for my little guy who is due in 20 days (how did that happen?!)…

Funny enough, I think this photo is life-sized. How often does that happen with 500 pixel images? I used Knit Picks Felici in the Botany colorway. I heart Felici–it’s so soft, yet surprisingly durable. These are my exact nursery colors–it’s a boy combo that has been “done” a lot, but it’s my favorite (for any gender, really).

Pooh Bear is modeling it for me here, but the bear of “very little brain” doesn’t fill out the top so well.

I also finished the quilting and binding on the snuggle quilt I made for the boy. I can actually show it to you now because our Wild Ones fabric collection that I used just came out.

Again with the green, blue and brown.

I wanted this quilt to be ultra-snuggly because I’ve noticed that those are the blankets we’ve used and loved the most with Alice. Cotton quilts are great for hanging on the wall or laying on the floor in the house (or at a picnic), but they aren’t always the most snuggly for napping or wrapping around baby. So to make this one soft and drapey, I skipped the batting and normal backing and just used a brown fleece blanket that I got at Walmart for $4 for the backing. I quilted with spaced out straight lines in the diagonals of the on-point blocks. I love that the quilting makes it look kind of like a string quilt.

As you can see, I used pre-packaged satin blanket binding. Man, that was a PitA, and expensive too, since I ran out with 10″ to go, so I had to buy two $8 packages. The funny thing is my experienced coworkers warned me against the satin binding, but I had to try it anyway. The whole time I was putting it on, I was thinking of the episode of The I.T. Crowd “Jen the Fredo” where Jen wants to apply for the job of “Entertainments Manager” and everyone keeps telling her “It’s not for you, Jen. It’s just not for you.” And poor Jen just has to learn the hard way. Ultimately, I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m glad I did because I think the baby will love the feel of it, and he won’t care about my horrible corners or uneven stitches.

Artemis agrees that the quilt is definitely snuggly, and at 40×50, it’s a great size too.

And for the girlier things in life: my final FO of the year was a test for work of the Hello Cupcake February block pattern using our Just Desserts collection.

I did this little 12-1/2″ quilt because someone had to, but it turns out that Alice loves it. She’s going through a tea party/sweets/cupcake phase right now. I think I’ll either hang it in her room, or do what my mom suggested and make it a special “birthday girl” placemat for her upcoming February birthday.

Who doesn’t love having that 1980 disco hit stuck in their head? You’re welcome.

As you may have suspected, the wonky quilt block bee quilt is finally complete, and I’ve decided to call it “Wonky Town”.

Its home is the big blank wall next to Alice’s bed in her new big girl room (formerly known as our office). I think it looks great with the cobalt blue wall for contrast.

The border is still a little wavy, but that’s ok. My main complaint about the quilt overall is that the seams of the white ground show up a lot more than I was expecting. In the future I think I will use a thicker white solid for large areas of white.

This was the most challenging quilting I’ve ever done, and I’m really proud of my efforts, warts and all. I don’t think most people quilt this style with just a regular sewing machine. OK, my Juki isn’t exactly a regular machine–it’s pretty special, but it’s no long-arm or even mid-arm. The machine did such a great job, that I would actually consider doing this again sometime. Most of my projects don’t call for such dense quilting, but it’s nice that the machine can handle it.

I had a lot of fun doing custom textures in each house and tree to fit with each particular shape. They don’t show up too terribly much because I mainly used blendy thread, but it was fun and actually didn’t take all that long to do. In the wonky log cabin blocks I did some wonky square spirals, and in the border I did long loopy lines.

Two years after starting those first wonky log cabin blocks, I finally have a finished quilt, and it’s so much cooler than I could have imagined!

Sara nominated me for the “Versatile Blogger Award”, which is a great excuse to be able to blog and yammer on about myself without actually having to have a finished project to blog about. Thanks, Sara! Apparently, I should reveal to you seven things about myself and then do some nominating of my own.

Thing 1: I am a working mom, and I love it. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against those who make the stay-at-home lifestyle choice. My own mom was a SAHM until we were all in grade school, and I think she did a great job. I just bring this up as an important thing about myself because I often get comments from other people who either A.) Assume I would rather be at home and pity me. or B.) Assume that I am a SAHM. Like the perfectly nice wife of one of my husband’s coworkers who asked me at a party, “What did you do before you had Alice?” (referring to my career, which she assumed I had given up). I love having a career, and I think I would go crazy if I had to stay at home all day. Being a mom is wonderful and awesome, but I think I am able to appreciate my time with my kiddo all the more by having a break from mom status for 40 hours per week. Despite its folksy grammar, I’m a firm believer in “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy.” By doing what makes me happy, I think I am a better mom, and it’s better for my daughter to see me happy and fulfilled. Of course, I don’t think that just applies to “mama”. “Daddy” needs to be happy too, and it chafes me a bit that in our society still it’s OK for women to make the choice to stay home, but men aren’t given that choice (at least 90% of the time). It has to be something that both partners work out (before they ever have kids). OK, this Thing 1 is getting awfully long and ranty. I promise to make the other things shorter.

Thing 2: I am left-handed, or perhaps more accurate would be to say “almost ambidextrous”. I can do everything with both hands except write. Given the look of my handwriting these days though, even that is questionable. I have to admit I was a little disappointed when Alice showed very strong right handed tendencies early on. Not because I’m an elitist or anything, but because in my experience left handed people tend to use both hands more equally just because we are forced to adapt to so many environmental challenges in a right-handed world. Being able to rotary cut fabric with both hands switching off is extremely handy!

Thing 3: I am agnostic (here I go again with BIG things, but, hey, it’s got to get said sometimes right?). According to the Wikipedia article on Agnosticism, I am “Apathetic or Pragmatic Agnostic” which is, “The view that there is no proof of either the existence or nonexistence of any deity, but since any deity that may exist appears unconcerned for the universe or the welfare of its inhabitants, the question is largely academic.” Yep, that’s my belief in a nutshell. I am totally respectful of other people’s beliefs, and I don’t think I have all the answers. I just don’t personally believe there’s a higher power. That said, it really bugs me when people tell me that Jesus loves me or ask me to pray for something. I just hate it when people make assumptions about me (see Thing 1 above).

Thing 4: I have a really acute sense of smell (and even more so when pregnant). This is not a good thing. Do you realize how many more bad smells are in the world than good ones? Even the things that are suppose to smell good are headache inducing for me, like any perfume or scented candle or incense.

Thing 5: I don’t have cable or any network television. We just watch DVDs of TV shows and Netflix in my house. I haven’t seen a television commercial in a really long time, so I have no idea what people are talking about when they talk about different commercials. We got a cable deal one year, so we signed up and watched it like three times. Hundreds of channels and never anything on but commercials. When Jason called to cancel it, the lady said with a note of disbelieving horror in her voice, “But what are you going to watch?!”

Thing 6:I actually appreciated childhood while I was a child. I was extremely responsible and mature and well-adjusted, yet I played pretend games with my younger siblings and cousins right up until I went away to college. On my sixteen birthday, we had friends visiting with younger kids, so we played dress-up, and I was a castle guard with brown eyeshadow to make fake stubble on my face. I love that my daughter is in the age of pretending now. It’s a magical thing.

Thing 7: Relating to Thing 6, I do not take myself seriously. Most people who know me probably think of me as a serious, quiet person, but when Halloween rolls around, I am the first to dress up in some elaborate and ridiculous costume all the while keeping my reserved demeanor. I also have a pretty good sense of humor I think–it’s just a little on the dry side.

OK, now it’s my turn to nominate someone, but I always hate this part because I don’t know who’s already been nominated, but what the heck. I’m nominating Christina, the Sometimes Crafter because her blog is one of the most versatile I read with all the different crafts she indulges in.