Spring Kerchief

I've used up my leftovers from the hedgehog sweater to make a new triangle-shaped scarf.  My old triangle-shaped scarf, lacy and fuschia, is a bit ratty from daily wear all winter.  I still remember the summer of 2002 when I spent a week swearing like a sailor on the beaches of Block Island as I knit it. Triangle-shaped scarves are great to wear, because they loop so well around the neck without bulking up, but those long rows are never ending.  Especially when you've made a mistake in a lace pattern and are ripping backwards into no mans land.

This time, I went for something simpler and got a great start on it during a family vacation to Florida.  Have you noticed that I love knitting wool on warm beaches, preferably with a little sand and sunscreen mixed in?  Then you need to know that I was raised by a mother who carded her own wool and picked her own fleeces on the beaches of Martha's Vineyard throughout the 70s and 80s.

Snow below suggests that the Spring part of this Kerchief is yet to come...

The pattern is Seattle Yarn's Spring Kerchief by Ruth Bowen, which I found on Ravelry.  Their advanced search tool, where you plug in how much yarn you have and what you want to make, and it spits out free patterns, is so so glorious and amazing.  I nearly finished three partially used-up balls of Rowen Felted Tweed DK.  This pattern is great but you need to be psychologically prepared for the cast-off ruffle row, which took me almost 4 hours (which is to say: a faculty meeting, a drive to my parents, part of The Help - so bad that I couldn't finish it - and one of the kids' weekend naps).  I wasn't tracking my time on this project until then, but I think that row represents a good chunk of it.

Ballet skirt

In celebration of having an accepted offer on our home, I've busted out all my sewing gear and allowed it to overtake our living room once again.  Ahhh, the soothing feeling of knowing your ironing board and serger are ready at a moment's notice and not buried in your children's bedroom closet just when you really need them.  Let's just hope this deal goes through and I am not forced to undo everything for an open house or showing in the coming weeks!

Now, down to business:

Sassy Miss L is taking ballet classes and it is a HOOT.  We are slowly gathering the right "gear" for this experience (leotard, slippers, tutu, sparkly shoes, tights...), including the newest addition: a ballet skirt.  I took this tutorial and added some vintage fabric from my parents' attic to get this:

I love the happy coincidence that the flower overlaps exactly to continue the pattern across the front.  And that it breaks up that otherwise unending stretch of light pink from head to toe.  It's 9" long so that she won't get caught up in it or trip, and I cut the fabric about 30" around.  I was shocked to see that her waist elastic measurement is the same as what I usually cut for a 6 month old - how can that be?!  The shaping of the front was done with my snazzy new curved ruler, as suggested in the aforementioned tutorial.

Now it's just time to dance, dance, dance.

Kindle cozy

Just whipped this up, a belated Hannukah present for my husband (he got the Kindle, too).  It's from this tutorial, which is perfectly easy to follow.  Basically you rip apart a binder and use its chipboard to create the bones - then you cover it in fabric.  An old headband serves as the elastic to keep the Kindle in place and to close the whole thing up.  Doing the math to figure out all the dimensions takes awhile, as does cutting through chipboard with an Xacto knife.  I didn't love machine-sewing right next to chipboard, but it definitely works!

Are you wondering about the fabric choice?  I took out a big heap of all my "manliest" fabrics for hubby to choose from - and one fabric for sewing a baby present.  Guess which one he chose?

Here it is all folded up, held shut with a wraparound elastic

You can prop up the Kindle for reading, which seems useful