Baby Seal Amigurumi

My baby sister's birthday is tomorrow, and I wanted to make her something really special. She has this baby seal toy called "Tuppy" from the Tupperware company. My mom got it for her when we were little and it's still her favorite. She found an amigurumi baby seal on Pinterest and pinned it for me, asking her to make her one. Since I know she would love it, I decided to go for it! (I am definitely learning to only knit or crochet for people who ask for it, and even then only if I have time and it's not too terribly involved. I picked up some "I Love This Chunky Yarn" from Hobby Lobby to make it bigger than the pattern shows. It only took me a day, and I love it! I hope she loves it too.

I used an I hook and safety eyes and nose from Hobby Lobby, and red ink for the cheeks. I might have to take better pictures during daylight, we'll see. Super easy pattern, definitely going to make it again someday!

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Rainbow Socks, Finally Finished!

Geez, these socks only took 3 1/2 months to finish. So glad these are finally done, now I don't ever have to see them in my bag again.

Project notes: Lifestyle Toe Up Sock pattern, 64 stitches. Premier Designs Serenity Garden sock yarn, bought at JoAnn, 2 skeins. The fiber is "Dralon," which is a nylon blend. The cool thing about this fiber is that my feet don't get too hot when I am just putzing around in socks for awhile, so I really like the fiber so far. I finished another sock in this fiber (different colorway) last night and hope to finish the pair soon, and I have one more colorway of this yarn waiting for me. Here's hoping those pairs don't take as long as this one did!

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Ripple Baby Blanket

This was an amazingly fast project! I bought several skeins of baby yarn on clearance at JoAnn awhile ago, and I have 2 baby blankets due to my church the first week of November. That deadline is creeping up on me so I decided to get started using up that yarn. (JoAnn Sensations "Little Treat"). I found the pattern Rainbow Ripple Baby Blanket  that is FREE, which made me very excited! I started the blanket and was able to get through 1 skein a day for three days, making it a really good size blanket. about 3 1/2 feet in diameter. I had another 2 skeins of this colorway, but I figured out I would get another 4 rows total out of the two skeins, and I decided it just wasn't enough of a difference to make me want to keep going. BUT, I love that I was able to make a great blanket in only 3 days!

My girls got jealous I was taking pictures of the blanket, so they jumped in and we had fun for a bit :D

I have already started my second blanket, a pink and purple colorway of the same yarn. I'm hoping because these are getting done so fast to have some wiggle room with the Christmas presents I have planned. We shall see! Update coming later this week on some other finished projects and UFO's. Blessings!

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Portland Trip

Whew! I finally have the 30 seconds I have been needing to sit down and write about my trip! I spent the weekend in Portland and St. Helens with my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. I originally went up there to take my twin cousins' senior portraits, and we took a lot! (To see all of the finished photos, visit my new photography site.)

I also got to visit a lot of people I love, including my cousin Brenden, his wife Kayla, and their sweet 9 day old baby, along with their three other adorable girls! They didn't know I was coming and we haven't seen each other in about 7 years, so there was much crying and hugging and happiness.

 Plus I got to visit TJ, my long time friend since middle school. We went to Powell's books, which is enormous bookstore in Portland the size of an entire city block. We only got to spend 15 minutes there and we ran around like crazy people. It was so fun  though, I could go back for hours and hours and hours!

By this time TJ had to go to work, so I popped over to a local yarn shop called Knit Purl. It was a lovely shop and again, I could have spent hours there, but stupid parking meters made that hard. I wanted to buy something locally spun or dyed, but I just couldn't find anything I just had to have. So, I decided to pick up some Madeline Tosh lace weight yarn, in a gorgeous blue and green and grey colorway. What can I say? It begged me to bring it home with me. 

All in all it was a very busy, very successful trip. Charlie was a champ on the plane, I got a bit of a break from the four children scene, and we took lots and lots of great senior portraits. I hope to go back and visit next year, maybe with a little less on the agenda and a little more freestyling :D Have a blessed day everyone!

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My Town is Flooding....

as are several other parts of Colorado. They just opened the dams in Estes Park, this should be interesting. Please keep my hometown in your prayers, my mom barely got out of the town 20 minutes south of us but my family is all home safe and sound now.

In the meantime, I'm working on this little guy to keep me company.

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WIP Monday - Part 2

Okay, so I missed last week. I totally spaced it out, deal with it :-D Here are the current Works in Progress, or WIP's I am knitting right now.

This is the project I am currently the most excited about. It's a Mareeka Shawl designed by Brian Smith, who designs really beautiful shawls. My mom gave me a $50 gift certificate to a local yarn store in a nearby town, and I picked up the yarn for this beauty and another 900 yards of some alpaca lace I will probably use in the spring. Yellow and grey is one of my favorite color combinations, but it's not one I have made anything with. I threw in some black and I am thrilled with how fun this shawl is so far.

The only problem I have run in to is that I mixed up the yardages required for the black and the grey, so I have not enough black and more than enough grey. Solution: I get to go back and buy another ball of black, and then use all of the leftovers for a neat hat or some other project. Hooray for silver linings!

I am almost done with Sammy's stocking, I just have to do the finishing work. Which. I. Hate. Doing. There are so many ends to weave in! And I really did not do my best work on this stocking, I guess doing 11 of them in one year two years ago doesn't keep me in my groove, so hopefully the next one is better.

I ran out of yarn on the Shale Baby Blanket. It looks so lovely though! I have 20 repeats of it done, only 37 more to go. Oi vey, that's a lot of stitching! I picked up some Caron Simply Soft on clearance at Hobby Lobby in a beautiful blue, I think I am going to do this same pattern with it and use it as a baby blanket for our church.

Oh yeah, and the stupid rainbow socks aren't finished yet. I want to throw them out the window, hopefully I will finish them by next weekend.

That's all for this week, I probably won't get to update next week because of a big secret that you will find out about later! Have a blessed Labor Day!

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