Purple Crested Chatterbox

There are some "birds" around these parts that are always making noise… playing, talking, spinning tales and giving direction.  It's the best, these little opinions… stories made up… the first year of advice for her sister… retold experiences from school.  I will be very, very melancholy when she doesn't have so much to share with us…

Rubens

Until then, we'll listen and encourage.  Knit hats in favorite colors and do what we can to make sure that these two girls are good to each other.

Concentric

The hat is knit from Acadia.  The pattern is Rubens, written by Gudrun Johnson.  I knit this in transit back from New Hampshire last June, when a storm created a bottleneck in air traffic and I spent an entertaining afternoon and evening watching the people of Baltimore mill around their home airport.

Lovely Marled Purple

Knitting details are recorded here on Ravelry.  I highly recommend the yarn and the pattern and it's designer… XO Faye

Little Doe and her Fox Friend

How lovely is everything in Alicia Paulson's world?  Her online presence is so well managed, her home looks like the perfect place to curl up and read a book in, her daughter is darling and her designs… irresistible for this mother of two little girls.

A finished pair of friends

In late summer I purchased two softie kits from the Posie Gets Cosy website.  The first was Miss Dandelion Doe and the second was Mr. Basil Fox. I was just completely drawn in by these charming little faces and leggy bodies and also loved the idea of little animal dolls for the girls that were not mass produced.

Frannie the Fox

I won't lie, they took some time to assemble, but the kit was great.  It had nearly everything you would need, and the few things it doesn't include are identified clearly and are easy enough to find.  I started assembly really, really early… in August?  And felt foolish for kicking the project off so far in advance for Christmas.  Because as it always happens, life gets in the way of these creative projects.  Weekends fill up with commitments, evenings get darker and my eyelids wave the white flag of surrender.  And so, here it is December and I'm just wrapping things up.  I think it is almost better that I started earlier so that I could enjoy the hand sewing and knitting and not feel rushed.

The girls love these little friends as much as I enjoyed making them.  Our oldest is fiercely independent at the moment. She wants to dress herself, has no hesitation about be apart from us (at school, or dance class, or with her favorite sitters) and has ideas about everything. She's not particularly taken with dolls, but is with animals.  She loves Miss Dandelion and immediately declared her a kangaroo.  Her name is now Kanga.  (No argument here… her profile is a little kargaroo-ish..)

Kanga

And the littlest.  She will probably love Mr. Basil.  She's a clown and affectionate and the wild baby of Borneo lately.  She's taken to walking on her own, just this month. (Her poor sister's world is about to get altered again, I'm afraid.)  I see that it won't be long before she's running.  You can see in her face how badly she wants to keep up with everything that her sister is doing. She loves soft things, loves dolls and fuzzy stuffed animals.  I just hope in a flash of that wild-babyness that she doesn't rip off one of his little arms (she's also surprisingly strong).

I really enjoyed making these and have ideas for more clothes for these two little critters now that they've been made. We'll see how much time permits in the post-holiday winter.  I may be busy playing doll house or tag or hide and seek and not have time to finish additional softie knitwear.

Just hanging out.

Stay warm.  F-

A tale of three drop stitch cowls

This fall I was inspired by a friend to make some bulky knit cowls as gifts.  And what a great idea it was.  I'm generally not a fan of bulky or super bulky yarn, so I didn't have any on hand.  But the promise of being able to finish a piece so quickly and yield something so cute was all the convincing I needed.

Bright Red Dropped Stitches

I used the Drop Stitch Cowl pattern by Abi Gregorio. It was really a fast pattern to learn, it's really a fairly simple pattern repeat and can be used on any even number of stitches.  I highly recommend it, if it appeals at all.

Probably the best color representation

I ended up knitting three of these.  Two as gifts and one for myself (no judgement… in fairness my office at work is a virtual ice box.)  The two gifted cowls were knit out of Zumie by Skacel.  And they are really soft and will hopefully be comfortable to wear next to your neck and face.  The red one I plan to keep and although it's not as soft, I'm loving it.  It is knit out of Cascade Magnum.  It's a big fat singly ply and so far I'm impressed that it's not leaving bits of itself all over the place.

So 2014 handmade efforts were extended a bit this holiday season with a nice little pattern that knit up in a few hours.  Hope your holidays are warm and cozy.