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Whoa, I made a lot of stuff this month! Want to see?

Weaving

I wove 2 scarves this month. For the top scarf I used Louet Gems sock yarn in “Ginger” for the warp and some handspun merino/tencel singles for the weft. For the bottom scarf I used Indigo Moon sock yarn for the warp and handspun merino for the weft. Both scarves came out to be about 8×60 inches. To finish the scarves I fulled them a bit and steam-pressed them with my iron. I’ve already sent the merino/tencel scarf to my sister. She loves it :). I’m keeping the other one for myself.

Weaving is getting easier. Warping the loom is still a pain in the butt. It takes me about 2 hours to make the warp and get it on the loom (down from 5 hours!). Once everything is all set up the weaving goes so fast. An hour or two and you’re done. It’s so much faster than knitting!

Spinning

I was a spinning maniac this month. I decided to try spinning during H’s morning naps. As you can see, it was a fabulous idea. These 6 skeins are some of my favorite yarns to date. Starting in the upper left corner we have a crazy rainbow-y scrap yarn from an Art Club Jumble Bag. I love spinning scrappy yarns. My Jumble Bag was sort of rainbow colored so I arranged the batts in that order and Navajo plied the yarn to keep the colors separate. I wound up with 150yd of worsted to chunky weight yarn. Next is a Totally Loaded batt from Terra Bella Spun. These batts have every bit of fiber and fluff imaginable. I can’t get enough of them. They’re like crack for spinners! Next up is some gorgeous Yarn Wench merino in “Mahogany Peacock”. More on that a bit later…

Aaah. That beautiful skein in the lower left corner. THAT is my pride and joy (of yarn). A few weeks ago I had this crazy idea to incorporate gemstones into my spinning. I saw this beautiful Terra Bella battand knew immediately that I wanted to ply it with a string of freshwater pearls. Which is exactly what I did. I think it deserves a picture all on it’s own, don’t you?

My precious. It’s 44yd of bulky weight awesomeness with 65 natural freshwater pearls plied randomly throughout. Ok, back to my final 2 skeins. The next skein up there is from this amazing batt from Gaslight Dyeworks. It was an Arrested Development themed batt. How could I resist? It was really fun to spin. I loved the little pieces of shredded denim. My final skein is some Zen String superwash merino in “Hopi”. I spun it into a 2-ply sock yarn. I really want a pair of handspun socks. I don’t know if I can subject this beautiful yarn to my feet though. I don’t think they deserve such lovely yarn.

That was a lot of spinning, right? But I’m not done yet. I also knit a lot of stuff this month.

Knitting

Ok, so you’ve seen my silly baby hats already. I won’t repeat the details for those projects; you can find them here and here.

I knit H a new pair of longies earlier in the month. I swore off knitting any new longies for him once he started crawling. Army crawling trashes longies, and army crawling on a sisal rug REALLY trashes longies. He gave up army crawling for the more traditional cross-crawling in December so I decided to cast on for some Belladonna Designs longies.

Details:

Pattern: Belladonna Designs Options
Size: XL, baby!
Yarn: 2 skeins of Zen String Ahisma (rav link). “Williamette”. Left over Malabrigo for the trim.
Needles: size 9 addis. magic looped the whole thing.
Mods: well, the pattern is customizable so i customized it (in theory) to H’s measurements. As you can see in the photo, the butt is pretty saggy. I did 4 sets of short rows but I wish I would have done a few more to prevent saggy butt. Next time. Next time.

Finally, I turned my big skein of Mahogany Peacock into a shawl. I liked the shawl I knit for my grandma so much I decided to make one for myself.

Details:

Fiber- Yarn Wench merino, “Mahogany Peacock”, 9.25 oz
Spun- 240 yd of Bulky 2-ply.
Pattern- Simple Yet Effective Shawl
Needles- size 13 circs.
Mods- None, except I ran a bit short of yarn and used some leftover black wool. I like the dark, solid color along the edges.
Ravel it.

Whew. It was an unusually crafty month for me! Have a great weekend :).

I’ve been starting this post for over a week now and I keep having to go back and rewrite it. H has changed so much in the last month. Every time I turn around he’s learned something new. The month of January has been a busy month for H. He even took his first steps on January 27th (see, I had to go back and add this. what else do you think he can cram in in the 4 days left this month?). It is a huge pain in the butt to photograph him now since every time he sees the camera he tries to climb my leg and wrestle it away from me. These aren’t my favorite pictures of him, but it’s going to have to do for now.

We were a few months late getting in to the pediatrician’s office for his 9 month visit, so his 11 month stats are 30 pounds and 33 1/2 inches. He’s still in the 100th percentile although his weight gain has slowed way down. He’s been hovering around 30 pounds since he was 8 months old. I can’t believe how tall he is though. He’s got the longest legs! The pediatrician assures me he’ll be well over 6 feet tall when he’s done growing.

He started pointing at things on January 1st. Once he figured out how to point it became pretty obvious that he understood a lot more than he had previously been able to communicate. He loves to point at things he knows. He points at mommy, daddy, doggies, kitty, outside (points at the door), upstairs, downstairs, teeth, baby, a few of his toys he knows the names of, and my personal favorite- he points at his diaper when it’s wet. He also loves to point at new things and learn new words. I can’t even keep track of the words he understands anymore!

He is way into babies right now. It doesn’t matter if it’s his reflection, a picture in a book, or a baby we see when we’re out and about. If there’s a baby around he points at it, starts talking to it in that mysterious baby-alien language, and if he can he gives it a hug and says “aaaaaaah”. All of a sudden H loves to hug everything. People, pets, toys, even books. He hugged one of his diapers the other day.

He’s doing just the teeniest bit of talking. If you ask him what a dog says he will respond with a very hearty “woof woof woof!”. He says “bye bye” with a lot of prompting, and if he gets really mad he starts saying “nanananana!” which clearly means “no”. He usually does that when I take a delicious piece of paper out of his mouth. He’s been saying “mama” a lot when he’s tired. I don’t think that really counts, but it is heart-meltingly sweet.

He’s really becoming an independent little guy too. He cruises and crawls a great distance away from me without as much as a glance back in my direction. When my friend comes over to babysit he is so excited to play he wants nothing to do with me. I picked him up for a hug the other day when Amber was still here and he grunted and shoved me away. Hahaha. No time for hugs! I’m thrilled that babysitting is going so well. I am grateful to have a friend like Amber who shares my parenting philosophy and is gentle and caring. H and B have fun playing together and I don’t know about B, but H is EXHAUSTED after they leave and takes a 2 1/2 hour nap. Nice!

This post could easily go on for pages and pages but I’ll try to keep it short. I have just one more story to share. It’s about TV. Now, for the record I don’t think babies should be encouraged to watch TV. We don’t let H watch cartoons or “educational” shows like Sesame Street or anything. He’s always been obsessed with the TV though. He even points to the TV if you ask him where it is. I’m sure he’d try to give it a hug if it wasn’t mounted to the wall. Sigh. Anyway, once in a while if he’s up kind of late he might watch a little TV. The other night a commercial came on for some Disney movie with live action puppies. Puppies flying a spaceship. He saw those puppies and started pointing and saying “woof woof woof” and babbling in that crazy baby-alien language. He crawled closer to the TV and bounced up and down, barking and pointing at the puppies. We replayed that commercial over and over for him. So much for not encouraging him to watch TV ;).

3 great things about today.

1. The first one is obvious, right? Did anyone else see that Pepsi commercial where they morphed their logo and Obama’s campaign logo into one weird logo? With some weird “yes we can” song about drinking frigging POP? Ug. I hated that.
2. Booty Club shipped today! My friend and her little boy came over to babysit today and the house was filled with the sounds of baby giggles while I worked. There couldn’t be anything better to listen to while working.
3. I finished another hat for H. Behold:

Details

Pattern: Petite Beat Bonnet- Lion, from Boho Baby Knits. I love that book!
Needles: size 6 and 7 circs
Yarn: Cascade 220, yellow, and Plymouth Tweed in a deep orange color. This was my first time using Plymouth Tweed and I really liked it.
Mods: Well, um, although I knit the toddler size, it is still a bit small. That’s why it’s crooked in most of the pictures. H’s head is in the “100 ++ percentile” according to his pediatrician, as is the rest of his body. He is bigger and taller than the average 2 yr old. If I knit this pattern again I’d add a few inches to either side of the bonnet. It fits good enough for now. Babies don’t leave hats on for very long anyway.

This was my first time doing the loop stitch. It was super easy and even kind of fun. This was also my first time doing duplicate stitching. I didn’t particularly enjoy that part, but I think it had a lot to do with using a tweed yarn. Duplicate stitching is hard to do with a lumpy yarn. Oh well.

I’m trying to teach H to growl like a lion when he wears his hat, but so far I can only get him to bark. If you happen to see a small-ish, chubby lion crawling around barking like a dog don’t be scared. It’s just my kid :).