Unraveled, Week 13/2025

Bock bock! I'm in a "fowl" mood this Wednesday as I join with Kat and the Unravelers -- with a finished chicken!

Pattern: Emotional Support Chicken by Annette Corsino
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in Signature Series: Neutrals (approximately 114 yds./26 g used) and FDW Bounce in two purples and yellow (approximately 28 yds./7 g used), plus a small amount of black leftovers
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm
Started/Completed: March 20/March 24
Mods: omitted wattle

This is now the third ESC I've knit, and it might just be the cutest! I figured that because my nephew has one, my niece needed one as well, and with Passover and Easter both coming up, it felt even more appropriate. She's not quite old enough to really be into stuffed animals just yet, though, so I thought a chick would be better than the full-sized chicken. I didn't do anything to adapt the pattern other than use lighter yarn and smaller needles.

The leftover yarn from Molly's socks ended up being pretty perfect for a chicken -- the purple stripes and yellow for the beak were added in manually, but all the other color changes are just the tweed yarn. I still have a good amount leftover, so I very well may have had enough to do the entire chicken in it, but I still rather like the purple stripes for some added flair. I embroidered the eyes rather than use safety eyes; frankly I thought the safety eyes I have would have been comically large on this smaller bird, if not downright scary. I also omitted the poly pellets I usually put in the bottom of the body (in a sewn bag).

Here you can see the new chick with my chicken for a sense of scale. I think I could even stand to knit one on smaller needles (US 0 or US 1) for a mini chicken -- one day. I'm a bit chickened out for now.

I'm still working on my sister-in-law's socks, though there's not that much more knitting to show. I'll have a better update on Friday.

Reading! I have added three titles to my "read" list this week, though two were so short they hardly seem like they should count!

I was very impressed by Leila Mottley's debut novel, Nightcrawling, so when I received an invitation to read and review her new novel, I was quite interested to see where she would go next. In The Girls Who Grew Big, Mottley takes her readers to the opposite side of the country, the tiny town of Padua Beach, Florida, and introduces them to three young women all dealing with pregnancy. Simone, the oldest, is already the mother to 4-year-old twins, who she is raising in a red pickup truck after being kicked out by her parents and has recently discovered she is pregnant again by the twins' father. Emory is a high school senior with a 9-month-old son who is realizing that having a baby has not brought her life the meaning she thought it would. Adela is 16 and has been sent to live with her grandmother until she gives birth because of her parents' shame. These three are among the girls and young women who have come together to support each other in the middle of community that judges them but also offers them little to no help.

My thoughts on this novel are conflicted. On the one hand, the writing is powerful, and Mottley shows that her debut was not a fluke. On the other hand, I didn't understand how Simone, for instance, was able to make ends meet (she's living in a truck, but somehow still manages to party with her group?). I also often found myself exasperated with these three young women and the poor choices they repeatedly made -- though I also have to wonder if that wasn't the author's point. They are, after all, still children and are being forced into very adult decisions and responsibilities, and I suppose I was judging them as much as the adults in their lives were. Perhaps Mottley is asking us to suspend our disbelief in these particular characters a bit to see the bigger picture: that girls and women who find themselves pregnant often have few, if any, options and are often shamed by others no matter what decisions they make. I gave it 3 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published June 24, 2025.

Last Thursday, when I was off from work, Molly and I took a trip to the main branch of our library system to see if they had any books she could use for her history research paper. She didn't find anything, but at long as we were there, I poked around in the nonfiction section and came home with two books by Ted Kooser, who many of you have been talking about lately. First I read Lights on a Ground of Darkness, which is a short memoir of sorts (I think it was originally published as a long essay) about his mother's family, how they came to live in Iowa, and his memories of his interactions with them when he was a child. This is a beautiful, quiet remembrance, with the writing very clearly that of a poet. It's very short, at only about 70 pages, but I took two days to read it to savor it. I gave it 4 stars.

Those of you who are already familiar with Kooser as a poet likely also know that, for more than two decades, he sent out a poem on postcards for Valentine's Day, first to friends and later to women across the country. His collection Valentines contains all the poems, each one paired with a beautiful black-and-white illustration by artist Robert Hanna. Even though I tried to read these slowly and deliberately, I read through them all in one sitting (though I'll admit I took photos of a handful so I could continue to enjoy them after I returned the book to the library). This was my first experience with his poetry, other than a small selection some of you have shared on your blogs, but it won't be my last. I gave this collection 4 stars.

I am currently reading This Motherless Land, a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (hence why I reread it recently), and I've just started The History of Sound, which I ended up buying because it was only available as an audiobook (with a long wait) via Libby and the hard copies at the library were checked out.

What are you making and reading this week?

A Mixed Bag

TGIF! It's been a long week, with the Mister on a work trip and wintry weather moving in. But at least we're now at the end of it.

I appreciated all the good thoughts for my visit with the orthopedist! The bad news is that I'm not done with the boot altogether. He said to keep wearing it for the next three weeks, especially when I'm out of the house -- BUT I am supposed to start walking around without it when I'm at home and I can take it off to sleep! And I can drive again! The timeline means that I'll still be wearing it for a bit when we go to Florida, but maybe they'll have some pity on me when we're boarding the plane and let me get on early. He gave me a bunch of exercises to do to, so I will be working those into my routine and trying to get around bootless as much as possible at home so that my foot gets stronger. While part of me is disappointed that I couldn't ditch the boot completely, I had a feeling it wasn't going to happen anyway, and now I officially don't have to worry about showing up at the office for the rest of the year.

In other good news, look what I finished on Wednesday night!

Pattern: Someone to Write Gnome About by Sarah Schira
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Mountain Tweed BFL in Mid-Winter (hat and socks), Knit Picks Gloss Fingering in Dusk (body and legs), and handspun wool of mystery (nose, beard, and sock accents)
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm and US 1.5/2.5 mm
Started/Completed: November 24/December 3

I think I may have mentioned before that I really had no idea how big this guy was going to be, despite the fact that the dimensions are written right there on the first page of the pattern. (I fully admit that other than the needle sizes needed, I didn't really read the first page all that closely.) But I'm not sure this photo really gives you a good sense, so how's this for scale?

I know my brother will love him, so knitting him was worth it, but I doubt I will do it again. And I'm quite happy that I've chosen a much simpler pattern for my nephew. There is nothing wrong with the pattern -- Sarah writes excellent patterns with lots of great information about techniques! I just found it a bit too fiddly for my taste.

Now that the big guy is done, I'll be casting on soon for the one for my nephew, and I've pulled out my sister-in-law's socks. I've just started the heel on the second sock, and they're in stockinette, so I can easily work on them while reading, in a meeting, etc.

Tomorrow night Molly is performing with the school Glee Club at a local neighborhood's light-up night, and on Sunday evening we've been invited to dinner at the new house of some friends. Now that I can drive again, we girls might also get wild and crazy and do a Target run! Mostly I want to hide inside where it's warm and get used to not having a boot on. Stay warm out there, friends, and have a restful weekend!

Unraveled, Week 31/2024

It's the last day of July, and it's a Wednesday, so that means it's time to check in with Kat and the Unravelers. And I'd like to start off by introducing you to a new friend:

Friends, meet Ann Hatch It*, my Emotional Support Chicken. Like me, she loves nothing more than curling up with a good book. She's also a little bottom heavy like me (ha) thanks to a bag of poly pellets inside to help her sit upright. I made her a little more petite than my last one, in part because the yarn I was using was a bit thinner but also because I went down to a US 5/3.75 mm needle for a tighter fabric. I am quite happy with that decision, as I don't really need an enormous stuffed chicken (but a smaller one is okay).

I used yarn from two local dyers (both of whom are friends, too!). The variegated gray was a one-of-a-kind skein that I won from Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works as part of her yearly make-along. The burgundy is HipStrings Buoy DK leftover from this sweater. Mo gave me a bit of acrylic yarn she had leftover from a crochet project for the beak. As I did in the first one, I omitted the wattle from mine; I don't think it's needed and would be likely to get pulled off easily if I made it, so I just left it off.

In knitting this pattern a second time, and anticipating that I very well might knit it again, I'm glad that I made notes on it the first time around so that I had some guideposts along the way. I wouldn't call it a very well-written pattern, or at least it's not written the way I would write it, but I know what I'm doing with it now. This time around, I'm making some notes to myself about leaving some of the ends un-woven-in so that I can use them in the sewing up.

Now that Ann is done, the only project I have on the needles is a rather boring pair of socks for my father-in-law. That means I'll likely be casting on something new soon.

Reading has been good the past week, though I have only finished one book:

The Ministry of Time is the next Read With Us selection, and I've been looking forward to reading it. I'm glad that I bought it on Kindle because it's the kind of book I have a feeling I'm going to want to go back and read. I know a lot of you have either already read this or are planning to read it ahead of our RWU discussion, so I won't get into the plot or too much discussion because I don't want to give too much away. I will say that I really enjoyed it, I think mainly because the writing felt to me more like a book from the 18th or 19th century (very much my comfort zone), and I thought it was really smart, which I always appreciate. Although a lot of what I've read about this book seems to be focused on the time travel aspect, I think the author really has some interesting and meaningful things to say about displacement and being a refugee, whether that's in your own time or a different time. This would have been a five-star read for me had things not fallen apart a bit at the end, which I didn't feel fit with the rest of the book, so I gave it 4 stars. I'm looking forward to our discussion and to rereading it (eventually!) because there is a lot going on it in and I know a discussion will make me appreciate it more.

I'm still keeping up with my weekly pages in A Suitable Boy, and I've started reading Persepolis, which my brother gave me for my birthday this year, on paper and True Biz on Kindle. They're both books I've been wanting to read, but I got the kick in the pants I needed from a summer bingo from a podcast I recently started listening to. They'll fulfill squares for "Read a book in translation" and "Read something by or about a person with a disability," respectively.

That's all I've got, folks! Today my in-laws are moving to their new condo, so tonight we'll be taking dinner to them because I'm sure they'll be exhausted and overwhelmed. Frankly, as it's supposed to be hot and humid today and it's a running day for me, I'm sure I'll be feeling much the same.

*The accepted practice for these chickens seems to be giving them a punny name, so I decided to get some inspiration from one of my favorite writers.

Heinz or Hunt's?

If you're wondering about the strange post title, it's because I'm feeling a little punny this morning -- this is a catch-up post (get it?). (Oh, and the answer to the question is always Heinz. Always.)

I'm still trying to get Rainbow to pose with her finished blanket, but thus far she's only been interested in snuggling with it. I guess it's a indication of the blanket's success that she's been sleeping with it every single night since it was finished. Blocking went well and squared it up decently, but it also stretched it out just enough that the fabric has really nice drape now. Here it is atop my queen-size bed for scale:

The details: I used Casapinka's Blanket of Calm (Ravelry link) as a jumping-off point to get me started, mainly because it was free and had just been released when I was thinking about starting this blanket. Once I understood the construction, I didn't have to refer to the pattern at all. The entire blanket is double crochet, with about four rounds of single crochet for a border. I used an F hook (3.75 mm) for the whole thing; I didn't swatch, but I knew that I generally use a US 5 (3.75 mm) knitting needle with fingering weight yarn for things like shawls, so I figured it would work well with crochet, too. The very center of the blanket is Holly Press Fibers SHEEPISHsock leftover from my I've Got Sunshine (Ravelry link) socks and the rest of it is Knit Picks Felici. I used two skeins each of the colorways Thunderstruck, Summer Camp, Test Pattern, Goth Kitty, Material Girl, Ever After, and Dark Rainbow (though there's about half of the second skein of Dark Rainbow left because Rainbow declared the blanket Big Enough at that point). Altogether, I used 677 grams -- 2,957.9 yards/2704.7 meters -- of yarn, and the only Felici left in my stash is that half skein or so of Dark Rainbow. I'm quite happy to have all that yarn out of my stash and that big boost to my Stash Dash total (which right now stands at 13,445.5 meters!).

Over the weekend we attended our nephew's first birthday party in the park. The theme was the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I have to say that my sister-in-law did an excellent job on the treats (she ordered the cookies, which, though it's hard to see here, are foods with holes in them, just like in the book):

My nephew, however, remained unimpressed by the whole thing:

(That's Rainbow's hand and drink on the left side of the frame, trying to get his attention so he'd look at the camera. And yes, quite a few people at the party were not wearing masks. My sister-in-law comes from a Faux News family. Le sigh. We were all masked, and thankfully the party was outside.)

The good news is that the crocheted alpaca I made him seems to be a hit. Or at least it passed his taste test. I received this photo from my brother-in-law this morning:

I can't ask for a better reception than that to a hand-made gift for a 1-year-old!

Time to Get Monogamous

It's July 23 (yes, really; I checked!). One week remains in the month, and I've decided that I really want to finish Rainbow's blanket by the end of the month. So I've decided to buckle down and focus on it almost exclusively. But I have updates on other projects. First, an FO you got a peek at yesterday:

Pattern: Amigurumi Alpaca from A Little Love Every Day

Yarn: Knit Picks Dishie in Verdigris (approximately 66.5 yds.) and Swan (approximately 19 yds.)

Hook: 3.0 mm

Started/Completed: July 16/July 21

Mods: none (at least not any that were intentional!)

I went through a period when I was a teenager when I was making little stuffed animals, but that was, um, quite a few years ago and I had to relearn the technique. Once I got the hang of it, and once I realized that I needed to stick a locking stitch marker in the first stitch of the round to keep track of where it was, it was much easier to than I was expecting. In reality, this little guy didn't take as long as the start-to-finish dates would suggest. I did a bunch when I first started, then put it aside for a couple days, and then pretty much did the rest on Tuesday. I'm sure there are a few mistakes, but you really can't tell and I know for a fact that my nephew won't know the difference. I may try to make a companion in the next week, but I'm not stressing about it if I don't get around to it. I stuffed him just enough to make him squishy and embroidered the face to make him baby safe. The hardest part of the project was definitely sewing on all the little appendages!

I've also gotten past the split on my Torbellino, though I haven't knit on it in a couple of days. I'm at least at the point where it's all stockinette in the round for quite a bit, so it's now a mindless knit.

And here's where things stand on Rainbow's blanket. I've got about half of the current skein left to add plus two full skeins.

I'm fairly certain that she will find this to be big enough when this yarn is used up, particularly given that we can stretch it out even bigger in blocking. Lately she's been favoring blankets that are technically baby blankets, ones that either cover her legs or can be wrapped around her shoulders. And I'm feeling pretty confident that if I focus on this project for even just a few days, I'll be able to wrap it up. If I just end up using the yarn I have left here, it should mean about 3,100 yards or 2,800 meters to add to my Stash Dash total -- more than enough to push me over the 10K mark!

The Reading Streak Continues

Good morning! For a second week in a row, I'm putting up a Wednesday post because I've been on a tear in my reading and joining Kat and the Unravelers (hmm, sounds like a band of knitters, doesn't it?).

To catch up, I finished all the books I was reading last week. If you're interested in my ratings and reviews, I'll direct you to my Goodreads account (if you're a Goodreads user, too, and we're not already friends there, feel free to add me!).

In addition to finishing those three, I've also started and completed three other books:

I'd had Between the World and Me on my want to read list for a long time, and I'd also had a long wait for it from the library. But it was worth the wait. It was a quick read, in the end, but also a somewhat difficult read. It's written as a letter from Coates to his son, trying to explain his experience as a Black man in the United States and to prepare his son for what he might expect from his life in this country. Reading this gave me a view of life that I could never experience as a white woman. There's a lot to unpack in this short book, and I have no doubt that there's a lot I missed because I didn't understand some of the cultural references, but it's a valuable read. I gave it 4 stars.

If you have Netflix, you may have heard of or seen the miniseries based on the memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. After watching it, I knew I wanted to read the book. I had a bit of a wait from the library, but once I got it, I devoured it. I honestly thought that I had a good idea about what went on in some of the more observant streams of my religion, but I was shocked by how ignorant I was. (Did you know, for instance, that Hasidic Jews disagree with the existence of the state of Israel?) This memoir was often painful to read, and it really opened my eyes to the fact that every religion can have extremists. Normally I'd rather read a book before seeing its dramatization, but in this case, it worked out to do it in reverse, as the edition I read had an afterword that specifically addressed the miniseries. I gave it 5 stars.

A number of you recommended The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time for my "With an unreliable narrator" bingo square, and I'm so thankful I took that recommendation. I borrowed the audiobook from the library and listened mainly during my daily exercise sessions. It was really wonderful and entertaining. When I was studying psychology in college, I did a summer internship with an autism researcher, so I spent many months reading books and memoirs about those on the autism spectrum, so I really enjoyed reading a fictional account told from the point of view of someone on the spectrum. I found Christopher to be a totally endearing narrator. I have no idea if his account has been found to be authentic by the autism community, but it rang true for me based on what I know. I gave the book 4 stars.

I currently have two books in progress, one of which will help me get a cover-all on my first bingo card!

I number of you have raved about Save Me the Plums recently, so I was very excited to see that it was available from the library with no wait. I borrowed it on Monday and expect to finish it today, as I only have about 100 pages left. I'm really enjoying it -- though reading all the descriptions of food does make me hungry! Reichl is an excellent writer as well, so I have a feeling I'll be looking into her other memoirs after I finish this one.

I'll be completing my first bingo square with a reread of a favorite from childhood. I have a distinct memory of reading Mandy in the fourth grade, when I was Rainbow's age, and loving it. The edition I read then identified the author as Julie Edwards, and I can remember a moment of amazement when my teacher told us that that was the married name of Mary Poppins herself! I'd bought a copy of the book some time ago for Rainbow to read, though she has yet to do so, so I thought I'd read it in the meantime. Though it's a children's book and very quick to read, I've only been reading it just before bed thus far, so I'm only a little more than 100 pages in. But I should have no problem getting through it this week and then passing it off to my daughter.

Let's take a look at my bingo cards -- the second one is already filling up!

I am really so amazed by how much reading I have been getting done this summer, and I am so very, very thankful for the digital resources offered by my library. It's crazy to think that just a couple of years ago, I was somewhat resistant to reading ebooks; now, reading a physical book is rare for me, and I actually find it takes me longer to finish a physical book because I tend to read them only right before bed -- I've found that I favor ebooks because I can read while knitting or spinning, and that multitasking is so important right now!

And just so this post isn't entirely about reading, here's a little preview of something I finished yesterday:

Isn't that the sweetest little face?

A Yoke, a Diversion, and a Pathetic Harvest

It's another hot day here in Western Pennsylvania, and I'm trying to psych myself up for a run in a little bit because we're supposed to get some thunderstorms this afternoon (and I really hope we do -- we need the rain badly). I'm feeling a little blah about my projects right now, but I'm still working on them.

My Torbellino (Ravelry link) is now ready to be split for the body and sleeves. I ended up having to work quite a few more rounds than specified for the size I'm making due to my different row gauge, so I also added a couple extra colorwork rounds as long as I was doing it. As you can see, I'm now alternating two skeins of the main color.

Rainbow's blanket is getting closer and closer to being done. Yesterday I joined the second skein of the second-to-last color, so I have three balls of yarn now left to crochet (provided she doesn't then decide she wants it to be even bigger). Though I missed a couple of days in the 100 Day Project, I have officially worked on it for more than 100 days, so it would be nice to finish it by the end of the month. I've been a little distracted, though, by another crochet project:

Can you tell what it is? Probably not! This is the start of an amigurumi alpaca that I'm attempting to make for my nephew for his first birthday. I have a feeling it will look a bit better once I stuff it and give it a face (that white thing off to the side is the face piece that gets sewn on), but I'm rather proud of myself to being able to follow a pattern with shaping. I've discovered that using a locking stitch marker is key to helping me keep my place because I'm not very good at reading my work yet. I'm sure there are some mistakes here, but I'm equally sure a 1-year-old is not going to care. I'm using Knit Picks Dishie from the Giant Dishie Acquisition of 2019 -- the colors are Verdigris and Swan. If I get this done soon, I might try to make a second one in the orange I pulled last week, but I'm trying not to push it and will be satisfied with the one.

As to the pathetic harvest, I present the first edible thing our garden has produced this year:

This is the first tomato from our one surviving plant, which thankfully seems to be doing okay -- it has two others growing and a bunch of flowers. This one looks good, even though it's small (about the size of a clementine orange). Our peas were looking like they were doing well, but it's been a challenge to keep them from drying up in the heat. So I don't have big expectations for the garden this year, but anything we do get will be a welcome bonus. I'm so glad I don't live in a time where I need to rely on my garden to feed my family!

I'll be back tomorrow with a reading update -- unlike my garden, my bingo card is flourishing!

"Ug-guh!"

It has been quite a week. When I published my last post, what I did not tell you was that I was doing it from my bed with a sick kid beside me. In the middle of the night on Saturday (or technically Sunday morning) she woke me up with her crying and said her neck hurt. I managed to get to back to sleep for a few hours, but she was up again at 4:30 a.m. with a fever. She was pretty miserable all day, and to make a long story short, we ended up at the Children's Hospital ER with her that night. Fortunately, the diagnosis ended up being just a virus of some kind, but it has been a rough one. Her fever has only just gone away (or so it seems) today, and we're hoping she'll be well enough to go back to school tomorrow. Poor kid has not been happy about missing almost a week of school!

One of the perks of her being sick is that she's been allowed to watch whatever she wants on TV (it's a compromise to get her to sit and relax -- not to mention that it distracts her enough from how she's feeling to keep her from whining and crying all day). One of her preferred shows to watch is Lalaloopsy, a show I have some tolerance for. All the characters have cute little pets that do everything with them, so another distraction was looking at patterns on Ravelry with me for a stuffed animal that would look like one of them. We settled upon Owls Two Ways, and I dug out some Knit Picks Swish Worsted in pink and white and started knitting. By the end of the day, there was an owl.

I made a few modifications to the pattern. First of all, I doubled the size, so I cast on twice as many stitches and doubled the rows/rounds worked. I also threw in a little simple stranded colorwork to look like feathers around the body and on the top of the head. I used Kitchener stitch to graft the top closed and used the remainder of the yarn tail for the little tufts on the ears (which have since been removed because she decided she didn't like them). I used a US 4/3.5 mm needle for a firm fabric and stuffed it pretty full. It probably could have used some poly pellets at the bottom to make it stand up, but I didn't have any.

Meanwhile, I've made a good deal of progress on my State Fair Cardigan. I finished the back and got started on the right front, which is probably about halfway done.

I managed to get the whole back done with less than two full skeins, so I'm fairly confident now that I will have enough yarn in spite of the gauge difference.

(By the way, if you're wondering where the title of this post came from, it's the exclamation Rainbow has been using frequently lately, and it pretty much sums up how I feel about this week!)

A Promise Kept

Nearly two years ago, I started knitting a doll for my then newly 3-year-old daughter. I got as far as finishing the body and half of the head before I shoved it away in the bottom of one of my knitting bags. In the many months that followed, I got it out a couple of times and did a round or two before relegating it back to its hibernation spot. Then, a month or two ago, my daughter started asking if I would finally finish it. The gauntlet was thrown, and I of course said yes.

It has not been an easy knit, because it's all in cotton (which my hands do not like), but I have stuck to my plan to have it done before her birthday and I made it almost a month early.

Pattern: Baby Doll Set: Doll by Susan B. Anderson in Itty Bitty Toys
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Cotton (100% organic cotton) in colors 81/Sand (two skeins), 80/Bone (one skein), 638/Dandelion (one skein), and 632/Mediterranean (one skein
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 7 (4.5 mm)
Started/Completed: December 19, 2012/November 16, 2014
Mods: I adjusted the dress to fit the body a bit better (incorporating decreases into the stripes and making it shorter) and made the hat larger.

Let me start by saying that the finished item is completely adorable and the recipient is over the moon about it (so much so that, upon discovering where I'd left it on her pillow this morning, she ran into our room to poke me awake and say thank you -- which would have been awesome had it not been 5 a.m.). What's particularly clever about this pattern is that it looks like a little girl, but by removing the hat and the dress, it becomes a baby again:

Now, aside from the yarn, I will tell you what I did not love so much about this pattern: Every little piece of this doll is knit separately and sewn together. And when I say every piece, I mean every piece. The feet and legs are made separately and then attached to each other. The thumb are knit separately from the hands and then sewn on. What may be the most ridiculous things are the little nose and the belly button -- but that's pretty darn cute.

I'm also not entirely sure I sewed everything how and where I was supposed to. There are descriptions some pictures in the book, but there's no really clear diagram of what goes where, so I had to do a lot of guesswork. I won't deny that Susan B. Anderson is a really clever designer and has a real knack for adorable toys, but perhaps they just aren't for me.

So, the final verdict: Would I knit it again? Probably not. I think I would rather do something that's all in one piece or just a few. Was it worth it? You tell me:

Out of Hibernation

Nearly two years ago, in December of 2012, I started knitting a doll for Rainbow out of Susan B. Anderson's book Itty-Bitty Toys. At the time, I think I thought it would be a quick knit that I could get through in a week or two. Clearly, that was a delusion. I was knitting it in worsted weight cotton on size 4 needles -- in other words, it was murder on my hands. I managed to finish the body and half of the head before I stuffed it into a bag and pretty much forgot about it.

In the years since, I've thought about it from time to time, but it's only been in the past couple months that Rainbow started asking about it. Her birthday is coming up in about a month and a half, and when she asked if I could finish it by then, I thought it was high time I pulled it out again and got to work on it seriously. On Sunday afternoon, I finished up the head. By Sunday evening, I'd done the hair and one arm and started the second arm. Last night, I finished the second arm, stuffed and sewed both arms on, knit and attached the thumbs, and knit most of the first leg. It's now really starting to look like a doll.

While the knitting is not difficult (aside from the stiffness of the cotton), this is a really fiddly piece. Almost everything is knit separately and sewn together -- that includes the thumbs, the belly button, and the nose, which are all tiny little bits of knitting. The feet and the legs are worked separately and sewn together, even. So my progress is a bit slower than I'd like, but I am definitely in the home stretch for the doll pieces. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get through both legs and perhaps start the feet this evening. After that there's only the belly button and nose to knit on the dolls itself before I move on to the accessories (the diaper, the dress, and the hat). If I can keep up the pace I've set the past two days, I'm hopeful that it will all be done by early to mid-November. I doubt that Rainbow will want to wait until her birthday to play with it, though, and I can't say I blame her. Even without legs or facial features, this doll is so stinking cute.

And Then There Were Two

Pattern: Hop by Susan B. Anderson for Blue Sky Alpacas
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton (I think), unknown colorway, and Dream in Color Classy in Happy Forest
Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm) and US 5 (3.75 mm) dpns
Started/Completed: September 18/October 8

This bunny was so cute I had to make him again. Luckily, I had a good excuse -- a new cousin in the family. She'll be geting the usual handknits (sweater, hat, etc.) eventually, but we'll be meeting her for the first time this coming weekend and I didn't want to come empty handed.

Hop, version two, is very similar to the first go-round. I did make a few minor changes, some intentional, some not. One change of the latter category is this bunny's tail, which is just a bit more voluminous.

A change done on purpose this time was to alter my cast on. The pattern has you cast on as you would for straight knitting, join to knit in the round, and then later use the cast on tail to stitch up the hole. I decided that it made more sense to use Emily Ocker's circular cast on, so all I had to do after knitting a few rounds was snug it up and secure the end. It was a small change, but it did save some time.

I also did lifted increases rather than the knit front and back specified in the directions for the feet. The end result is the same, but I like the smoother look it creates.

The yarn for the second bunny came by way of my aunt -- the same aunt who taught me to knit a couple of decades ago. She knit Rainbow a couple of beautiful sweaters and wrapped up the extra yarn for me when she delivered them. There was no tag with the two skeins of yarn leftover from the one sweater, but to my eye and touch, they're Blue Sky Organic Cotton.

As with the first bunny, the face is embroidered using a bit of leftover brown sock yarn and fully secured so that baby fingers and mouths can't disfigure it. I think these two make quite a handsome pair, don't you?

Hop to It

I promised you a successful project, and here he is -- hello!

Pattern: Hop [Ravelry link] by Susan B. Anderson for Blue Sky Alpacas
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton, color 81/Sand, less than one skein, and Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran (85% merino, 10% silk, 5% cashmere), colorway Lavender, approximately 1/2 skein
Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm) and US 5 (3.75 mm) dpns
Started/Completed: September 2/September 14

This little bunny was such fun to knit. He's knit seamlessly, from his bulbous bunny feet to the top of ears, as is his sweater. The only real "finishing" involved is sewing up or grafting a few spots when the parts are joined together.

For Hop's sweater, I used a little bit of yarn leftover from my Climbing Vines pullover. His embroidered face was done with a couple of plies of brown sock yarn (I think leftover from Mr. Foster).

The only modification I made to this bunny was to leave off the carrot on his sweater. Someday I may do Rainbow's initial in duplicate stitch, but for now I like it the way it is. I especially like a cute little feature that you can't see in the pattern photo -- a bushy bunny tail, complete with a hole for it in the sweater!

This pattern was so much fun that I'm knitting it again for our newest cousin!

Foster, Bananas Foster

There's a very good reason for the blog silence these past few days -- I've been finishing Mr. Foster, and in the nick of time! He'll be shipped out tomorrow morning to make it in time for Aidan's birthday.

Pattern: Mr. Foster [Ravelry link] by the Knit Picks Design Team
Yarn: Knit Picks Essential (75% superwash merino/25% nylon) in Buckskin, Cocoa, Burgundy, and Ash, one skein each
Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm) dpns and 1.5 (2.5 mm) circs
Started/Completed: March 13/April 23
Mods: I used a three-stitch I-cord in place of a single crochet chain for the robe belt and made it a couple of inches longer than specified in order to have enough for the knots at the end

I have mixed feelings about this project. On the one hand, there's no denying that this is one extremely cute monkey.

On the other hand, he was kind of a pain in the you-know-what. The monkey wasn't too much of a pain until I got to the face and all those short rows. The robe really wasn't too bad. The pajamas, though, were a royal annoyance. I've realized that I feel the same way about moss stitch that I do about seed stitch -- I just don't care for it. In the case of the pjs, it made the project slow to the pace of cold molasses. I found this part of the pattern to be particularly -- and perhaps unnecessarily -- fiddly, to the point that I very nearly threw in the towel. I'm glad I didn't, though, because Mr. Foster really wouldn't feel complete without his clothes.

There is one feature of the pjs, though, that I absolutely adore: the rear flap, complete with a hole for his tail.

The one main failing of this kit, in my opinion, is that the yardage required for completing the pjs, at least, is vastly underestimated. I was fortunate in that I had some scraps of an earlier batch of the same yarn (from these socks) that were a close enough match in color that I could finish, but I can't imagine what I would have done if I hadn't. I certainly couldn't have waited to order another skein and still gotten the project done in time.

I had just enough to finish the robe, though it was a close one. Here's all the yarn I have left, just a few yards. (The robe obviously needs a good blocking, so kindly ignore the bottom edge's flipping up.)

Bottom line? While aggravating at times -- and it's certainly never fun knitting under a deadline -- I'm glad I made it through. I think Aidan will like him, and if he doesn't, he can always send Mr. Foster back to me!

That's all, folks!

Meet Sheldon

Meet Sheldon.

A fun-loving turtle, he's not afraid to get out of his shell.

He's frequently on the go.

And he loves surfing the 'net with his new buddy.

Pattern: Sheldon by Ruth Homrighaus (winter '06 Knitty)
Yarn: Knit Picks Shine Sport (60% pima cotton, 40% modal), colorways Green Apple and Sky, one skein each
Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)
Started/Completed: May 2/May 4
Mods: none

Sheldon says: Don't forget that tomorrow night is Hurricane Knitting at the Waterworks Barnes & Noble, 7-9 p.m.!