Butter Yellow Gifts

Recently I acquired two skeins of this lovely -- but sadly discontinued -- yarn, Rowan's Wool Cotton 4-ply, in the Butter colorway.

I looked around on Ravelry and saw that someone had made that exact yarn into a pretty little fichu using two skeins.

Needles: US 5 (3.75mm) and US 3 (3.25mm)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton 4-ply, 307.3 yards
Pattern: Sarah Hazell's Short Row Shawl
Mods: a lot of people had trouble with this pattern. The version I used seemed to have all the corrections. It still took me a fair bit to understand that the K2togs and P2togs in the short row section referred to picking up wraps, not to actual decreases.
Recipient: KD

So I did that, only to discover that they meant they had not used more than two skeins. So I still had pretty yellow yarn left.

Next, I made a produce bag, a Christmas gift for the household, as we are trying to use less single-use plastic in our lives. Although it looks small, it holds a decent amount of fruit.

Needles: US 5 (3.75mm)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton 4-ply, 78 yards
Pattern: Julie Tarsha's Weightless Produce Bag, available here
Mods: Used figure-8 cast-on to avoid sewing the seam at the end; used dpns instead of circs; used 3.75mm instead of 3.00 mm needle for end; used Double-Chain bind off and Chinese Waitress cast on; cast on 30 sts for each strap.
Recipient: R

Speaking of small, that left enough yarn to make part of a tiny Christmas gift.

Needles: US 1 (2.25mm)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton 4-ply, 8 yardsl Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic, 9 yards
Pattern: Anna Hrachovec's Cat in a Bag, totally delightful
Mods: I started with a figure-8 cast on
Recipient: M

And that is the end of the Butter Yellow yarn.

Bunnicula

Last spring, some household pets escaped in our neighborhood. Most were quickly recaptured or made their way home at feeding time, but one adventurous black bunny moved in under our neighbor's back porch, and worked at keeping our front lawn trimmed all summer. I tried to convince him to just work on the edging, but had no luck. The kids named him Bunnicula, and by the end of the summer he would eat carrots from NKD's outstretched hand. He was too canny to get close enough to be picked up and returned to captivity. I worried that he wouldn't survive the winter. In fact he disappeared in late fall, coincidentally the same time a fox appeared in the neighborhood.

 

So I made NKD a little version to stay with her always. Shortly afterward, the fox having moved on, Bunnnicula returned to view in our neighborhood.

Needles: US 4 (3.5mm)
Yarn: probably about 85 yards of no idea what in Black
Pattern: Sara Elizabeth Kellner's Henry's Bunny
Recipient: NKD

NoWill

Step one: discover that the designer of Pocket Ted has other tricks up their sleeve!

Step two: fold a pipe cleaner/chenille stick into the properly sized armature:
 

 Step three: knit a cover for the armature, stitch a friendly face, cover the armature and seam:

Step four: make him friends:

Pattern: Frankie Brown's Bendy Bodies

Yarn: Patons UK Diploma Gold DK

Needles: 3.00 mm dpns

Knit Toys

Decades ago I came across Nathalie Craig's Knit Toys in my local library (and thanks to the power of the Internet, have recently acquired my own copy). I knit on a shoestring budget back then (as opposed to knitting on an actual shoestring, which I think would bring me to the end of my rope...). Scraps of fabric and notions from the store, leftover acrylic worsted from various projects, and a seemingly endless bag of polyester fiberfill, all combined with the magical patterns in this book to provide my three kids with hours of fun.

 

There were the sister dolls,  Rose Red and Rose White, with their tiny eyelet aprons and ribbon edging.

There were the three little kittens, complete with mittens and mama. I'm not a big fan of attaching joints, so this was probably my least favorite project.

There were babies in bunting. A doll with no arms or legs to attach! I was so delighted that in a burst of creativity, I figured out I could embroider both sides of the head with an "awake" and "asleep" face,  and turn the bonnet to "wake up" the baby (warning: do not try with actual baby). Of course, then there was all the sewing involved in lining the basket - I think they sat around for awhile before I tackled that.

 

There were mice. Lots of mice. The pattern is completely addicting: knit three pieces, join and stuff. Add ears, nose, eyes, and tail.

And of course, there were Gingerbread Men. Another jointless, addicting pattern, and my favorite.  I even did the math and figured out how to make a half-size version. I made entire Ginger families for some young gentlemen of my acquaintance. I also made several for the local kindergarten teachers, who always started the year with the story of the Gingerbread Man, complete with following his "footsteps" around the school (and incidentally learning the layout - it was an inspired project!), and ending with gingerbread cookies for snack.

Somewhere in this house there are more - little bears and roly-polys. All from this wonderful book, from which I filled my kids' childhoods and toy box.

Elucidate! Reiterate! Interrogate! Procrastinate!

My children took my education in hand after my shameful admission last year that I didn't know what a Dalek was. In fact, they gave me Series 4 for Christmas, so I am now All Caught Up. And a fan, of course. I always knew I would be, in a resistance-is-useless kind of way. I just kept postponing the inevitable.

Pattern: Extermiknit
Materials: the same as for last year's faucet-cover Dalek-outfit
Modifications: copper beads instead of bobbles, and a bit of copper wire (leftover from the kitchen remodeling, with the ends bent over, so no sharp edges) inserted into his arm for stability

This particular project gave rise to one of those wonderful, entertaining, family games that just happen - you can never seem to make them work when you set out to do it on purpose. It involved finding all the possible 4-syllable verbal commands ending in -ate that English provides - without recourse to the Internet. We were coming up with them for days!

Son, if you've got a better picture, I'll post it. This one is not one of my better efforts.