Suzy Q Homemaker

I knit this skirty for my friend's daughter.  It's the first one I've ever made!  I love the bell ruffles & picot edging.

Today’s topic is “6 things you’ve made during your lifetime that you were proud of (can be a craft, a dish, . . . anything).” You can answer this with a list of 6 words, 6 phrases, 6 sentences, 6 paragraphs, 6 photos, 6 videos, etc . . .

I'm a crafty person, so I've made a lot of things in my lifetime.  Here are six of my favorites:

This soaker is part of a trade I'm doing for some nursing clothes.  It's knit with some merino that was custom dyed as part of a yarn for longies swap I did last year.  I knit Timothy some shorties with some but he's sleeping.  You'll get an action shot another time.  :)

I'm behind on posting my Monthly Dishcloths.  Here are two that I finally blocked.  There are two more soaking right now and I'll get those up soon.

I can't stop knitting shorties for him.  So far, the ones on top fit him best.  He's so tiny!

Here's a small list of free knitting patterns for the cutest bunnies I've ever seen:

• Baby Bunny Beanie 
• Bunny Nuggets (pictured above)
  
• Jess Hutch's Bunny 
• Chocolate Bunny 

Happy Easter!

Perhaps I can entice this baby to come out with these knitted goodies.  Come on baby!  I'm ready!

I've had a long day and nothing to show for it except the first few days of my dischloth for the mid-month KAL.

WHAT.  I went a WHOLE DAY without blogging?  I had good reasons, though.  Here's the first one (a finished custom):


Another reason I had for not blogging is that I've been working on a special project, the details of which I cannot disclose just yet.  How's that for sneaky?

And the last reason is that I spent most of the day out of the house yesterday.  First I went to my sister's house to watch her boys while she went to an appointment.  Then I left Simon there while I went to redeem the gift certificate for my 60-minute Mother-to-be Massage and 40-minute Sole Therapy at my favorite spa.  I loved that they use a special pregnancy cushion so I could lay flat.  Other prenatal massages I've received, I had to be on my side and then flip to the other side half-way through.  The special cushion is the way to go.

Later in the evening, I went with Jamie to the book signing & reading of his new book, Ten Tales for Almost Anyone.  It was a fun evening spent talking to some good friends, meeting some new ones, and being out in the "real world" without children for a bit.  He sold every copy he brought!  All of them are printed at home & hand bound, so they aren't available online yet.  But you can read the great review here!

I wasn't a fan of this pattern.  Not that it was hard, it was just...eh.  The border wasn't consistent, and I'm not sure what's going on with the seed stitch stripes.

Again, I'm only going to be wiping up the disgusting dinner table and greasy dishes with it, so...yeah.

I actually finished this a week or so ago, but am just now getting around to posting it.  Thing is, I was trying to stage a photo shoot with Scraps so I could prove the snuggliness of the pet snuggle I made for Dewey's KAL.  Being a kitten, she had other ideas like Drinking Out of the Aquarium and Knocking Down the Entire Basket of Unopened Mail.

This purple squishy thing is the Bamboo Knit Snuggle.  I chose this pattern for my KAL because bamboo reminds me of Dewey.  She couldn't knit with animal fibers and was always singing the praises of her natural plant yarns.  The snuggle itself is only named after the stitch, though.  I knit this bad boy with some purple acrylic from my stash.

Here's to you, Dew.

Dear readers,

Promise me that you will not enter this giveaway.  I want to win so bad that it hurts.  It hurts deep, deep down in my soul.  Don't tell any of your knitting friends about it because I want all of these delicious knitting goodies for myself.

Deal?

(That being said, I am earning an extra entry into this giveaway by posting it here and am only doing this for MY BENEFIT ONLY.)

Love always,

Lizzie

P.S. I am not usually this selfish.
P.P.S. It is only the thought of having all those needles and yarns that make me a little insane.


P.P.P.S. If I win this giveaway, I will surely pee my pants.

On New Year's Day, I made Scraps a brand new toy.  Because she has an alpaca fetish, I have to hide my stash.  If one skein gets left out, you can bet she'll have stolen it to snuggle with in another room.  So I knit up one of these little guys with some leftover alpaca I had in my stash.  Obviously, I did not felt it.  I just knit with small needles so it would come out smaller...DUH.  You think she likes it?
This weekend I finished up my January dishcloth for the Monthly KAL.

Jamie: It's goofy.
Lizize: I'm just going to be cleaning up your greasy-ass dishes with it.
Jamie: It's still goofy.

I may have mentioned that I did a LOT of knitting for the holidays last year.  Five pairs of mitts in five different styles were made for five different family members!  I wanted to keep two of the pairs I knit because I liked them so much (namely the white baby alpaca mitts).
Simon managed to pick up his very own case of Fifth Disease over the Christmas break.  Thankfully, he showed no other symptoms than this horrible red rash.

There's a special place in my heart for this challenge.  Words just can't describe how deeply important it is for me to do this.  Dewey's Knit-A-Long is Mini-Challenge #2 in Dewey's Books Challenge.  Haha, that's a lot of linking in one sentence.  Don't mean to be irreverent (which is nearly impossible when Dewey's involved--she was not the type to get all offended, oh queen of dark and sarcastic humor that she was).

I already had plans to do some knitting for charity in her honor, and this just gives me greater cause to do so.  One of the charity I have in mind is the Snuggles Project.

The Snuggles Project was founded by our president and founder, Rae French, in 1996 because of her heartfelt need to do something for the innocent victims who find themselves in animal shelters without a bit of comfort to call their own. Picturing them in their hard cold cells made her heart ache to do something to help. So she got the idea of security blankets for shelter animals. The security blankets are called "Snuggles." Each animal would get a Snuggle to cuddle up with to feel warmth and comfort. Most shelter animals are kept in areas with stainless steel braces and hard plastic flooring or even bare concrete floors. The Snuggles would allow them to have a little reprieve from the coldness of the pen they are kept in.

One thing that Dewey and I both loved to share were our cat stories.  She was always worried that she talked about her cats too much, but I was always telling her that I loved to hear about Minette and her newest girl Minerva.  I sometimes showed her pictures that I took of my cats and she came up with some pretty funny captions for them on ICHC.  In honor of Dewey, her friends were encouraged to "rent a cat or something."  Since I can't realistically do that with three cats in the house already, I'll knit for cats instead.

Knitting takes up a HUGE part of my life at home. I'm not intimidated by most projects and I am always in search of a challenge!  So I've decided to make a few goals for this year.  They aren't crazy goals like "Finish a pair of socks every week" or anything.  Just a few reasonable goals that I can (hopefully) accomplish with four kids in the house.

So...DEEP BREATH...here we go:

I think that's reasonable, eh?  I'm still going to knit for my Hyenacart and do lots of knitting trades.  Have I mentioned that I love doing trades?  I've done a few Yarn for Longies swaps and have bartered for diapers.  It's way better than paypal (which, by the way, almost totally screwed me...but that's another story).

Here are two recent customs I knit for a trade.  The yarn is Purewool merino in Haunted and Abir.  The hats are my own design.