novamade

won't you be my neighbor?

Inside the body of this five year old beats the heart of an eighty year old man.  For all his love of graphic t-shirts with witty phrases, when it comes down to it, Little Sir actually prefers wearing plaid button-up shirts, newsboy hats, ties and, curiously, suspenders (though he hasn't actually worn suspenders yet, though he has expressed not just a little fascination with them lately--honestly, I have no idea).  I am pleased the warmer weather will bring shorts, graphic tees and sandal wear that will make my child appear somewhat normal again (at least until fall rolls around).

After he decided that I should knit him a sweater for his birthday (which yes, was last month for those keeping score), he gave me his criteria.  I was dubious about whether a new handknit sweater would see any love after the first two hours after it was made.  The last sweater I made him went from winner to loser in a day with no explanation.  After I shared this observation with Little Sir, he shared an observation with me: "well, if you asked me what kind of sweater I wanted, I would have told you."  Oh. Or, "oh, snap," as it's said these days.

So I asked him what he wanted, and this is what he told me, as we walked around Webs looking for yarn, much to the delight of Webs staff and other shoppers (my observations/notes in ellipses or brackets--I felt I needed to explain that to you for some reason):

"I want a plain sweater.  I don't want any patterns all over it, no cables or any  curvy things [same thing], just a plain sweater--a smooth one, no bumps [no garter stitch]."

"And I want a collar that opens a little bit so my shirt collars can stick out [v-neck].  But I don't like big collars on sweaters" (the last sweater had a big shawl collar, this is news I can use). 

"Maybe you could make the neck open enough so I can wear a tie or a bow-tie" (I have no idea where this bow-tie thing has come from, if you figure it out, clue me in, please).

"Actually, I am not a fan of sweaters that you pull over your head, I want one that buttons up in front.  So a cardigan.  A cardigan with big buttons (we went with button #1, or the one on the left, if you are curious--it seemed most fitting, and well, it got the most votes).  And long sleeves.  It should have long sleeves" (which is fair considering he has monkey arms and nothing long-sleeved covers his wrists appropriately at the moment).  "I bet you could make that in, like, twenty hours" [twenty days, if we are being reasonable].

"If you make it like I'm telling you, I would love it."

 
With such a vote of confidence, and such specificity in request, I (obviously) had to give it a try.  Not wanting to reinvent the wheel (or make up a pattern, because I am lazy like that) I looked at what I already had.  Fortunately, I have a lot of resources...like patterns from 1977 that I paid $1 for at a library book sale (which I am addicted to--library books sales, not patterns from the 1970s).  When I bought this pattern book/pamphlet a few years ago, I had no idea that I would have a small child who would want to emulate Mr. Rogers in fashion.  Funny how things work out.

 
I modified this pattern quite a bit.  I changed needle sizes, I knit the sleeves in the round (which, honestly, why would you knit them flat if you are bothering to go from the top down, or bottom up for that matter?  Reducing the amount of purling necessary to produce a sweater full of win?  Oh, yes, please.), and I used different yarn (because wool, I loves it).  I had to do math (which, always makes my head hurts, it's true) to figure out the stitch counts.  I based all of this on my gauge swatch (which means I actually did one, I know, shocking, right?), which took Little Sir's measurements into consideration.  I have to be honest here, I was totally shocked when this sweater came out exactly as I wanted it to.  Note to future (normal) lazy self: the time, energy and effort to do a gauge swatch and taking good measurements, totally worth it (this is nothing new, but you know, worth mentioning).

And while I had my doubts about the facings that  needed to be sewn together and attached to the back to form the v-neck collar (which can, indeed, accommodate shirt collars, ties and bow-ties), it looks smashing (she said humbly).  And yes, he does love it.  He wore it all weekend and asked to wear it to school today.  High praise, indeed.

I used Cascade 220, one of the Heathers colorways.  Little Sir picked it out, you may not be able to tell, but the blue is heathered with a bright green.  Little Sir liked this particular colorway because he felt that this blue had a "good amount of purple in it."  Okay.  Whatever.

Quirks.  He has them.

five cheers of celebration

 
Hip hip hooray! x 5.  We are really into the hip hips in our household, but I am not typing that out five times.  I am too lazy, and some of you would likely find it obnoxious. 
I have had a good deal to write about, I just haven't done it--that behavior is going to stop immediately.  In the mean time, let me tell you about something big in the novamade household.  Today is my five year anniversary of motherhood!  Or, if you'd rather (and probably more appropriate, Little Sir is five today!  As you can imagine he is very excited about it.  So was his brother.

 
Until he learned that birthdays are more fun when they are your own. 
There has been, as is our way, much celebration over the last week.  But the celebration is extending into Saturday because that's when we will celebrate with friends while bowling (I don't understand this, to be honest, but I guess kids really like the whole bowling thing).  Also, the fact that I have class tonight has pushed cake consumption (and, well, cake baking) to tomorrow (which it's nothing exciting, it's the same cake I always make for birthdays because it's a favorite--the strawberry shortcake one from the Barefoot Contessa)--but who is going to complain about an additional two days of celebration and presents?  Certainly none of my offspring. 
Maybe you are wondering what any of this has to do with crafting.  Well, let me tell you.  See, I do the, "hey, it's a gift-giving occasion, I think I will make you something" thing for my kids.  And I was thinking of something simple like, I don't know, a pillow (I said simple, not fabulous).  On a return trip home from Vermont, we were passing right by Webs, so obviously we had to stop there. 
Let's be honest here, I don't need more yarn.  I don't need anything really (but I am rather want-y over quite a bit these days, if we are being honest).  But it never hurts to look, right?  Little Sir decided to go in with me.  Whilst there, he decided that I really needed to knit him a sweater for his birthday.  I thought it was rather generous of him to give me two weeks notice.  What did I get from Webs?  Nothing.  What did Little Sir get from Webs?  A sweater's worth of yarn. 
The sweater is not done (I know, you are probably as surprised as, well, no one).  I am hoping to finish it this weekend.  It's certainly still cold enough for wool-wear here in New England, after all. 

smart solutions, brought to you by the number four

 
So you know how I advocated making two things (in my case, hats) when you are trying to appease siblings?  Turns out, this is a good rule to maintain peace in one's household in general.  I am not sure why I thought I could get away with making a quilt for one child and not the other, apparently, I missed that day in the Mother Tutelage Workshop series.  So now I am faced with the task of making another quilt,  in a manner that is more expeditious than my usual way of quilt making (which usually involve great lapses in time between start and finish) because the boys have come to fisticuffs over this quilt (especially now, since Little Sir has decided to keep the quilt at home--I am sure he is doing this just to cause discord.  You may think I am kidding, I'm not.  Sometimes he likes to get rough and tumbly, I think it's a brothers thing, I honestly have no idea).

 
When inquiring about a solution to this new problem (is it just me, or is my propensity for asking a four year old for advice about this sort of stuff, maybe, counter-productive?), Little Sir looked at me, like the fool I apprently am, shrugged and said, "well, you could just make another quilt, Mommy."  Maybe it was just the way he said it (patronizing, much?), but I have gained a better understanding of how my children/THE children (or at least the older one) thinks that I am made of time.  It's kind of cute that Little Sir thinks that I can just magically produce something of awesome proportions just because I will it to be so.  I mentioned that, "it's not as easy as all that.  These sorts of things take time and planning."  I have to plan and draw out a design, buy the fabric (let's just disregard the mountains of fabric currently at my disposal, trust me, fabric must be bought), cut the fabric, piece everything together, and then you know, there is the quilting and the binding and probably another cute signature block...  I am seeing hours dripping away from my life...but, it could be fun, so I am not complaining--I am simply making an observation here.

 

And when Little Sir offered to help, well, obviously I could not turn down this opportunity to collaborate with an artist of such renown.  I am finding that collaboration with such a diva (divo?) can be challenging.  He is feeling quite assured of his creative vision and is discounting my suggestions at the moment ("that's not feasible" means absolutely nothing to him).  But we are working on it.

 

So maybe in a month (or two?) we will see another maze quilt and a pattern to go with it around these parts (since so many of you inquired about one).  It will be my first foray into writing a pattern for a quilt, so, fun, right?  And obviously, there will be other stuff going on while that Maze Quilt 2.0 thing is going on.  Obviously, multiple craft disorder and all that.

 

it a-MAZE-ing

 
Do you remember a few years ago when Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were first dating and they kept saying that everything was "amazing"?  Well, I have your amazing right here.  It's a maze quilt. It's also an "I Spy" quilt of sorts too, because all the maze segments are bits of small scale fabric of awesomeness.  It's okay, you can jump on a couch, I think it's pretty amazing clever, too.

 
Last year when Little Sir decided that he was all done with the whole business of nap-taking, his teachers and I realized that he needed something to keep him occupied while all the good children slept.  When I asked him what it would take to make him either take a nap or simply be quiet, he suggested that a blanket, or better, a quilt would be the solution to the whole situation (I didn't see the logic in it then either).  So obviously I had to make him a blanket, or better, a quilt (my friend Diane has described me as something of an enabler, she may be right)...

 
At the time, and still today, mazes were an area of interest and preoccupation for Sir.  So I wondered, "would it be possible to make a quilt with a maze on it?"  The gauntlet was thrown, the challenge was on, and awesomeness was achieved.

 
It wasn't that hard.  Some graph paper and simple math--it's all built on the concept of a nine-patch block (well, that's the way I did it).  Either draw your own maze or find one on the internets, (I made one slight change to this one here--make sure the maze is do-able/skill appropriate for the recipient).  Work out a color scheme, cut, sew, quilt, and voila!  You have some awesome on your hands!  Also, point of order, you should consider letting the recipient choose the fabric for the quilt backing, just a thought.  If the lucky recipient is young, it will make his or her whole week (seriously, Little Sir almost lost his mind with the enormity of "this important responsibility"), and it gives wee ones a sense of ownership (also, if you are lucky, they will pick the fabric that you like least and you can eliminate is from your stash, ahem--and yes, Sir loves those neon hearts, especially the pink ones).

 
I finished this quilt, except for the binding last summer.  The reason the quilt sat languishing in my "to fin" pile was because I sewed the binding too wee to machine sew both sides and knew that hand sewing the binding was in order.  It's the first time that I have hand sewn a binding on anything larger than something the size of a napkin (a very small napkin, okay a coaster, really).  I knew this was going to take time and, fundamentally, I am kind of lazy, so I kept putting it off. 

 
After being pestered about my inability to finish quilts (yes, by the four year old), I knew I had to finish it to preserve my own sanity. It took three nights of hand-sewing.  I should have just done it months ago.

 
And as cool as this maze quilt is, the maze is not even the best part.  No, the best part is the signature block (she says, ever so humbly).

 
In our house, we do not say, "because I said so." This is a phrase that always annoyed me when I was growing up and I always thought, "when I grow up, and have my own kids, I am not going to use this phrase."  It wouldn't work anyway since Sir requires explanation for everything and "because I said so" is so lacking in explanation, it would be an insult to his highness to even utter it.  The first time I almost used said, "because I said so", Icaught myself and said instead, "because you are precious to me..."  I don't know, it's the first thing that popped into my head (and yes, it was said with not just a little sarcasm), and it gave me time to think of an explanation that would appease a small child that was (and still is) entirely too articulate and assessing for his own good.

 
So this quilt was amazingly (okay, I'm done) successful.  I was right in the middle of patting myself on the back when Little Mister asked me about the location of his quilt...

"the children need hats"

 
Little Sir has taken to referring to himself and his brother as, "the children."  I am not sure why.  While it sounds cute in theory, waking up to a child yelling, "the children are awake" or "the children are hungry!" a few mornings in a row has killed any sort fondness I had for the phrase when it first became part of the vernacular of our house.  The one thing I have learned of late, my "the children" are very needy.  But what they were most in need of, apparently, were hats.

 
Little Sir mentioned on several occasions that he "could really use a a hat, maybe one that was handknit."  He further piqued my interest by appealing to the fiber-crafter in me by saying that "it would be nice if it was made from handspun yarn, too." So obviously, he was going to get what he wanted, at least in this regard . 
I let him go through all of my handspun and he picked out his favorite.  I really nice blue-sy superwash merino dyed by Traveling Rhinos in the Baron colorway that I spun up ages ago (you remember back when I decided to spin a rainbow ? I know it was a really long time ago).  I did want to start doing something with my handspun, afterall, so this worked out well. 

 
And you can't knit a hat for one child and not the other, well, you could, I guess, but that would be mean.  So I picked some of the Ashland Bay merino (in English Garden) that I spun to knit a hat for Little Mister.

 
While he normally eschews anything that covers his head, Little Mister has taken a shine (I have no idea where this phrase come from, but I think it's funny) to wearing this hat.  He loves it.  Which I, of course, think is awesome.

 
The best thing about these hats are the fact that I just cast on and knit.  Okay, reverse that, I took the measurements for the circumference of their heads (they're both huge) and did a small swatch (I know, it was an OMG moment for me, too).  I ripped out the swatch (I wanted to make sure I had enough yarn--I did), I did a little bit of math and cast on and knit.  Knitting on the fly.  I know, it's just a hat (or two, actually), but it was the first time I had this thought of "pattern?  I don't need no stinkin' pattern," and was, well, right!  Yes, I do feel terribly clever.

 
So now "the children"  have hats. Knit with handspun, no less.

love, twue love

 
Did you celebrate Valentine's Day?  The day itself, for me, was uneventful, but the days leading up to it were very celebratory.  Children sort of force the issue of ridiculous holiday observance (says she who considers her birthday a holiday, ahem) because they get interested in anything Hallmark chooses to hype up, and really, hoping to be a contender for the Mother of the Year award sort of obligates one to play up the interests of one's children, and etcetera.

Special K wants nothing to do with Valentine's Day, but even he felt inclined to cave in because the Littles wanted to get me flowers (which was sweet, really). 
So mostly, I guess you could say we celebrated Valentine's Day this year by catering to Little Sir and Little Mister.  I made red velvet cupcakes because Little Sir wondered what they were (he decided that he "didn't like them, actually." 
I made cupcakes for other people, and let Little Sir decorate them with those teeth-achingly sweet tiny hearts (he was obsessed with them this year). 
I read books with Little Mister all weekend, because it's his thing right now (please excuse his Robert Pattinson 'do, he is loathe do let anyone touch his hair post naptime). 
And the thing I did that really demonstrates maternal sacrifice...I sat down and patiently watched Little Sir write out all of his Valentines this year.  He was adamant about doing them himself (with me watching him do it).  It was cute for the first three minutes. 

 

After two hours, I wanted to gouge my eyes out; but, I smiled the whole time and told him what a great job he was doing --even though many names ended up two lines long, and I had to listen to him complain about parents--including his own--giving their children names with so many letters.  I just smiled and nodded, because I am pretty sure that's what you are supposed to do when a four year old, basically, tells you--the parent--that while you thought the name you were bestowing on him was so terribly clever, it wasn't and you, in fact, are a moron.  Smiled and nodded. That is true love, no?

soul men

 
Did you have good Halloweens?  Ours was pretty rockin', or blues-y, as it were.  I mean, seriously, with Jake and Elwood leading the trick-or-treating train, you know it's going to have a certain amount of awesome.
Little Sir, or, Jake, has been obsessed with the Blues Brothers for the last two months.  We have watched YouTube videos, we have listened to Blues Brothers tracks from various albums; and, of course, we have been singing "I'm a Soul Man" at the top of our lungs with the music blaring from the speakers.  We are cool like that.

 

In case you were wondering; no, I did not make these suits (they were actually  purchased quite inexpensively from a third party vendor through Amazon--for less than the cost of making the suits would have run, it must be said), I was going to and then I realized that would not only be crazypants, but, you know, stupid considering... I don't sew clothes.  Yeah.  And that, boys and girls, is how (or why) the Littles, Sir and Mister, found themselves outfitted in two different costumes during 2010. 

domo origato mr.roboto

 
I am hoping that the happy childhood memories that my kids will have to share with their own kids one day will be just exchange for the therapy they will likely need in the future.  I might make my kids a little anxious, which is to be expected, since I find my own antics riddled with anxiety.

 
I would say Happy Halloween, but it's not Halloween yet, and this isn't a Halloween post.  Well it is, but not really.  It's more of a pre-Halloween post, or Halloween 1.0, if you will.  So yes, Little Sir will tell you, he was "not a robot for Halloween this year.  No, he and his brother will be sporting a duo costume-thing this year.  I was planning to make the costumes, because, you may have caught on to this, I am insane.  The boys both need dress jackets for their real Halloween costumes, and various circumstances crashed into a perfect storm of inability.  1) We are packing out our house, half of my sewing stuff, it's in storage and not accessible.  2) I kind of waited to the last minute to even attempt to sew, not one but, two dress jackets. 3) My one experience sewing an article of clothing was Halloween two years ago, while the results were passable, I would not have called it an outright success. 4) I don't really sew clothes; and, by "don't really" I mean, I don't.

So I ordered the costumes.  Pride comes before the fall, or whatever.  I am not going to be a martyr for the cause (or so I thought).  I told myself, "hey self, let's make it easy this year, let's just buy the costumes!"  And so I did...and they are scheduled to arrive this afternoon, which, you know, awesome, two days before Halloween.  Too bad the Halloween parade at school was this morning.

 
No problem, SupermomNova to the rescue.  So you know how we are moving and packing up our house, a side benefit of this situation is having eleventy bajillion boxes of varying shapes and sizes at our disposal for the obvious (that would be packing) and other creative things.  So um, yeah, robots.  Or rather, Anderdroid 1.o.

 
And his trusty sidekick, Dashbot 1.0.

 
So, fun, right?

I am not going to lie, Little Mister, was not enamored of the costume once he realized his mobility would be hampered.  He wore it for two minutes.  Does two hours of crafting in exchange for two minutes of of cuteness seem balanced to you?  I guess I will just have to take Little Sir's enthusiasm for my creativity (and well, awesomeness, really) and be happy with it.  Which, yes, I can do that.

 

what are you doing this weekend?

 
If you, like me, will find yourself in Maryland for a certain Sheep and Wool Show, please do say hello if you see me or the fam, we will be there.  None of us will be wearing anything made of wool because I hear it's supposed to  be in the upper 80s this weekend, so you will just have to look out for these wolves in sheeps' clothing:

 
This will make two sheep and wool festivals in two weekends for us (we did the Connecticut Sheep and Wool Show lat weekend, not nearly as grand as MD, but still loads of fun).  Not a bad way to spend a weekend, actually.  It's that time of year, festival season!  Woo hooOOOo!

 
Next week will start a week of giveaways on this blog, I am very excited about it (it might have something to do with my birthday, and you how I feel about that);  but, I will tell you more about it on Monday, right now, I have some sheep to see.

four

 
Four years old.  That's how old Little Sir is now.  We gave his birthday a great deal of celebration, and he felt really special, and that's the whole point, isn't it?

 
My intention was to finish a quilt for his birthday (it just needs binding, this is a trend for me, I think); but, I opted to actually spend time with him and prep celebratory things instead.  So it'll be another late birthday quilt, I guess.  Or, if you are like me, you can look at it as extending the celebration, which sounds much better I think.