Trouble with Trebles

This blog is to keep track of my knitting, other craft projects, and the weird bits of life that don't fit anywhere else.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Pop Goes the Weasel

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - Steven Wright It's no secret that I love animals. It's also no secret that my husband does not. This may have been a problem in our relationship except that I am also allergic to nearly all animals. My asthma is generally not an issue, but put me around a cat and my system goes haywire. My inability to have a real pet has led me to fall in love with those that I can knit and don't have dander. My favorite patterns for animals are from Susan B. Anderson, whose patterns for knitted stuffed animals are so cute you can't resist them, or at least I can't. When I signed up for a stuffed animal swap I knew I had to do one of her patterns. I chose the cute Little Owls from Knit Simple Holiday 2010. I bought this magazine specifically for the animal patterns and I love the owl best. I am so happy with how it turned it out! The pattern was really easy to follow, and I definitely plan to make more of these for the girls! Next up, the Red Fox. I even have the yarn!

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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

I Heart Crafting

I meant to post this on or soon after Valentine's Day. It's a little late, but I'm still proud to be able to post the Valentines that RJ and I made together. They were evidently quite a hit (with the teachers anyway). We were the only ones that didn't give candy, stickers, pencils, or tattoos. I don't know if that makes me charmingly old fashioned or a stick in the mud. I'm going with old-fashioned. It was a lot of work to make enough for everyone, but mostly we had fun. RJ loves to craft, so this project was great in several ways. It used up a bunch of cardmaking supplies I already had. I think I spent about $3 in extra stuff, like the "Happy Valentine's Day" stamp for the inside, some additional blank cards, and some paper flowers, just for fun. It kept her entertained, which is sometimes tricky. It also meant I didn't have to weed through all the Justin Bieber and other silly Valentine's day cards to have some for her class. A win overall, I think!

Friday, February 10, 2012

Small Things

Truthfully, not terribly much crafting got done in 2011, at least not when compared to my initial ambitions. I really love to knit, crochet, sew, etc., but it was such a busy year that my hobbies suffered. On the up side, I figure that the children are really only going to be this young for a short while so I will have many, many years when they are off doing other things to knit. RJ is taking ballet and tap, so I will also likely have lots of dance lessons in my future in which to work on crafts as well (she takes her lessons through her daycare right now, so I don't really do anything except send her dance clothes). I digress. Here is one project I did finish, although technically the knitting was done in 2010. I started this in 2009 when we were hoping to have another baby, and I wanted to make a more masculine sweater in case we had a boy. I also wanted to use up this green chunky wool-ease that I used to make my brother a neck warmer. I used Lion Brand Jiffy for the main body, so it is machine washable. Always a good quality in baby knits! The pattern is One-Skein-Wonder Baby Sweater from the book One-Skein Wonders (which is the same place I found the pattern for my brother's neck warmer). I've actually used this book quite a lot, probably because the patterns are quick and easy which is great when you have to put them down a lot. Here is the sweater:
And here is Iva wearing it. I thought she might be able to wear it, but with her short hair it really does make her look like a boy. I don't care all that much about whether her sex is correctly identified, but she has lots of other more suitable handknits and with the "leather" buttons I think this has such a cute masculine quality to it. I plan to save it for a gift, since someone I know will surely have a boy. The pattern was easy and cute, and I plan to make another more girly version to have one hand for a girl gift.

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Sunday, February 05, 2012

Superbowl Party Refugee?

My husband once again apologized to me on Superbowl Sunday. He does this every year, because he feels that because he's not much of an American football fan (he prefers soccer, and actually calls it football just like the rest of the world) we don't get invited to any Superbowl parties. I nearly always half-forget it even is the Superbowl, and don't give much thought to whether or not I've been invited to a party or not. Thus his apology only serves to remind that I could potentially be missing out on some fun parties and that somehow we are being excluded. He is correct that we have been in California for five Superbowls and have not been invited to one single party. I figure there are several possible explanations: 1. Our friends here really don't care that much about the Superbowl and don't have parties. This is reasonably plausible because I've actually never had a single conversation about football since moving here. When we lived in the midwest football came up more more regularly and we were invited to Superbowl parties. 2. Some of our friends do have Superbowl parties, but they don't think we are interested. I imagine the fact that I've never discussed football would probably support their belief that we don't really care for football. 3. Our friends have lots of parties (Superbowl and otherwise) and don't invite us because they aren't really our friends. This one is silly, because we've been invited to all kinds of other parties, including a deep-fat fryer party (yes, it was as disgustingly yummy as it sounds!). We could solve this issues by actually throwing a Superbowl party ourselves and inviting our friends, but we have a pathetically small television, a fact which I've gathered that sports fans are not fond of, and I'm not willing to buy a gigantic television just to host Superbowl parties. So here we sit, watching by ourselves another year, which isn't all that bad really. For the record, I actually don't mind football, but I'm a Packer fan and I was really disappointed that they lost in the playoffs after such a stellar regular season. And American football goes so slowly that there's lots of time for knitting. Here are the yarns for my latest project, which like football has a gambling aspect to it. More to come soon: