BABY CABLE HAT

I promised cable knitted projects earlier, and here we are with another one! I've got friend who is due at the end of the month, so thought I'd knit her a little something. Baby and kid stuff is so fun and quick to knit. I've been pretty into knitting cables recently, and since this will be an autumn baby, I thought a little cozy cable hat would be appropriate.

I used this pattern for Veslestrikk's Gullklumplue that I found on ravelry, and knitted it in Drops Baby Merino in off white on 3.5mm needles and finished it off with a faux fur bobble. I don't usually knit with such small needles, but it wasn't as fiddly as I thought and the cables turned out so lovely and defined. I used just over half a ball of wool, so this is an excellent way to use up some leftover yarn for sure.

I'll be gifting it together with either one of the macrame teethers or the fabric teethers I made earlier this year. Hopefully little baby Amanda will approve!

DIY TRIANGLE & SQUARE PLUSHIES

Oscar has been requesting we read Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen's Triangle and Square (he calls them "Tralung" and "Quare") every night at bedtime for I don't know how many weeks now, so for my seventh project of 2018 I decided to get my sewing machine out and sew a couple of Triangle and Square plushies. Jon Klassen's illustrations are so cute, so I pretty much had a giant smile on my face the whole time I was making these. :)

They were super simple to make, too. To make them, I googled the images and edited them in photshop so that they were the right size. I had no problems finding a front and back picture of Square, but for some reason I could only find the front of Triangle, so I made my own back in photoshop based on the image of his front. It turned out pretty good. I printed everything on unbleached cotton using this technique (ooold post! It's the same I used to make this printed banner), and then sewed them together and stuffed them. One thing that might be an issue with this later, is that the ink bleeds pretty much straight away if it's in contact with water (as you can see on square's back below, where a couple of drops of water dripped from my iron). So if I were to make them again, I might get the files printed via Spoonflower rather than use my home printer, just so it'd be a bit more durable/toddler proof.

Oscar was so excited when he saw them, and in retrospect we probably shouldn't have given them to him half an hour before his bedtime haha. But it was so fun seeing his reaction. There's nothing like seeing the things you make actually get used and appreciated!

SIX CHILDREN'S BOOK FAVORITES

Oscar absolutely loves books and has from a very young age. We read several books every day, a couple at bedtime, a couple while he sits on the toilet (he often declares he needs to use the toilet by coming up and asking for a "book and poop" hahah), and whenever else he feels like it. Snuggling up in an armchair with Oscar on my lap and reading him a book is one of my favorite things (though seeing him read books for his toy fox or for the dog come pretty close too!). His interests and preferences are always changing, but here's a couple of books we've been enjoying lately:

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett
Other than the beautiful illustrations, this book has such a beautiful story too. It's about a girl who knits (yeees!), and even though people keep telling her she can't do things she still does them.

Spot A Lot Vehicle Adventure by Steve Smallman
Oscar loves cars and animals, so this book was a hit from the get go. The first (100) times we read it, Oscar would exclaim "WOW!" every time we flipped the page.

The Wolf, The Duck, The Mouse by Mac Barnett
Great story, and Oscar loves dancing when the duck and the mouse have a dance party. And at the end of the book, we all like to howl along with the wolf.

The Grufallo by Julia Donaldson
A classic, but clearly for a reason! Oscar loves the Gruffalo, or as he says it, "Gullaloo", and it's been on repeat around our house for a while now. He's also got a Gruffalo hand puppet, which he loves giving big hugs to.

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen
I actually bought this book years ago, way before we even started thinking about having a kid, and it cracks me up. Oscar loves it too, and gets really into it when the bear realizes where his hat has gone.

The Storm Whale by Benji Davies
This book was gifted to us, and it's been a favorite from the start! Oscar loves counting the cats, and on every page he asks where the whale is. We've read this book to him a lot, and one of his early words was actually "whale" one night after we'd finished the book and he pointed to the stuffed whale I'd made him. Yeah, my crafting mamma heart just about burst!

BIBS & TEETHERS BABYSHOWER GIFT SETS

My poor sewing machine had been sitting collecting dust for far too long, so for my third project I needed something to get my sewing mojo back. Lucky for me, I also have a few friends who are expecting babies pretty soon. Perfect opportunity to sew a couple of baby-sized projects, no?

So I brewed myself a pot of tea, put on some music and started sewing. I used these free patterns from See Kate Sew—probably my favorite sewing blog. I bought the fabric from a local shop, some terry cloth for the backing, and wooden rings I found on Amazon. I didn't want the terry cloth to be too thick and bulky, so I just used some thin towels—cheap and cheerful!

This was such a fun and simple sewing project, and I love how they turned out. It's a perfect way to use up old scraps of fabric too, which I kinda wish I had thought of before I went out and bought fabric. I still have leftovers from when I made this skirt and this dress, and how cute would that be, a black gingham set and a pink floral set? Note to self: remember to check your craft stash before you hit up the craft shop haha.

The wooden rings were part of a 20 pack though, which means I have quite a few rings left. I'll definitely be making more of these, but probably not a full 20 sets haha. Does anyone have any suggestions for something else I can use the wooden rings for? A wall hanging perhaps? Or a plant hanger?

FOX COSTUME

Last week they had a day of dress up in Oscar's nursery for Fastelavens, and on that occasion we decided to dress him up as Mikkel Rev from Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen. Graeme sourced the clothes, while I sat down and made a fox tail and a set of fox ears.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about: Mikkel Rev is a much loved character from the stories of Norwegian author Thorbjørn Egner. I grew up with these stories myself, and they've recently had a bit of a revival as they've been made into a stop motion animation (looks like it's also been translated into quite a few languages?). It's really cute and Oscar is a big fan. (He also has a fox teddy which is his favorite, and was actually the original inspiration behind the whole fox costume idea.)

Now, of course we could have just bought the costume online, but I thought it was kinda pricey and mainly, where's the fun in that? So after doing a bit of research around pinterest and the web, I decided to make the tail out of yarn. It's a pretty simple technique, where you essentially just make a bunch of yarn tassels and then brush them out to make the yarn look more like fur. I was a bit sceptical of how it was gonna end up looking, but I'm so happy with the result and it was so much fun to make haha. I mean how cute is that little fox butt? I used the same brushing technique for the ears and then used a ton of hairspray to make them a bit sturdier and sewed them onto the hat. Hey presto, there's your fox.

Wonder what other animal costumes I could make using this technique? Or maybe Oscar will be going as Fantastic Mr. Fox for next Halloween? Haha

And lastly, of course, a couple of photos of the costume in action:

GOLDIE DOLL

My niece turned two a couple of weeks ago, and for her birthday I made her this awesome Goldie doll from See Kate Sew! Honestly, these dolls are the cutest. I'm pretty sure if Oscar had been a girl I would have made him all of them by now!

I chose to make her the Goldie doll as both Goldie and my niece have blonde hair. I gave her two striped bows in her hair, included a pink skirt, a mint skirt with a cat print, and the teddy bear and ice cream cone as accessories. My niece seemed mostly interested in the ice cream cone at first, but I'm hoping she'll end up loving this doll as much as I do!

DIY BABY EWOK COSTUME

Hey guys! Hope everyone had a fun Halloween! Halloween isn't really a big deal here in Norway, but every year people celebrate it a little bit more, which I'm quite excited about with my Americanized third culture kid upbringing. I still remember my first Halloween in Houston about 2 decades ago--the decorations, the costumes, the masses of candy! In a few years when Oscar is a bit older, I'd love to go visit some American friends so he can experience a proper Halloween. Plus, any excuse to dress up and have some fun during this dark and cold season is a big fat yes in my book. 

And now that we have a kid and we have every excuse to partake in the Halloween festivities (like we needed an excuse before, Bo is no stranger to dress up...), I thought I'd share how we made Oscar's ewok costume. It was really simple to throw together with stuff we already had around the house, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. 

The outfit is basically made up of three components; the bear suit, the hood and the spear. The bear suit was a hand me down from some friends, but I'm pretty sure you can buy similar suits all over the place. H&M sell them for sure. The hood was made out of one of Graeme's old brown t-shirts, where I just added two "bone style" buttons on the top and some leather strips around (Wicket was my inspo). Graeme made the spear out of a bamboo stick, some string, and a piece of wood he whittled to the shape of a stone and spray painted grey. He glued it all together with a glue gun. While the wooden spear is obviously more baby appropriate than a stone one, the spray paint wasn't exactly edible, so Oscar was under pretty strict observation while he was playing with it. Everything he touches ends up in his mouth these days. 

Yub nub!

A DOUGLAS ADAMS INSPIRED BABY MOBILE

It has taken me way longer than it should have to finish off this mobile. And, if I'd have known it would help our Oscar sleep, I sure would have finished it a lot quicker! But it was just so hard to decide on what mobile to make him. You guys, there is SO many cute mobiles out there, so much amazing inspiration. I wanted something cute, and simple, and was really drawn to clouds for some reason. Or stars? Or geometric shapes? Or mountains, or woodland creatures, or sea creatures, or, or... Sometimes I find it really hard to narrow down my inspiration and decide exactly what project I want to spend my energy on. Actually, that's not sometimes, that's all the time.

Anyway, I went through various prototypes in various materials before eventually making something I was happy with, and as a result I also have a good stash of unused felt and jersey that I'm not sure what to do with. Eventually though, I crocheted some clouds that I liked, and while searching for raindrop patterns found a cute whale one. I thus decided to scrap my cloud-and-raindrop plans, crocheted the whale instead, and decided to add a bowl of petunias and turn it into a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mobile. I reckon it goes pretty well with this banner that's also inspired by Douglas Adams and hangs on the opposite wall right by his changing table (as a bit of a reminder when we're changing the worst diapers, ha!).

To make the whale I used this pattern, and to make the clouds I used a variation of this pattern, as I wanted my clouds to not be completely uniform. The pattern for the bowl of petunias I just made up, and added a coin to the stuffing to weigh it down and balance with the whale (though you can see it's still not perfectly balanced). I then hung all the elements on an embroidery hoop, and covered the embroidery hoop with the same white yarn I used to crochet the clouds and hang the other elements with. And done!

"Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now."

- Douglas Adams, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

GREYSCALE BABY BLANKET

I became an aunt again last week! My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, weighing in at 3970 g and measuring 50 cm long. I'm loving that Oscar will be growing up with a cousin so close in age.

As a small gift to the little one (who has not yet been named), I decided to knit a baby blanket similar to this one I knitted for Oscar. Oscar loves being swaddled, so we've gotten tons of use for it. I think I might even knit a second one! It's such a basic knit, so it's really quick to make. Unless of course, you are constantly being interrupted by a little bub who needs your attention. If it wasn't for naps, this thing would have never been finished!

Naturally, I got Oscar to model the blanket for me. As you can see, he's currently in the middle of losing his baby hair. Hope his new hair grows back soon, as right now he's sporting a hairstyle similar to his grandpa haha. And he's been smiling tons recently, a real goofball smile, but of course all he was willing to give me today was this little smirk. Still melts my heart though! And he seemed pretty happy with the blanket, so hopefully my little nephew will be too!

KNITTED BABY BEANIE

Oh my, how time flies. Oscar is already two and a half weeks old, and he's already grown so much that he's starting to fit into the newborn sized onesies (he was far too small for them when he came home from the hospital). How did that even happen?

And so far, we seem to be adjusting well. We've had a couple of challenging nights, but for the most part he lets us sleep pretty well through the night, and spends most of his time napping. He's actually currently on my lap, napping away as I type this. Because in the time it took me to start writing this post, he's demanded that I stop everything I'm doing to change and feed him, and he's now happily snoring away. Yeah, our household basically revolves around him these days.

And since everything runs on Oscar time, I haven't had much of a chance to do anything else. Any project I started before Oscar was born has basically been put on hold. That baby mobile for his crib that I started on the day I went into labor lies unfinished, and this Christmas present I started making hasn't been touched since he got here (no, no, calm down, I wasn't being overly organized, I was just trying to keep myself busy while waiting for him to arrive). So this knitted baby beanie I'm sharing here today is actually something I knitted a good while ago, when Graeme and I were enjoying a weekend at my parents cabin. But I'm kinda glad I waited a while to post it, because, you guys, have you seen my little hat model?

I used the leftover yarn I had from this blanket to make this beanie. It's a very simple and quick hat to knit, where you start at the bottom and decrease at the top. To make, cast on 72 stitches on size 3.5 double pointed knitting needles. Knit two, purl two for about 10 rows, or until you have the rolled edge as big as you'd like it to be. Then, knit one row to make a natural fold for the rolled edge. This step isn't technically necessary, but it makes the folded edge a lot neater. Continue by knitting two and purling two as you did before, until you've knitted about 10 cm. Then, to decrease, repeat the following until the end of the row: * knit two, purl two, knit two, purl two, knit two together, purl two, knit two, purl two, knit two, purl two together *. For the next row repeat: * knit two, purl two, knit two, purl one, knit two together, purl two, knit two, purl two, knit one, purl two together * until the end of the row. Continue like this until you're just knitting and purling two and two together, and finish off by pulling the yarn through the remaining stitches. Make a bobble and attach to the top of the beanie. Place hat on baby.

Don't take too many photos of said baby in beanie though, or he'll end up making this face:

Oh, how I love that little angry face. Oscar the Grouch.

And also: after telling you all about how I have tons of unfinished projects and seemingly no time to do anything about them...guess who went out and bought yarn for a new project today? 

DIY STUFFED WHALE TOY

I think this might be my favorite project for our little guy so far. I was looking for kiddo project inspiration on Pinterest (you can check out my kiddo board here), when I came across the cutest whale DIY (with free pattern!), and pretty much knew I had to try to make my own version straight away. I’d seen tons of more cartoony whales and other creatures before, but I loved how this one was a bit more “realistic”. Stuffed toys were probably my favorite toys when I was a kid (along with Legos), so who knows, maybe they will be for my kid too? I still have my favorite, a tiny yellow dog named Tussi (Norwegian translation for Eeyore), and he’s been with me everywhere.

The original is made out of denim, but I wanted to make one out of something a bit softer and snugglier, and I came across the perfect and most softest fleece material while I was searching for backing fabric for my quilt. Which, yes, means I spent forever in the fabric shop looking at pretty patterns and trying to decide what fabric to buy, and walked out of with fabric in three shades of grey. Maybe I should be a bit more adventurous next time?

I also decided to not stuff and topstitch the fins or tail. I prefer them floppy and like how they bounce around when he’s swimming (see below!). I think if I were using a thinner fabric, I’d consider maybe adding batting to make them a bit chunkier, but the fleece I used was pretty chunky so it wasn’t really an issue.

Look at him go with that happy floppy tail!

A CHEATER'S QUILT

Somehow, I got it in my head that with a new baby on the way, I had to make a quilt. A quilt for him to snuggle up in, play on and make forts out of. I guess I've entered the nesting phase? And while we're waiting on our bedroom to get sorted before we can start on the nursery, I might as well spend my nesting efforts on projects. 

I've seen so many beautiful modern quilts around, with solid colors and geometric patterns, and they're so inspiring. But I've never made a quilt before, and I know they're a lot of work and quite time consuming to say the least. And believe it or not, I have some self-insight. I know I often get carried away making plans for big, elaborate, time consuming projects that would turn out awesome if only I just got around to finishing them. But I get bored. I want to start something new. My morganite cardigan is still in my knitting basket next to the couch, and this crochet hexagon blanket is still embarrassingly unfinished (though I do occasionally drag it out and add to it, and it's a lot bigger now!). Not to mention my list of project ideas that haven’t even begun to materialize. And when I asked my friend who recently decided to make a quilt how she was finding it, she replied that it was "bloody hard work," and that "the cutting of the squares takes so long!" So I was quite skeptical that making a quilt was a good idea for me.

But then I came across the concept of cheater quilts. They're genius. Only two bits of fabric with batting in between. No spending ages trying to decide which fabrics to use. No cutting. No fretting over uneven pieces and no wonky alignments. And after seeing all the beautiful ones Kate from SeeKateSew has made, I was sold.

So after much humming and hawing and trying to decide which one to go for, I ended up with a yard of this one from Spoonflower. I love the color combination and I decided one yard would be a good size to start with. I've never used Spoonflower before, but must say I was quite impressed, both price and delivery speed! The fabric arrived two weeks after, and I headed to my local fabric store the next day to pick something to back it with. My original plan was to back it with a simple black and white repeating pattern, but after spending an hour and a half in the store and not really finding any that I liked, I came to the somewhat boring conclusion that I don't really like most patterns, and ended up with a nice solid charcoal cotton. I love how it turned out against the blues, that it's not very busy, and that the white thread contrasts with the dark grey. 

Don't get me wrong, this blanket is far from perfect and full of flaws, but I kinda like that too. And it certainly took me longer than an hour to make, but it's a bit hard to stick to your schedule when your mom drops by halfway through for a chat and a cup of tea. But I love the results and can't wait for it to get put to use!