A Fundraiser for Sweet CJ

On August 21st the Nocturnal Congo on Hyena Cart will hole a fundraiser for Sweet CJ's Team who will be participating in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundations (JDRF) Walk to Cure Diabetes on October 17th.

CJ's mom Niki, is the WAHM behind Heartsong Knits and a good friend, so when she asked me to walk I was in. I am also honored to offer up for auction on our Congo this pair of Quilted Monster face Longies.

These longies were knit with the basic Butt Knits Pattern with the Gossamer face duplicate stitched on the bum. I used Mosaic Moon's Selah Colorway with trim by These Two Sticks on Cestari Super Fine merino wool to knit the quilted pany legs and finished off the hem with a crab stitch. 

If you would like to learn more about CJ and her family, along with their new challenges, you can check out Nikis Blog "God Blessed this Broken Road..."


If you would like to donate and help me reach my goal for this walk, here is a link to my Fundraiser page.

NIght Owl Cocoon

I have been working on getting together a pattern of my own for a baby cocoon, and as I have been working on all these Owl Cables for the Nocturnal stocking coming up so soon, I decided to add a few to this cocoon and add it to the first stocking.

Busy as a bee...

Wow the last few months I have been knitting up a storm. I am very lucky to be working with a wonderful group of ladies putting together a Congo on Hyena Cart called Nocturnal.

Our first stocking will be at 12am on June 5th.

Here a few things I have been working on for our grand opening, our theme is Owls.

The Shirt was hand painted By Juddy Duds

I chose an elastic waist band for this set to make diaper changes easier.


More to come...

Padraic's Wonderful Dragoons Lair Wallaby

I couldn't just make fun stuff for one of my little ones I had to spread the handmade love around. I have been knitting for a little over a year now, and a little intimidated about making a sweater, but when I saw there was a knit-a-log on line I said to myself, at least I will not be alone.

I am really glad I did, because as you can see in these pictures, Padraic is going to grow pretty fast into this.

I had three skeins of Mosaic Moon yarn in the Dragoons Lair colorway and four 2oz trim skeins, I thought that for sure would be enough for a sweater for my little man, Right? Right after casing on an knitting the base ribbing  for the 2T size, I realized, between the time it was going to take for me to knit this and the fact that winter is coming to an end (thank goodness), I really should be making a 4T Wallaby. So I frogged it and started again.

Maeve, A Mommy Made Outfit Just for Our Little Sprite

About 6 weeks ago we decided that our little sprites head was not rounding out on it own, so our pediatrician suggested we look into Cranial Technologies. I need to be honest here, I really was skeptical as to the success of a simple band and some Velcro would have on reversing the odd shape her head developed into, I am happy to say this helmet has been the most wonderful and welcome surprise.   

After a week of adding stickers to a white helmet, I decided I wanted her to have a head band to be proud of and I began looking around for someone to paint it. Everywhere I went I got turned away, there were a lot of reasons from liability insurance issues, to the time frame in which the art would need to be completed (the helmet should be worn a minimum of 20 hours a day), so I decided I can do this myself.

I went to Michaels' bought some acrylic paints and brushes, mustered up the courage by pouring a tall glass of red wine and this is what I came up with:

After adding a few Stickers, here is the final product:

After a few days I decided she need a coordinating outfit as well, and with all this newly discovered creative talent why not give sewing a try as well. Armed with the information and pattern I found on Make Baby Stuff.com I headed over to a friends house, as she has a newer, more user friendly sewing machine than I, and here are the results of that Sunday afternoon:

So as you can imagine I am just over the moon happy with myself, and Maeve looks like a star in her Mommy made outfit.

The Internet and Images

Today I took the time to go through and begun the tedious process of digitally cleaning up all of my pictures out there on the internet. I deleted all of my images on Picasa and started uploading them again with a watermark that says "Crickets Lullaby", it is really small, so I don't think it is obtrusive.

My Test Pair

I am in the middle of working on becoming a licensed knitter of all of Amber Perry's Butt Knits Patterns.

Step one, buy and fill out an application, Check.
Step two, knit a tester/product sample, Check.

 

I chose to knit the new born size and add the Gossamer face embroidery. 

Step three, Submit pictures for approval, Check. 

So now the waiting game begins, and my fingers are crossed that hopefully she likes them. 

Cricket Chirp Converter

More then one I have mentioned "you can tell the temperature outside by how many times a cricket chirps" but until now I didn't know the exact formula, so here it is:

Take the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and add 40 so for example:

A cricket chirps 30 times in 15 seconds, 30 + 40 = 70 degrees fahrenheit

If you need it a more official Cricket Chirp Converter put out by Tim Brice and Todd Hall can be found here.