Back at home, the evidence that seseme is now a toddler is mounting. Oh, it’s mostly a joy but when I see her climbing up onto the dining room table, I miss the days when she’d stay put on a blanket on the floor.

Her sweater is finished and she actually got to wear it. If you look closely you can see that it’s dirty because not only did I let her wear it, I also let her (gasp) eat in it. I love it and it looks really cute on her though that’s nearly impossible to photograph. It’s the Toddler Tunic by Staci Perry (ravelry) and all I changed was to lengthen the seed stitch areas at the edges and I added some flowers using scrap yarn from this stash.

I knit the sweater with recycled yarn from a huge J. Crew cotton sweater that I found at the bins. It was such a huge sweater that I could probably knit myself a matching sweater but I’m not that kind of mom. The yarn was really annoying to knit with because it’s a bunch of tiny threads that aren’t plied together. Several times I came across a spot where a few strands were broken but I just ignored it and kept knitting. I’m sure that if I throw it in the washer, some of those ends will start to poke out but she’s only going to be able to wear it for this one season so I think it’ll be okay.

I’ve finally written up a pattern for my eyelet skirty (or is it skirtie?) that I’ve been showing you lately. It’s more of a guide than a pattern but it’s free and I don’t think any of you will have any trouble with it. Happy knitting!

The pattern is below but I’ve also made a pdf that you can download and print. You can get that right here!

I knit this as an addition to a knit soaker (diaper cover) but have included a description of how to adapt it to be just a skirt for your little one.

To knit the skirt attached to a diaper cover:

1.First knit the soaker of your choice.I used the curly purly soaker pattern.

2.Using a circular needle the size that you used for the body of the soaker, pick up a row of stitches just below the ribbing, or about 2 inches below the top of the soaker.(Note: This is much easier if you purl the row after the ribbing when you’re knitting the soaker.Then use the purl bumps as your guide when picking up the stitches.)

3.Row 1: Join to knit in the round and *K1, yo* around.This doubles the number of stitches on your needle and adds fullness to your skirt.

4.Knit for 5 rounds.Next round (eyelet round): *K2tog, yo* around.

5.Repeat these 6 rounds until your skirt measures approximately ‘ the desired length.

6.Change to needles one size larger than those you’ve been using.This will add a little more fullness to the bottom portion of the skirt.Continue in pattern until skirt is almost the desired length.End with eyelet round.

7.Knit around

*K2tog, yo* around

Repeat these 2 rounds one more time. (Ending with eyelet rounds close together prevents the hem from rolling)

Bind off.

Note: If desired, knit stripes of a different color as often as you’d like.Also, the frequency of the eyelet row is not essential.

To knit the skirt alone:

1.Knit a gauge swatch with your desired yarn and determine how many stitches per inch you have.

2.Measure around your baby’s waist.Multiply your stitches per inch by the number of inches your baby’s waist measures.Round this number to the nearest multiple of 4.This is the number of stitches you will cast on.

3.Using a needle sized 1-2 sizes smaller than you used on your swatch, cast on desired number of stitches and *K2, P2* around for approximately 2 inches.

4.Switch to main needles and knit skirt, beginning with the K1, yo round in #3 in the above directions.

My knitting has taken a bit of a back seat since it’s been so warm but I’ve been doing some other crafting (not just for my shop) and I do have some knitting to show.

I’m still working on Mike’s sweater. It’s coming along but I’m not in a big hurry to finish it since this is the wrong season for wearing a wool sweater. It’s been in the planning stages for so long (a year!) that I just want to get it done so I’ll keep at it.

I’m knitting Avast from Knitty but neither Mike nor I liked the cable at the bottom so he picked this one out instead. Well, if I’m being honest, this was his second choice but I like it better than his first choice and since I’m the one who has to knit it, well, you know the story.

I have been sewing too! I’m really proud of this project.

Now that sesame is getting bigger, I can no longer fit all her shoes, socks, hats, pants and pajamas all in one dresser drawer! Her clothes are getting bigger right along with her. Shocking, I know. So I’ve had to do some rearranging and her room needs more storage space. I have this hanging organizer for her diapers and I really like it so I set out to recreate it in way cooler fabrics.

It was a lot of work to figure it out but It turned out great! I took a lot of notes and pictures along the way so I’m hoping to write up a tutorial for it. Let me know if you’d be interested and I’ll do it sooner rather than later.

Also on the sesame front, I made her the cutest little skirtie! It’s a wool diaper cover with a ruffly skirt knitted onto it.

The soaker pattern I used was the curly purly pattern. After it was done, I picked up a row of stitches about 2 inches below the top and knitted the skirt part.

The pink yarn is Lambs Pride Worsted and the grey is a combination of Eco Wool left over from my Hemlock Ring Blanket and some grey Wool of the Andes that I had laying around.

The bunny ears are cute but the headwear I’m most fond of is this cute little bonnet I knitted for sesame. She even seemed to like wearing it!

The pattern is from Dale of Norway’s pattern book #142. It’s the bonnet from pattern 14201, the eyelet lace layette set. (ravelry) I used one ball of Rowan cashcotton and size 2 needles. I knit the 9-12 month size and had to do some math because my gauge was different. It took two tries because the first bonnet was too small but luckily it was a quick knit so she was able to wear it today! I probably only have a few years that’ll I be able to put Easter bonnets on her so I need to take advantage of all of them.

Do you know what is good? Baby socks. They’re little and cute, super fast to knit and they use up those little balls of leftover sock yarn that never seem to go away. I knit these for the sesame babe and chose a twisting rib pattern because, well, her socks twist around whether I want them to or not. This way, when they twist around her foot, maybe they’ll look like they’re supposed to be doing that. They also have some some ribbing on the top of the foot to help them stay on. She still pulls them off in 2 seconds but they look darn cute for those 2 seconds.

Know what else is good? I actually wrote up the pattern and you can download the pdf here!

Here are the details. Well, some of them.

These socks are a bit big for my 9 month old but not so big that she can’t wear them now. I think they’ll fit her for a while.

The directions are written for the magic loop, or 2 circular method because that’s how I knit socks. They’re toe-up and have a heel flap because I like heel flaps better than short rows. They’re toe up so that you can use up every last bit of those scraps of sock yarn you know you have lying around. The last thing I need is to attempt to use up my tiny ball of sock yarn, only to have an even tinier ball of sock yarn leftover. That’s not cool.

Know what is cool? My baby is asleep now. Thank the heavens. Oh yeah, a free pattern for my lovely readers is pretty cool too. Did I mention you can download it?

Stupid, icky dandelions. Oh I know, it looks like a pretty little ray of sunshine but in another month or so when my entire yard is covered with them, it won’t be so cute and happy. I spent an hour yesterday pulling those dark green leaves and long, long taproots out of my lawn to try and get a head start on the removal process. What makes my neighborhood so dandelion-happy? I really want to know! I do feel a good deal of satisfaction when I see the pile of dandelion corpses wilting on the sidewalk so this officially marks the beginning of yet another season of my love-hate relationship with this pastime.

To cheer up the ominous dandelion picture, I added something that truly is a ray of sunshiney cuteness. Socks for sesame. The yarn is Knitpicks Sock Garden in the colorway Daffodil. How perfect is that for spring? The colors are brighter but they got a little washed out in the sun(yes, sun!). I used up nearly every last inch of the yarn left over from these socks. So mom, if you still have those, you and your granddaughter can have matching tootsies!

In other crafty news, I’ve been working on a sewing project with this fabulous fabric. I’ve been holding onto it for a while and have finally found the perfect project. Stay tuned for more updates.

Oh, and have you seen this?! I love, love, love olives. When I first met Mike he claimed he didn’t like olives but he now loves them almost as much as I do. I love them so much that I converted a so-called olive hater. I don’t think I could have married someone who hated olives, that’s how much I love them. I so need to knit me some of these giants! (Clicking the photo will take you to the free pattern. )

This is the best picture I have of her wearing her star pants that I finished last week. They’re the Perfection Pants from Wooly Wonder and I used exactly one skein of a New Zealand Wool, if that’s really what it’s called. I lost the label so this really means nothing to you. The yellow is Cascade 220 and I added it to keep her from looking too much like Kermit the Frog.

Yes, that is Bigfoot Bunny behind her! Much to my delight, she has taken an interest in the cute little guy. And yes, that is the charger for some electronic gadget in her mouth. For our sanity, sometimes we need to just give in.

While I try to pin her down to get some more pictures of recent knits, I’ll leave you with these. This is a picture of her wearing this sweater with the infamous elephant buttons that I knit long ago, before she was born. Before I even knew that she was a she.

It was the first thing I knit for the baby. I could hardly tell there was a baby in me and holding this tiny little sweater in my hands made it feel so much more real. This sweater will always be special to me and I’ll be sad when she outgrows it.

Besides knitting, I’ve been making things that I’ll be adding to my shop over the next week or so. I just love these little birds! They remind me that spring is around the corner.

Thanks for the well wishes regarding my school application. Some of you wondered what program I’m applying to. I have my MS in biology and I’d like to do some more research and get a PhD too. My area of focus is ecology. I like to be outside looking at all the cool things nature has to offer. It’ll be cool if it works out but I won’t be crushed if it doesn’t, though the waiting might kill me.

The winner is Carol, aka An Island Girl, aka Knitting Nanna! She guessed 56, which is very close to the correct number of 59! I thought about laying all the ends out for you to see but in the end, that picture would have looked just as jumbled up as the pile in my previous post. So, you’ll just have to trust me. She’ll be the recipient of one of my ThinkingMama Designs, soft and fuzzy reusable coffee sleeves!

What were all those ends for, you ask?

For this adorable little ruffled cardigan. It needs a button and a good blocking but since sesame can’t wear it for a little while, I’m calling it done for now. The yarn and pattern were a Christmas gift from my uncle who knows nothing about knitting but he saw a sample knitted in a shop window and went in and asked for everything needed to make it! It was a pretty awesome gift. The yarn is Sublime’s Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK and it is so soft and gorgeous! (I don’t think Uncle G realized how expensive the yarn was until it was too late The baby now has a nicer sweater than any that I own! It’s the 1-2 year size so she’ll be able to wear it for a long time. The pattern is from Sublime’s booklet, The Second Little Handknit Book and it’s full of adorable little baby and toddler patterns. I followed the pattern exactly and it’s the cutest thing ever, other than the baby herself.

Happy weekend! It’s sunny here in Portland so we’re going to go outside now!

Happy Thanksgiving next week! We’re off to California for the whole 2-turkey-dinner-shuffle-back-and-forth-between-2-houses-until-we’re-exhausted-
and-the-baby’s-cranky kind of holiday. It will be great. Really, it will. Oh yeah, I also get to go to Mike’s high school reunion. That I’m not too excited about but I’ll survive.

I’m back now! I’m not working (for now at least), not waiting for baby (because she’s here!) but I am still knitting. Well, I should say knitting again because there were several months there that I wasn’t even doing that.

Between the end of February when I last left you and the end of May, nothing much happened except that my belly got bigger and bigger so I’ll just recap the highlights since then for you.

• Baby Sesame was born in the morning on June 2 (only 3 days late) and it was amazing and fabulous. Thanks to Hypnobabies, I had a wonderful, relatively short labor and a natural birth. Little Sesame was a whopping 8 lb 13 oz and we named her Sairshe (it’s pronounced like seersha). It’s a Gaelic name (we changed the spelling a little) that means freedom. Here’s a picture of her when she was 3 weeks old. I can’t believe she’s 4 months old already! I haven’t yet decided how comfortable I am putting pictures of her out in internet-land for everyone to see but you at least get this one!
• I quite my crappy job! It was a glorious day. I even had an exit interview with HR where I got to tell them how terrible their employees are treated. It felt nice. I will have to find another job in a month or so but I’m trying not to think about it yet.
• I finally finished my frost flowers and lace shawl/blanket. I really only use it as a blanket. Since I left for the hospital at 2am, I brought it with me. I loved having it wrapped around me while I waited for Sairshe to make her entrance. I also knit a lovely clapotis but I don’t have a picture because I left it at a friend’s house.
• I entered knitting in the state fair! I won 8 1st place ribbons and 5 2nd’s. It was awesome!
• Ravelry!! So cool! Okay, at least it seems really cool. Since I’ve been out of the blogging loop, I only recently was made aware of it so I’m still on the waiting list. Hopefully I’ll be a member soon!

To catch up on my knitting life, here are some things I knitted for Sairshe before she was born. I’ve forgotten most of the details now so this it a little bare-bones. This is a little shrug and the pattern is from some Debbie Bliss book and I think it’s even knit with Debbie Bliss yarn. Does anyone do that anymore?!
Anouk from Knitty made with some long forgotten cotton. I started it years ago for an acquaintance’s baby. Needless to say, I never finished it for her. Good thing I had a girl baby!

This is a blanket knitted with Rowan dk Handknit Cotton. I think the yellow color has been discontinued. I love the ruffly crocheted edging! I’m think I’m mostly impressed that I remembered how to crochet something.