Sesame Seed Designs » sesame

pants for the baby seamstress

Casey — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:28:00 +0000

Silly baby loves chewing on the tape measure. She tries to eat my patterns too. Yum, paper. These are the Perfection Pants from Wooly Wonder. We use cloth diapers so these wool pants (longies in cloth diaper speak) are the waterproof outer layer and they’re warm and snuggly soft. I used Knitpicks Merino Style. The light blue is called Tidepool and was left over from my ogee tunic and the dark blue, Frost, was in the stash too.I didn’t have enough of the light blue to finish and I didn’t want an abrupt change to the dark blue so I opted for a slip stitch pattern to make it pretty! I love slip stitching! I’d never done colorwork like this before and it was so easy.

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.

Am I the last one on earth?

Casey — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:52:00 +0000

Am I the last person out there who has knit a Clapotis? I did this summer and now I know what all the fuss was about. What a great pattern!I used Knit Picks Shimmer in the Happy Dance colorway. I triple stranded it and the result is a lovely fabric with a lot of drape. It’s thick enough to really keep out the chill but it’s light and airy at the same time. I love it! The alpaca and silk is a fabulous combination. I could wear this every day.

I had a little bit of yarn leftover and I decided to use it to knit the baby a hat. We went to visit my dad this weekend and I knit it while I was there. I was distracted by visiting with all my relatives and, of course, by a crying baby, so I didn’t try it on her while it was in progress. Bad decision. It’s really cute but a little too big around. The best thing to do would be frog it and start over but I have so little time to knit nowadays that I don’t know if I can do that. I thought of taking out the top seam and frogging an inch or so, then decreasing for a few rows when I reknit it. That way, I can flip it over and have the narrower “top” be the bottom so it’s snug around her head. I can seam the cast on edge to then be the top. Or, I could just leave it alone and knit a chin strap to keep it on her head. What do you think?

Here’s a picture from our trip. This is the southern CA part of my family. That’s my 94 year old grandpa on the right! I’m so happy he got to meet his great granddaughter. My dad is next to my grandpa. To see more cool photos (some of my fam, but mostly not) visit my cousin’s blog. She’s an amazing photographer!

Darn dog!

Casey — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:50:00 +0000

My dog has done the unthinkable. Something he’s never done in the 3 wonderful years that I’ve had him. He ate my knitting! And not just any old knitting- the first thing I managed to complete since Sairshe was born! I was so happy to have finished something and then, before I could even block it, stupid Bradley ate it. It was a pretty lace scarf knit with Kidsilk Night. A little fuzzy, a little glittery, and now totally ruined. Impossible to frog. Nothing can be salvaged. It feels terribly wrong to throw Kidsilk in the garbage. I think Bradley’s suffering from a disastrous combination of baby jealousy and boredom. I would feel sorry for him if he hadn’t EATEN my scarf!! And he occasionally gets to curl up on my Boppy. Is that so terrible? Is it, Bradley?! No, I thought not. DON’T eat any more knitting!

My current project (that is staying far away fro the dog) is Bpt from Knitty. I’m using Cascade 220 Quatro in the Jamaica colorway. The color is so pretty in real life. This picture doesn’t quite capture it. It’s much more green but it’s cloudy and blustery outside so I can’t get good light for a true picture. I’m doing a turned hem instead of the applied I-cord and I’m undecided on the hood. I’ll decide when I get there. Here is proof that the girl is going to be a knitter! We went to an alpaca ranch last weekend and Sairshe loved them! With this kind of beginning, how can she not grow up loving fiber? That’s Snow White that she’s petting and you can see her cute little baby next to her.
P.S. I hope you like my new look! I decided that it was time for a fresh start and there’s nothing like some pretty flowers to get you through the cold, gray seasons.

Sesame is . . .

Casey — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:39:00 +0000

A girl!! I was actually really anxious about finding out baby sesame’s gender. It’s not that I was hoping for one or the other, but I found that I kind of liked not knowing. Then I realized that when I found out, I could start knitting cute baby boy or baby girl clothes. We’re thrilled that sesame is a little girl (for the record, we would be just as thrilled with a little boy) and little girl knits are so cute!
Take this Miss Dashwood hat from knitty. (Even if you’re never going to knit this hat, it’s worth clicking on the link just to see the adorable baby modeling the hat.) It snowed yesterday so I got to stay home and knit. It was great. I knit this hat out of Knitpicks Main Line. It’s 75% cotton, 25% wool. The picot cast on took an eternity but it’s so cute that it was totally worth it. The pattern has ear flaps on the hat but since sesame will be born in the spring, I don’t think ear flaps will be necessary. I used almost an entire skein and if I’d made the ear flaps, I’d probably have needed to use part of a second. I hope sesame likes it. This is my favorite picture from the ultrasound. Sesame is punching me but I know it’s out of love.

Answers

Casey — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 03:50:00 +0000

Hi readers. The 2 questions I got about my last post were: Where did you get the elephant buttons? and Who is the lucky baby that gets the sweater?

I got the buttons at a store here in Portland and I don’t remember the brand. Sorry to disappoint those of you who wanted to buy then online. They’re probably there somewhere but I don’t know where.

The baby is, or will be, MY baby! My lack of knitting and blogging lately is because I have been feeling really sick and tired. I think I went almost a month without knitting because all I could do was sleep or lie on the couch watching stupid tv. I’m starting to feel better now so I’m happier and slightly more productive.

I’ve been knitting my frost flowers and leaves blanket but it doesn’t seem like I’m getting anywhere. It’s quite repetitive.I took it off the needles and spread it out so I could see that it really has gotten bigger. It’s about 2 1/2 feet square so I still have a ways to go. It was fun to see it all spread out but it took almost an hour to get all those stitches back on the needles!

My other project has been dying yarn with natural plant dyes. I’m taking a class at Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks and it’s super fun! I think I’m hooked. The little skeins at the top of the post are tiny mini skeins I dyed at the first class so we could practice. They’re tinier than they look in the picture. I could maybe knit one baby bootie out of each one. Any ideas for what to do with them?These are my skeins from the last class. The blue is indigo, the pink is cochineal (actually a bug, not a plant) , the yellow is osage orange and the purple is logwood. I don’t remember what the other dyes were. Next week I get to dye the rest of my yarn and I can’t wait!