Well, the socks aren’t necessarily summer socks. But I finished them in the summer! I had the first sock of both of these pairs completed in March, and the second socks were lagging for one reason or another. The stripey pair, I needed more yarn, and then I needed to finish the purple pair. The purple pair, I guess I’ve just been busy! It took far longer than it should have to finish up that second sock!!

But I’m happy with both pairs. I LOVE the purple pair. The yarn is nice (it’s Joann’s Sensations Bamboo and Ewe, which knits up nicely) and I love the pattern (Harris Tweed). This pair was made for a friend of mine, at her request. I don’t think there’s ever any way to charge a fair price for a hand-knit pair of socks, lol. $1 million should suffice.

The stripe pair is from Knitpick’s Felici yarn. I love the yarn, and I like the pattern, with one exception - it’s baggy around the legs, particularly the cuff. Annoying!

I had this dress listed on Etsy for a while, with no takers, so it’s sat here in my box of Boulevard Designs items. Too unique to have a good spot in a craft show display, and too small to make a suitable gift for any of my friends’ kids. Then, I had my own girl and now she fits into it. Isn’t it adorable?

Found Style Underground’s video demos of new-to-me ways to tie headscarves.

And their Lucia Latte scarf is really pretty!

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Sowers of Hope is on an Etsy team with me. They make many types of headcoverings, including the style I usually wear, the Tichel, or mantilla.

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Garlands of Grace offers some simple, and beautiful coverings.

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These are super fun, but I don’t think I could actually wear one.

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Happy Homestead has pretty stuff, but it’s generally more, hmmm, “I wear victorian take-off calico dresses” than I like.

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I think I’m leaning towards something from Garlands of Grace…

I will be getting three of Enwrapture Vintage’s beautiful silk wrap skirts. I was able to purchase them through a co-op for a substantial discount, which is why I splurged and bought 3. wahoo!

I’ve also pulled out some fabric to do some sewing when I have a minute. (ha.) Realistically, it’ll be May before I have a chance. I think I’m going to change from my usual A-line skirt (using my fabulous Super Easy Patternless A-Line Skirt instructions) and maybe try a simple elastic-waist gathered number or two. We’ll see. I usually dislike how puffy those end up looking. I think they’d look great with the longer T-shirts that are the current style, but let’s be honest: I don’t own any of the longer-length T-shirts that are the current style.

And I’m browsing Etsy.

Beautiful, but $48 might be more than I want to spend.

  I like the concept, but it’s too mannish for me.

I loooove this.

  ooooh, like this one, too!  too big for me, though.

  Flutter skirt.

  Could I pull off this look?

I really like Conscious Clothing’s stuff, but it’s out of my price range.

Fun idea, but I’m not sure I am down with the no-back, ties behind you pinafore. And the skirt’s a bit too country for me to ever wear it alone. Top might be hard to nurse in.

Love it. Struggling with how many wrap skirts I should own, after the Enrapture order.

gaiaconceptions has some pretty awesome designs with organic, local (to them), and hemp fibers. Hidden pocket? Awesome.

I started this on spring break, but traveling by RV with 11 people, including your 17 month old, doesn’t give you as much knitting time as you might think. I think I got about 10 rows done on the entire week-long trip.

It is awfully adorable, though, and actually a fairly simple knit. It’s worked from the bottom up. The pattern calls for 3 skeins of the skirt color and 2 of the bodice color, but I only needed 2 of the skirt and 1 of the bodice (fortunately, because that’s all I had). I did use up every last scrap for seaming.

The pattern is Soli. The yarn is CotLin (cotton/linen blend) from KnitPicks.

It’s coming along nicely. I’m about 3/4 done with one sleeve…. and I’m not going to have enough of either color to finish. I’m so mad. I ordered more than the pattern indicated, and STILL don’t have enough. The main problem is that KnitPicks is out of Caribou (the brown) until May. MAY!!! I certainly hope he doesn’t need a sweater in May.

I hate buying yarn for projects… I hate ending up with all these leftover extra skeins, which is why I didn’t order extra extra skeins for this sweater. Grrr.

Anyone have KnitPicks Wool of the Andes Bulky in Caribou? I also need Oregano, while I’m at it, but I can order that from KnitPicks right now. I just don’t want to have to wait until May to finish. I’ll be all off my groove.

(I found this in drafts - I thought I’d published it a month ago!!)

Done! I sewed the buttons on Christmas morning!

It actually was not hard at all, though I find knitting with bulky yarn to be a bit cumbersome, it did make it go much faster! The yarn was from Park City Yarn Co in Park City - I picked it up while we were on vacation this past summer. The Alpaca Yarn Company. It’s a Park City company, made from area alpaca, but the yarn is manufactured overseas. The yarn I used was Snuggle, which is a bulky weight.

The pattern is from Garnstudio, which means that it contains as few words as possible, lol. Even so, it wasn’t difficult to follow, and I think the sweater turned out lovely. I made the 2T size, so it’s a bit big this year but should fit nice next year.

Here’s the Ravelry project page.

Been trying to use up a bit of leftover sock yarn - actually, it’s the Monkeypal I love so much. I hate to have these tiny little balls of leftover yarn sitting around, you know? So these tiny wool soakers are ADORABLE. What I’m going to do with them, I have no idea. They’re so easy to make, and fast (about an hour), I’ll probably make a few more. The pattern is here, and here’s the Ravelry project page.

And these little socks were fun to make. High-Energy Baby Socks, they’re called. Apparently named after the pattern developer’s friend’s baby, who was nicknamed High Energy Fetus. Anyway. Simple but with fun details around the top. I knitted these up mostly at the pool during our week at Okoboji, watching Wally and Daddy playing and holding a napping/nursing Genna. PS - tried nursing discreetly while wearing a bikini and knitting? Yeah, not so much. Ravelry project page.

These socks are a pattern I made up myself, based on the other two baby socks patterns I’ve used. It’s ribbed throughout, with a simple heel flap, knit top-down. I knit it on size 3’s, wanting a slightly bigger size than I was getting on size 2’s, and I’ll be honest - that was, I think, a mistake. These socks kind of slide right off of her. They fit will around the foot, but they just slide off for some reason. Grrr. But they are awfully cute, and if I put legwarmers on over them, they’ll stay up, right?

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Then I also whipped up this sock for our DSi. I thought it would use up the rest of this yarn I inherited from my mom, but, um, there was more there than I thought. This particular pattern, though, was awesome. It’s knit in a tube, flat. I’ve read how to do this several times in several different places, but this pattern was the first to use words in a way that made sense to me. As I read it, I finally understood how this works. Ravelry project page. Pattern. NOTE: if you decide to use this pattern, on the line where she explains how the ribbing words, she says:

Slip Stitch Pattern (ribbing): k1, bring yarn to front, slip st purl wise, purl 1, slip sts purl wise, bring yarn to back

She means “…purl 1, slip st purl wise…”  ONE stitch. Not stitchES. There were some questions about that in the comments on her blog (linked above), but I don’t think she understood what was being asked.

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And then I used the same pattern, a felted it a bit, to make this pouch for the IPod Touch. And then I used up a bit more scrap making this little pouch with the same pattern, adjusted to give me a flap to fold over and snap.

The Two Summer Sundress. This is such a ingenious design - I hope it really works out the way it’s supposed to. This dress is supposed to last two years - the first year, with the straps crossed, the second year with them straight. We’ll see.

I made three total, but didn’t get a picture of the dress I made for my niece Joey. The ones pictured are for my friend’s daughter Liv for her 5th birthday later this month and for Genna for next summer

I’ve never sewed on my knitting before, and I’ll admit it was a bit scary at first. I did Genna’s dress first so if I messed up, at least it wasn’t a gift for someone else’s kid, you know? But it was super easy to do, and I didn’t screw it up too much. Now I just hope that they fit all the intended receipents!!!

Pillowcase dresses are SO SIMPLE!!

Yes, you can start with an actual pillowcase, but you don’t have to! In this case, I just cut some fabric, about twice as wide as she is big around. (So I measured her around the chest, and doubled it.) Sew up one side seam. Now you have a tube, right?

You can either hem the bottom (and you pick which side is the bottom, since when it’s just a tube, either side could be the bottom!) or you can add a length of seam binding, or make a decorative band with another fabric, whatever.

Once you get the bottom hemmed, focus on the top. Lay the dress out, you can put the seam in the back or on one side. Cut out armholes. Like this:

After the armholes are cut, you’ll see only ONE straight part of the fabric that’s not hemmed, right there, top front and top back, between the armholes. Make a casing out of each of those little flaps, just about 1/4-1/2 inch deep.

Now, you need to hem the armholes. You can just hem them, or you could use seam binding. I personally recommend seam binding.

Next, cut two lengths of seam binding long enough to thread through the casing and tie over each shoulder. I recommend sewing the seam binding closed for this purpose.

And you’re all done. Easy peasy.

If you want pictures, post here and I’ll take some and put them up.