Clearly, I am insane.

My only little girl, four years old, is in Kindergarten. Right now. My only child in the care of the public school system. It is a frightening thought.

So, out of a bit of nervousness last night, I made a gauge swatch. Swatching is not insane you say? A-ha! I shall show you.
















It's about four inches from the heel to the top. It's got an eye-of-the-partridge heel and I'll be arsed if I can remember how I decreased for the toe. I'm proud of myself for being able to do this off the top of my head, but...I made a four-inch sock. Just because.

Here are some pictures of the design process. Note the monkey.

So, I made a new dress for Iree. She's all about dresses right now, so I checked my stash of fabric and cut out a couple dresses for her. I let her pick the first one and she picked the cherry fabric. I have a horking lot of this fabric even after this dress.

But it's cute and she likes it. The other one is a pale green plaid that doesn't look nearly as bad as it sounds. The pattern was pretty easy, I finished the cherry dress in a day, so I may work on the green dress tomorrow.


I made this dress a couple years ago. I guess Iris is about three in this picture. I think that's her Lolly in her hand.

This little baby girl is going to Kindergarten on Friday.















And these are her yellow mittens. They have a bit of I-cord connecting them to go through the sleeves of her coat. Hopefully, they will be easy to keep up with that way. These are my very first ever mittens, so I'm pretty proud of them. Every time she saw me working on mitten #2, Iris wanted to try on the other one. She'd walk around with one mitten on, wiggling her fingers inside of it.

I actually made #2 a bit shorter than #1, so I ended up ripping it back past the decreases and lengthening it a bit. The pictures above are 100% done, finished, complete, post-ripping back and re-knitting.

Here it is just after I ripped it back. Iree said I was very silly for making her mitten two times.
She's probably right.

Anyhow, there may be a hat to accompany the mittens and possibly a scarf as well. I've got a fair bit of the microspun left in yellow and some green that goes with the fluffy novelty I've got stranded in the mittens. I think that right now I want to make a pair of socks for myself.

I have pictures, as promised, and updates.
I haven't been doing much actual knitting the past week or so. I've been very distracted and busy, and Jane, stop this crazy thing!


I did a few TCA blocks while visiting my mom's last weekend, so the stack is a bit higher and the ball is a bit smaller. This will be a TCA before ya know it. I also found the pattern for the ziggy-zaggy wave pattern that's so common as a TCA, so I'm thinking either that or the classic granny square.
You can see in the picture there that one of the blocks is composed of leftovers.



Oh, and here's a picture of the crocheted washrag that I mentioned last time. Isn't it purdy? It's a bit faded 'cause it just went through its second wash. It is to be expected with this sort of thing. It's still lurverly. It looks great wet, too. I love how the variegation turned out. I did another one that's a star shape and about the size of my hand, but I chose not to take a picture of its wet mankiness. This was done on a size G or H crochet hook with the Sugar & Cream cotton in alternate stitch. Alternate stitch makes for good scrubby bumps.


Now, on to knitting. Here's a picture of Iree's yellow mittens. They're done with Microspun and a fuzzy novelty whose name I forget. I've got quite a bit of microspun left (see, under the mitten? that's all microspun), so I'm thinking at least a hat to go with the mittens. Maybe one of the fair isle checked hats.
I'm thinking about casting them on again so I can get a fresh start. It's been awhile since I knitted these, and it's really not very many stitches. They work up very quickly. Thumbs, by the way, are magic.


Here's foot sweater #1, bottom of the picture, and #2, middle of the picture. They're coming along slowly, but they are coming along. Miles and miles of 2x1 rib. I'm only just now to the calf decreases.
You heard right, calf decreases. I want you to know that I love my husband very much and that if we ever should part, I'm finding a female partner to knit socks for. Someone with size 6 feet.



And finally, here's the baby sweater. I'm about three and a half inches in and I start the armholes at five inches. This is also in Sugar & Cream cotton, using Steph's Daisy pattern from Knitty. Like I said before, I'm going to do the snakey one.








Have you noticed yet?
I'll give you a hint, the lovely wood you see is my dining room table.
It's clean.
Not only is my dining room table clean, but I've cleaned up my sewing area in such a way that I could actually do some sewing. I haven't yet replaced the diaper cart for cotton fabric storage, but I did take the casters off and push it up against the wall. It totally looks like I did it on purpose. I'm still going to replace it, but at least now it's no longer hindering my use of the space.
So, on the sewing front, I've worked on one of the Knight puppets a bit and I cut out two dresses for Iris. She's really into dresses right now. Dresses every day (almost). Today she picked out a pink and grey UT outfit with shorts and buttoned up the shirt herself. She said, "I can button anything!" and that she was proud of herself. I'm proud of her, too.
Yesterday, we registered her for kindergarten. They did an assessment test and she did gloriously. She knew all the letters, counted, read, followed directions, wrote her name, and knew her colors. She had some trouble with the picture of the car and is still not convinced that it was a picture of a car. I don't know why, that was kinda weird. She's both nervous and excited, and I think I'm more so. I got a great kid.