Green, on the left, dyed with a ratio of 4 drops yellow to 1 green, with some of the darker bits 4 yellow to 1 blue. The teal in the middle was 4 blue to 1 green. The rainbow on the end, or “unicorn fart” as my friend Stephanie named it, was dyed with kool-aid on just one small chunk.

For Christmas I made my knitting friends little knitting bags. I made enough to basically have the construction concept memorized, so when I decided to make a smaller version for a Ravelry swap I’m in I basically winged it. 4″x6″ pieces of fabric and fusible fleece, a zipper, notching 1″ squares out of the corners… piece of cake, right? I mean, I’ve made at least 5 of these already so sizing the pattern down is no big deal. Except it WAS a big deal. Let me tell you: making this bag was a little like childbirth. In the beginning it was fun and exciting. “Little itsy bitsy bag for postage…

My life is going to get a little busier these next few weeks as I go back to full time employment. Which means the sudden urge to craft has hit me since I’ll be losing my Mondays at home with Declan and my nap time craft time. I’m kicking my weekend off with some yarn dyeing. 4 skeins of this yarn have lingered in my stash. I have a plan for a gift but not enough time to knit it. But since these friends are knitters,  too, hand dyed yarn seems more like a perfect alternative. Stay tuned for how this process turns out. Hopefully I can capture some good…

I’ve taken up my 5k training again. Week 3 already. You know what sucks? Well, besides the 3 minutes of running and thinking your going to die, I mean. What sucks is knowing that 4 years ago you did this before, and then life and babies happened and now I’m back to starting over. I’ve lost what I earned and it blows. But I’m armed with new shoes (and new/smaller running pants! Healthy eating for the win!) and music loud enough to drown out my breathing. I’m going to get through it, even if I have to bribe myself with a beer at the end of each run.

Little Oak in progress. I’m making surprising progress this weekend with chasing my kid around, trying to keep him from killing himself by standing on the rocking chair, etc. But little sweaters for little munchkins are always a faster knit given their small proportions.

I improvised a bit with these mitts. Nothing really appealed to me on my Ravelry searches, and I ended up wasting more time looking for a pattern instead of just getting started knitting. I flipped through a few of my magazine stash and ran across the Hitch pullover and the cable pattern was interesting, thus the “hitch mitts” were born. Yarn is Patons Kroy FX sock yarn I picked up on clearance at Joanns (or possibly Hobby Lobby, but most likely Joanns).

Because all new babies need a little sweet friend. Pattern is Elephant Boy, yarn is some misc acrylic I had around the house left over from other projects. Modified the sweater to have a garter stitch panel across the body and sleeves because it was faster and easier to keep track of than all those knits and purls to create the textured version in the original.

My friend Dawn brought in her very first sock in progress to show me. I officially have a new sock knitter in my friends group! Convert ALL the knitters!