I cast off this cute little dress top more than a week ago.  It has been waiting patiently on my ironing board for it’s finishing touches. Namely, that hand sewn linen dress.

Yellow for spring. Light for warmer weather, warmer than we are having right now. Fits her tiny little frame perfectly. It is the Jane Austen Dress in the book Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines, by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne. (These two are absolutely hilarious! I laughed the entire way through the book.)  My Ravelry notes are here. For Easter wearing??

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Other things:

Mini Mister safari shirts coming along.

Still flitting around trying to figure out what the next knitting project will be. (I am trying to move away from baby sweaters, because, really, how many does one baby really need? Maybe I can knit a few for babies who are not my own!)

Officially finished with private school kindergarten applications. And feeling a few hundred bucks lighter after those hefty application fees. (Why is this like when I was applying to college? It is KINDERGARTEN!)

Vitamin D supplements definitely help my seasonal depression during the less sunshiny winters. They actually makes me feel less sleepy, less depressed, and a better participant in this thing we call life.

Sometimes a change in plans is a good thing. Exercises dexterity, tests the nerves, and sharpens that “just let go” skill. Here is how it went:

• 6:39 am – find out there is a 2 hour pre-school delay. Both kids will start at 11:30 am and need to be picked up at 1:30 pm.
• 6:40 am – wonder what to do about the appointment my husband and I have at another school at 10:15 am. They also have a delayed opening. Darn ice.
• 9:45 am – call appointment and leave a message because the school is still closed.
• 9:46 am – ponder options
• 9:50 am – talk with administrator with whom we have the appointment. Will ask a neighbor to watch the kids from 12 pm – 2:30 pm to make a 12:30 afternoon appointment and kiddos will not go to school.
• 9:53 am – run over the neighbor’s home and ask. Its okay.
• 9:54 am – return call to administrator and confirm. Send an e-mail to pre-school that the kiddos will be out today.
• 9:55 am – get a call from neighbor that she forgot about a doctor’s appointment and can’t watch the kids after all.
• 9:56 am – call administrator to try to reschedule. All possible other days our calendar are filled, or we are without child-care. Agree to come in singularly by 10:30 am for a morning appointment.
• 9:57 am – e-mail the preschool that my husband will be dropping the kids off at school and I will go to the appointment alone.
• 10:05 am – can’t get the smaller car out of our parking spot because of the ice. Need to take the mini van with the car-seats in it.
• 10:06 am – e-mail the preschool that the kiddos will not be at school!
• 10:15 am – run into traffic.
• 10:47 am – finally make it. Have a great appointment and now am crossing my fingers that we receive an acceptance to this school.
• 1:00 pm – make it home…eat a cupcake and collapse.

The temperatures have been pretty moderate here lately. It is supposed to be in the 60s this day in February and tomorrow, it is supposed to be in the 70s. Maybe good ol’ Punxsutawny Phil was right this year that spring would come early. Though I never have much faith in a forecasting super groggy groundhog pulled from his comfy sleeping spot prematurely by some humans.

Nevertheless, I have my crafting eye on short sleeves, spring knits, light pants, and sundresses. Sewing? Maybe. Still a bit of knitting going on here.

This one, well, it is important to check gauge. I know, I’ve heard it, and heard it again. But it is a baby sweater, right? Maybe not for a 3 month old. Maybe more like a 1 year old. Babies grow. The little guy we have yet to meet will grow into it. Eventually.

Sweet little elephant buttons finish this one off neatly. Ravelry notes here. But one cool thing that I should mention here is that my clothing design skills are just sophisticated enough to remember that little boys’ garments button on the opposite side from little girls’. What I really liked about this pattern is that it is all garter stitch so it looks the same on the inside as it does on the outside. I am not yet advanced enough to know how to reverse the pattern to make the left front come out to be the right front panel. So, I knit the garment according to the pattern and turned it inside out to get the button holes on the correct side. (Which I must confess I need to ask my husband about each time I make button holes. “Which side do your shirts button?”)

Cheers, here is to an early spring.

P/S

Since this pregnant mama ran out of Valentine’s day candy, she is anxiously awaiting an…Easter basket. Spring better come soon!

This one came off the needles and landed on Little Miss’ back straight away. Before buttons, before blocking, right before church on Sunday. Before it landed here on the blog, I thought I’d finish it by adding little pink elephant buttons.

Little Miss seems to like this sleeveless cardi (In Threes on Ravelry) better than the 3/4 sleeves on here tiny tea leaves cardigan. And Mini Mister just asked for a sweater with sleeves. You just can’t streamline hum?

More knits to come. Really. I have a stack of fabric too that is eying me in breezy spring colors. But waiting on a pattern is the hold-up. And maybe the cool weather is what is giving my knitting fingers inspiration here. Will warmer temperatures send me into a sewing frenzy?

It really has been a knitting frenzy here at home. At my in-law’s house. In the car. At preschool. In the doctor’s waiting room. Everywhere I can scrape together a bit of sit-down time.

When I finished this one, I couldn’t believe that I had done it. One, that I had actually completed a sweater for each child (including the one-still-to-come.) Two, that I completed a whole sweater with two sleeves. Three, that this endeavor was actually semi-affordable.

This is the ever-so-popular tiny tea leaves sweater pattern knit up in wonderfully warm lark worsted wool in rosa ragosa from Quince & Co. My Ravelry notes are here.

These shots aren’t great, but I am not going to apologize here for the model’s non-cooperation…being almost 3 years old and all. Oh, I can’t believe that last bit. She is almost 3! This Friday! Shhh…birthday party planning in progress…in my head…from the sofa…while knitting the next little project…

So by this time, you must think that I spend all my pregnant time these days sitting on the sofa with my feet up knitting fingers ablaze. Well, I do really. Because I have to lean over to cut fabric for sewing projects and this hurts this mama’s lower back. Because standing on my feet long enough to make that ever-craved-apple-pie is getting more and more difficult. And because my hormones somehow have put clutter/dust blinders on my eyeballs, I knit. A lot. Well, just this month really. I am fairly certain this streak of worsted woolen frenzy will melt as the months become warmer. (Or maybe I’ll turn in the heavy sweaters for breezy sport weight organic cottons and silks.)

The reason this baby sweater and the last one are two toned is because I’ve been using up the stash. Little garments. Little bits of yarn. Perfect match. And yarn already bought is really just a very budget-friendly way to clothe a new babe.

Yellow and green is a much “safer” color scheme, I think. We found out from our sonogram that the baby is a little boy! My husband’s aunt just gave birth to a baby just a few weeks ago and to their surprise she was a girl. We’d been told “she” was going to be a “he” for months. Yes, I saw the little boy parts our sono, but still. Better to be safe than sorry?

Same pattern as last time.

I never thought to sew or knit little garments in preparing for the births of my first two babies. Maybe I didn’t have time. I was working part-time as a tax consultant and going to grad school full-time to finish my MBA when I was pregnant with Mini Mister. And then I had my hands full with a move to a new home and keeping track of a 18-month-old when I was pregnant with Little Miss.

This time, I am able to feel the squirms of this little one as I rest on the sofa, watching Man vs. Food on the Travel channel as my little ones play with each other. Little moments of peace are like bits of Heaven I tell you! In my lap is perpetually a mini knitting project. When I am on the computer, my mind is filled with yarn, and spring time fabrics. When I am in the kitchen, I am hopeful that the homemade meals I am preparing are helping the little one inside my tummy grow big and strong. It seems like everything is geared toward our ever anticipated spring-time arrival. (A note about the Man vs. Food thing. I think think that the show is truly a grotesque demonstration of industrialized excess and indulgence. However, to the pregnant palette, some of those demonstrations seem a touch irresistible. Especially those delectables that contain wheat. Pancakes. Fluffy rolls. Crunchy pizza crust. Okay, I digress.)

So, I find myself this winter nestled on the sofa, looking at the birds at the feeder, watching Adam Richman, with my knitting fingers working at a speedy pace; hence, the almost four little sweaters I’ve knit up so far this month. This is one of the simplest little guys ever. See my Ravelry notes. Petite, cute, easy to execute with a foggy brain that has trouble with those complex patterns.

Mini Mister noticed the blue, and asked if it was “T-sized.” He held it up to his much bigger chest and decided it was “baby-sized.” And then demanded little sailboat buttons on his next mama-made sweater.

Last night it took my husband 7 1/2 hours to drive home. From D.C. It normally takes 30 minutes without rush-hour. Only 4 inches of heavy wet snow stuck on all the trees, and wind gusts that blew over those trees, and silly DC Metro drivers where the reasons for his delay. Not fun. It kind of makes me think of last year’s storms when we got 26″ and motorists were stuck on the overpasses for hours on ice. But I think his commute then was only 5 hours.

Madam Fortune Teller foresees a day of quiet/with preschoolers, knitting on the sofa in a sleepy stooper this morning.

Before the storm hit, this proud mama finally finished last year’s Easter sweater vest for Mini Mister. Really. Picked, planned for, purchased, knit-mostly, seamed-mostly, and then frogged. Only to be revisited this month a year later with the goal of making a sweater for each member of our family this year.

This free pattern requires a ton of seaming and finishing. Also, I am not a big fan of picking up edge stitches to continue knitting. There is A LOT of this. It fits, though it could stand to be a bit longer and it kind of reminds me of carrots. And Mini Mister actually wears it.

Working on other knits and sewing projects for the other children, or child-to-be. Will share so stay tuned.