Hats and mittens and cowls! Oh my!

*Post title brought to you by our recent startling realization that O has not seen The Wizard of Oz.  This will be remedied soon.

I've been trying to look on the bright side with the whole polar vortex/longest, coldest winter in my lifetime thing and am mostly failing miserably (although it's actually a miraculous 33F right now -- woohoo!  I'm almost ready to break out the flip flops and sundresses).  I do, however, really like winter accessories, which are a bit of consolation.  And I really like being able to cover my badly-in-need-of-a-cut hair with a hat anytime I'm out in public and being able to act like it's because of the weather.

One pattern I have fallen in love with is the Kitschy Coo bibbed cowl.  Perfect for kids, and I have been known to swipe O's for myself also.  Here's his, which is made from the same camo fleece as his hat and convertible mitts.  The other side is black microfleece. I liked this so much that I actually handstitched the opening for turning so it would be reversible.  Shocking, I know!

He's actually not going spelunking; we were going for a walk and it was getting dark.

I was so happy with the cowl that I made one for E also, even though I'd already made her a mini version of my ruffled cowl.  I also made her another pair of Sew Baby Mitten Wraps from two layers of fleece.  I lengthened the cuff for more wrist coverage.  She has teeny wrists, so I really need to move the velcro over, but the cuff of her winter coat holds them in place okay for now.  This fleece is an exact color match of her coat; I should have taken a picture.

And, of course, she needed a new hat.  I had just enough yarn left from this soaker sack that never made it onto the blog to knit her an earflap hat with a crocheted flower.  I'm pretty terrible at following crochet patterns, so I was quite pleased that I managed that little embellishment.

More recently, I made myself a Vrida Cabled Slouch hat, after I realized that the last time I knitted myself something was in 2009.  Yikes.  One of my goals for the year is more sewing and knitting for myself.  I love to make things for the kids and to give as gifts, but I've been stockpiling patterns and fabric and yarn for myself for years, and I need to make a dent in that stash!  Plus I know I'll be a grateful recipient.  ;)

This was also made to match the awesome felted sweater mittens that my sister made me for my birthday.  I meant to photograph them together, but apparently never did.  So imagine teal and charcoal sweater mittens, okay?

I am very happy with how this turned out.  I was running out of yarn and had to cut down on the body a little, so I was worried it wouldn't be slouchy enough, but it blocked nicely.  If I know you IRL, you probably either have already seen me wearing this or will soon enough!  

I also made my dad a hat.  When I saw him before Christmas, he complimented Ray and me on our red hats (the aforementioned 2009 knit for myself) and mentioned that he recently lost the hat I'd knit for him before.  And by before, I mean before O was born, so he was due for a new one!  Since I'm currently obsessed with cables, I went with the MacDuff hat and totally love it.  I made the M/L because he has a biggish head, and it's little large on me, but you get the idea.

It's a darker red in real life, but I have a lot of trouble getting reds and purples right with my camera.  User error, I'm sure.

Man, I do love a good cable, especially now that I relearned how to cable without a cable needle.  So slick.

In other news, I finally got a smart phone and am on Instagram now!

Handmade Holidays: All the Rest

So I had big plans for blogging the holiday crafting in a timely manner with nicely categorized posts. It started off well, but then I started reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series and more or less stopped being productive entirely.  A friend sent me the first four books a couple of months ago, and I smartly decided not to start them until after I'd finished my gift-making, but I probably should've held out until I'd both blogged everything and cleaned up my ginormous mess in the sewing room.  I haven't picked up the final book from the library yet, so I'm taking this opportunity to catch up in one big blog post.  I've made a good dent in the cleaning department today too, as I mentioned on Facebook.  Tomorrow, back to reading!

E's most time-consuming gift was a stroller blanket bag thing.  Technical term for sure.  We've been using a Papooska (which seems to be defunct now, unfortunately) on our walks to school and back, but it was getting too short for her.  I basically just enlarged the Papooska, adding about 4" to the width and a foot or so to the length, so it should work for several years.

Snug as a bug

The original had a nylon outer, but I used some lightweight Windpro (I think) stash fabric along with fleece lining like the Papooska.  It's heavier and seems warmer, but the one drawback is that it's considerably bulkier.

 

Like the original, I used reflective tape -- although I wish I'd either have moved it down a few inches or added another stripe -- and used buttonhole elastic to cinch it up.  The buttonhole elastic goes down along the sides below the buckles and through a channel on the top of the back part.

 

There's also some elastic that gathers the bottom and loosely gathers the upper between the buckles.  In hindsight, I'm not sure either of those is necessary.

Other than fabric selection and enlarging it, the only other change I made was to use adjustable buckles rather than snaps.

That's her owl bag peeking out from the bottom of her stroller.

It took waaaaay longer than I thought it would, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Since we walk to school pretty much every day -- unless it's below 0F with the windchill like today -- it will get a lot of use.

I made a couple of other blankets also.  For one of my nephews, this one is made from cuddle fleece with a Lego-esque applique, minus the yellow.  The font is Legothick.

I tried to make it the same way as the kindergarten quilts, but since that method requires precision, ironing, and a lot of marking, and cuddle fleece doesn't really allow for any of those things, it didn't go well.  One of the corners is extremely wonky.  Fortunately, my nephew loved how soft is is and wasn't bothered by its issues.

I made O a fleece blanket also.  His was Star Wars fleece on one side and blue cuddle fleece on the other, turned and topstitched, which worked much better with the super-stretchy cuddle fleece.

Christmas morning action shot

Also sneaking into the above picture was the Camp Half-Blood shirt (from the Percy Jackson books) I made for him with a freezer paper stencil.  I'll be sharing more about this one next month as part of Heron's Crafts Storybook Craft Project Series.

For my younger niece, a quick headband from Heather Bailey's Hooray for Headbands (opens a PDF).  This was a fun little pattern.  I think there will be more of these in my sewing future!

Ray participated in a Secret Santa exchange at work.  One of the days, he gave her this ribbon bookmark.  He chose the ribbon, beads and charms; I just  had to put it together.

I also made Ray some Green Pepper Glove-itts like O's in some blindingly bright lime fleece, thinking he might wear them running on really cold days.  He's been wearing them to work, though, instead.  Even better!

I also made the Green Pepper Tuck-Away Balaclava hat, without the balaclava part. I'm not sure if I miscalculated or the sizing is off, but it's way too big, so I still need to decide how I want to fix that one.

And that is finally it for Christmas sewing (okay, there's one more thing I still have to make for my oldest nephew, but that's it for the completed gifts).  I have a few things that need to be sewn up soon, but I probably won't blog again until I've finished A Dance with Dragons.  ;)

Handmade Holidays: Knitted Gifts

On to the knitting!

For a friend, mason jar cozies in pint and quart sizes.  They're knit from Paton's Classic wool in Orchid and Bird of Paradise respectively.  The pint pattern is the ribbed variation of Mason Jar Cozy 3 Ways.  I used the same basic idea for the quart size.  You can see my pattern notes on Ravelry.

I love the bottom of the quart cozy!

A quart cozy for myself is high on my to-knit list.  I drink a smoothie most mornings and blend them right in the jar.  It's so cold in the winter that I often wrap the jar in a hand towel.  Brrrr.

E got some Classic Mittens in size 2-4.  She has small hands, but I probably should have lengthened them slightly.  They're knit in Linen I Love This Yarn, which is an acrylic.  She often bites her mittens, so I didn't want to use wool and have them felt, and I didn't have any superwash in a good color in my stash.

They were a pretty quick knit.  I especially like the length of the cuffs.

When I asked my sister for ideas for her kids, she said that my 10-year-old niece still liked last year's legwarmers, but that now she wanted some that go over her knees!  I thought that was pretty funny.  She said her favorite yarn was Red Heart Earth & Sky.  When I looked it up, I realized it looked exactly like TLC Essentials Surf & Turf, which I had a skein of already.  Perfect.  I pretty much made them up as I went along, making O. try them on occasionally for reference.  In the off chance that you also need to make over-the-knee legwarmers for a tween, you can see what I did here.  They ended up fitting like I actually knew what I was doing, which was a pleasant surprise.

I had some ideas in mind for my other niece, who is 16, so I sent her a bunch of questions, some that were directly related to what I was thinking and others just to throw her off track.  I also asked if she had any requests, and she said she's like grey or red fingerless gloves to go with her black coat.

I made Fetching from Lion Brand Wool-Ease, but used the same modifications as jc9 on Ravelry, adding a thumb gusset, an extra cable repeat at the fingers, lengthening the thumb and skipping the picot bind-off.  My pics are not the best, but I really like how they turned out, other than some rolling at the tops.  She seemed to like them a lot and tested them out right away.

Camo Fleece Hat and Convertible Mitts for the Boy

Winter never fails to catch me by surprise, despite being a lifelong Wisconsinite.  Serious denial.

O. has been wearing those cheap-o stretchy gloves, and they weren't cutting it any longer.  He really liked the convertible mittens I bought him last year, but we could only find one. So I broke out the Green Pepper Glove-itts pattern that I've had for a while, but hadn't yet sewn up.  He sketched a specific design that he wanted on the backs,and then we went to the fleece stash in the basement to "shop".  He was going to go with blue until he saw the camo, which would match his glasses.

The pattern is adult sizes, so I shrunk the small size to 90% and hoped for the best.  They were really, really, really fiddly to sew up, especially compared to quick mittens I've made in the past, but I think it was worth it.  The fit and shaping is really nice, although I never in a million years would have guessed how the pieces -- especially the finger gusset -- would go together.  You just need to roll with it!  The only issue I ran into is that the mitten flap is too long (he is only seven), even though I took an additional 1/2" off in addition to shrinking the pattern.

 

When I asked him what the appliqued designs he wanted were supposed to be, he just said it was his symbol.  He cracks me up. They don't show up very well on the camo, but he's happy with them anyway.

Then we decided to make a matching also.  His Badger hat from last year still fits, but now that he has grown out his thick hair, it's rather snug.  There was just enough fleece left to make another The Rainshed Convertible Bomber Hat, as long as I lined the ear flaps with black fleece.  I made the child's M/L again, but added an extra 1/4" to each side. Much better fit.

He's wearing his Death Eater shirt!

I tried to get an action shot of both the hat and mittens this morning, but his ride came a little earlier than I expected, so I got this instead:

Winter Warmers

It's getting cold!  I knew it was coming, but was perhaps in a bit of denial.  The girl and I needed some warmer accessories, so out came the fleece. 


I needed a black hat to wear with my pink winter coat.  I've had the coat for a few years and can't figure out what I wore with it other winters!  I guess the past two years I mostly wore my Mamajacket, but that has found a new home with another babywearing mama.... I've had my eye on the hat from Ottobre Woman 5/09 since it came out, so I traced it and went to work.  It was pretty quick to sew.  The tucks took a little bit of fiddling and I blind-hemmed it by hand, but it still was done in one nap, with time to spare. 

Side view showing the tucks

It's hard enough to get a decent self-portrait without having to worry about picking up the details on black!  I'm not sure how I feel about the finished product.  I'm not in love with it, but I don't know if it's the style or just that I shouldn't wear that much black by my face.  Hmm.  What do you think?


On to the girl's winter wear.  E. just had those cheapo stretchy mittens, because they're easy to get on her, but they weren't cutting it now that it's frigid.  She needed something warmer for when we pick up O. and the other ones I bought her fell off after about thirty seconds.  I was looking for something else and came across the Sew Baby Mitten Wraps pattern, which I'd totally forgotten I had (tells you something about my pattern stash!).

I'd originally bought it when O. was her age, but tried to make them from WindPro and thought that fleece was too thick and hard to work with for such small thumbs.  This time I used 200 weight Polartec -- the same as her hat made two years ago (!) from the RainShed Convertible Bomber hat pattern -- lined with cotton thermal from one of her shirts from last winter. 

They're not an example of my best sewing, between the stretchiness of the thermal, trying to keep four layers together neatly, and hurrying because she needed them ASAP.  That said, they are *so easy* to put on!  She has sensory issues and doesn't like her hands touched, so getting her thumbs in the right spots can be tough, but these slid right on without her making a peep! 

Open flat

O. has a serious case of crazy eye in this one.  Ha!!