Saturday, September 26, 2009

Experimenting with wool interlock

I got the fabric on the mail and threw it in the washer for felting. It did felt quite a bit. The description in the website said it wouldn't felt that much. Well I lost 3" from the wide, and 8" from the length! That is a lot! Especially if you are paying about 80 cents per inch! This was my second experiment. These shorties that I got from Ebay are good but the waist was very bulky and thick and the cord never seemed to be tight enough to hold the pants in place. So I stitched a line right below the ribbing and then... cut it! This was the first time that I cut knitted fabric. Unlike most people would think the knitted stitches do not get undone as long as you stitch them first. I then added the elastic interlock waist and voila! My new favorite shorties!!
















The next two pictures (brownish color pants) are from my first attempt to make longies. The ones at the left came out too big. The directions didn't say to trim the edges so I used all the fabric on the arms and it ended up bunching up like this. The problem was that I was working with an XL size sweater, so the sleeves were too wide. So I went ahead and cut the little guy open again, trimmed the sides about 2 inches in each side trying to leave more space in the back for the buddy. The result was the picture on the right. Much better ha? However these are still a bit big on Baby, but that is OK. It was my intention to make the longies a size bigger because I do expect them to be wearable next winter.




















Saturday, September 19, 2009

Longies on the making
















I have so much to blog about I don't even know were to start. So I will start with the fun part. I was able to find several wonderful wool sweaters in a different Good Will store. I was so exited! One of them was even felted already! I think it is so funny that what is a ruined sweater for someone becomes a perfect finding for someone else. I spend only $24 on these sweaters, some of which are 100% cashmere, the others are 100% wool. I know it is so silly but the day I found them, I was so exited I almost had a car accident... LOL that would have made these longies a bit more expensive... I have ordered a yard of wool/lycra interlock for the waists. A while ago I purchased a pair of shorties from Woollybottoms. They came with a very stretchy waist. I love them! they are my favorites! Baby wears them all the time, so I started researching and researching what this stretchy fabric was, until I found out it was wool with lycra. I am just crossing my fingers I can do as good of a job as the Woolybottoms lady. She does an amazing job!! Here is a sample:



















See the yummy stretchy waist?

I do warn you that the wool/lycra material is very expensive. I paid more than $30 for just one yard including shipping. I just hope I don't ruin it... I am still not so confident on my sewing skills. I bought it here.











I am also knitting a pair of longies using a pattern called Itchy Fingers Longies download available from ravelry. This pattern calculates everything based on your swatch. I got a gauge of 24 sts on my swatch so I calculated everything accordingly. The longies started to look huge to me... So I revised my gauge. Turns out apparently I started to loosen up my gauge as I kept going and I ended up with 20 sts per 4" which means now I am 4 sts off. That is why my longies look so big... I was just about to frog them when I decided to try them on Baby just in case. They actually don't look bad and I was thinking maybe I can felt them a little or save them for later when he gets bigger. I am going to continue and knit an extra 2 inches on all the vertical measurements to allow for felting. We will see what happens. I hope it works!

Friday, September 11, 2009

Wood workshop



One of our home schooling friends put together a wood work shop. We have already made a jewelry box, a bird house and this time, we made a bird feeder. Although big sister has different plans for it, it came out so nice. I wish I had made my own so I can actually use it as a bird feeder.

As we get to meet more home schooling families, I realize that maybe I was not as weird as I thought, I just hadn't find "my kind". My husband used to tell me that I was the only woman who did this and that. Because I believe in breast-feeding on demand and as long as the child want to. Etc... But talking to other home school families, specially Christian families, I realize that there are many other moms like me who sleep with their babies and breast-feed for long periods of time. Many also avoid vaccination, etc. It is so nice to find other people with similar beliefs.

Baby


Baby is getting so much fun! He is really starting to want to talk, he says things like "dog" "cat" "shoe" "teeth", etc... Funny because these are all words from his "Your baby can read" videos... Also I recently discovered that he can actually read some of those words. One day I had him on my lap and the word "wave" came up on the screen. Before they actually said the word he started to wave. I was very exited! but my husband didn't believe me so I questioned myself. Last week again I was watching the video with him in my lap, the word "dog" came up on the screen, before they said the word he said "gog". I couldn't believe it! The videos actually work!

Besides that he is doing so many other cute stuff. He loves cleaning, he loves wiping and sweeping the floor. I seriously need to get him his own toy broom so I can use mine... Today I was putting away my husband's clothes and he was very busy and quiet doing something. When I went to see he was grabbing his dad's socks from the drawer and one by one, he was putting them inside the toilet. The toilet was stuffed with folded socks! It was so funny I couldn't get mad.

But the best thing of all for me as a mom is, that he is finally eating food. At 15 months he finally shows interest for food and eats quite a bit, especially if I sit him on my lap. He loves cereal and chips, beans and meat, etc. This is very important because before now, he wanted to be nursing 24/7. Hanging from momma all the time...Of course! he was hungry all the time...
I feel can get more done now that he is eating as he can play on his own longer. I heard that many breast-fed babies are very slow to eat solids and even when they do, breast-milk remains their main food. This is the case with my baby.

The sleeping situation has gotten a lot better too. He only wakes up a couple of times now and he sleeps good 10 to 12 hours.


Sunday, September 06, 2009

More fleece pants and safety


I made another pair of fleece pants for Ian. This time I tried a wider waist strip. That worked out much better. Also added an "Elmo" applique on the back. Mainly because if I don't, daddy will keep putting the pants backwards... LOL! So now I can just say "remember Elmo goes on the back..." I used the option on the pattern to have a lower rise on the front. I don't expect daddy to notice the difference, so that will be Elmo's job. I am happy with the results and the fleece I got at Walmart for only $4 a yard is nice and thick. It didn't say it was "anti-pill" but I sure hope so.




















On another topic, our friend Scott came to help us install the safety gate upstairs... I can not express how thankful I am, hubby and I were having a hard time trying to figure out all the pieces... Scott is so talented... he came, glanced at the instructions for a few seconds, and then installed the gate like it was nothing... Wow! Thank you so much Scott!! It is so nice to finally be able to let baby walk around upstairs without having a panic attack every time he is near the stairs... What a piece of mind...

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Life philosophy

Lately I had to make some though decisions regarding my life. Mainly I have been thinking a lot about the purpose of life, or more concretely the purpose of my life. I think that God is calling me to leave a more separate life. In a spiritual way that is. I have been reading a book called REVOLUTION in missions by KP. And at the same time I felt I needed to quit a long life friendship that was not positive for my spiritual life. It was a very hard decision, one that I had been considered for a few years, but did not have the courage to make until now. It is like God is talking to my life through these two events, making me think about my life and my purpose and the futile things we spend most of our time in.

I have gotten to a place where I am tired of pretending to be "normal". I don't think I am. I don't think any real Christian fits the worldly definition of normal. According to the world, I am weird. Because if I put God first and live my life as if only JESUS matters, that will definitely be weird. But I am convince that nothing matters, only Jesus, and falling in love with him all over again, going back to my first love, is all I want right now.