Neato!

So, this is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever made.
What, you may ask, is so awesome about that plain ole stripey hotpad?

Well let's look at it from a different angle...Holy hidden heart Batman!

Adventure + Aftermath, a photo essay

This morning Nils insisted on wearing short pants and his boots. Not a combination I would have picked, but you know how these things go. Anyhow, after getting back from the store he went to play outside in our back yard, which is muddy from the fabulous rain we got all day yesterday. While I'm putting the groceries away I hear crying, so I go look out the window and this is what I saw:

So I go out, drag Nils out of the mud (losing a boot in the process), take off his remaining boot and go wash him off in the laundry tub, and all the while he is getting more and more disconsolate. Finally after trying to wrestle new clothes on him, I gave up and plopped him in Walter's crib to calm down. By the time he calmed down, he'd fallen asleep. Mud is serious business.

Obvious

Lets test your deductive reasoning skills, and see if you can figure out why Walter is crying in this picture.

Baby Steps

Bampa!

Nils has four grandparents. He calls them all "Bampa." This morning he put this bucket on his head and declared that he was Bampa. I don't know why the bucket makes him Bampa nor do I know which Bampa he means. I do know that he was pretty pleased with himself though.

Snowday!

We went up to the snow today with Grandma and Grandpa. Nils really liked sledding down the hill.

Walter was not impressed with sledding, or the snow, or the cold. I think it might have had something to with the feeling of drowning in his clothes.

Buzz cut

Walter's hair was starting to get in his eyes. So I trapped him in the bathtub (without water, fyi) and attacked him with the clippers. I still can't get over how blonde he is under all that red hair he had when he was born. He's a little towhead

New Hat

We went and saw The Golden Compass this afternoon. I quite enjoyed it, though I did find some of the deviations from the book annoying. Anyhow I tried to duplicate Lyra's hat from the film (seen here and here), and I think I did fairly well. Here is Walter modeling the hat for me, and Nils is helping me take the picture.


This is how I made it, in case you wanted to know:

Using one strand each of off-white chunky yarn (wool ease chunky to be precise), light brown homespun, and a white light-weight boucle, (for bulk, color, and texture respectively) cast on 44 stitches using size 10 needles. Knit in stockinette, with a single garter selvage (knit the first and last stitch of every row) until the piece is eight or nine inches long. On the last row, knit 22 stitches, then finish by folding piece in half with wrong sides facing each-other and the needles parallel, then use a third needle to work a plain bind-off on both sides at once. To make the ties and edge the front, I doubled the number of strands of yarn I used for the knitting, and did a chain stitch with a size P crochet hook. Make a 10 inch chain, then chain stitch through the hat along the front edge, and finish by chaining and additional 10 inches on the other corner.

What I would have done differently: If I had bigger needles I would have used them, and correspondingly used thicker yarn, or more strands at once. Also I would have made it more brown (to match the one in the movie). And after seeing the movie, the hat clearly had a roll brim edge, which could easily be accomplished by making the hat longer before binding off and attaching the ties farther from the corners, however I'm rather fond of the braid like look the chain stitch created along the edge, and how it worked in with the ties, seen here:

Jumping Beans

If you can call Cheerios beans.

Redbeard

Alternate title: Walter the Red