Totoro Mural!

As I have written many, many times before, one of my favorite movies is My Neighbor Totoro. So when I thought about decorating the room for our upcoming baby, my first thought was, of course, to create a Totoro mural. Now while I am crafty in several realms, muralist is not a label I apply to myself with any confidence. So I enlisted (okay, bugged until he agreed) my brother Adam to create a forest-with-Totoros mural for the nursery. Here are some shots of the muralist extraordinaire in action. Adam had to paint about 5 layers of white on Totoro's stomach, so it's taken a while to complete, but we're nearly there and I couldn't be happier!

Room Prep

We've been working on transforming our spare bedroom/my study into a nursery for the past couple of weeks, and the prep work is almost done.

I decided to leave the walls the same color that they've been- a soothing hyacinth blue. The trim was a light brown color, and I decided to use Fresh Aire (no VOCs) paint and make the trim a darker brown. This paint is great because I can use it without worrying about the health impact, but here's a warning for anyone thinking about buying it: the color on the swatch is at least 2-3 shades darker than the paint itself.

An exciting discovery I made is that the hardwood floors in the bedroom were in great shape underneath some dingy old carpeting:



We pulled up the carpeting and I'm now working on pulling up all of the little staples from the floor. Fun times, but at least Meowzle and Mochi are helping me (see below):




Many thanks to Sarah and Ryan for their help with painting the stuff I can't do, and for taking all the carpeting out to the trash!

It's A...

We had an ultrasound on Monday, May 5 (Cinco de Mayo, appropriately) and found out that we're expecting a baby boy. No, he won't be named Suck Butter, for those of you who read the comment thread on my last post!

Why My Crafting Productivity Has Dropped

Yep, that's right-- I've been a quiet, inactive crafter/blogger as of late for what I deem a very good reason-- the first trimester of pregnancy! I suppose I could consider this the greatest crafting collaboration of my life and blog about it regularly, but I'm not sure it'd be as much fun to read about my fatigue and headaches as is is to read about monkey blankets and art smocks!

I hear from lots of people that the exhaustion and sickness is going to end any day now, so maybe I'll turn into a super-crafter soon. If I start blogging with great speed and show amazing craft productivity, you'll know that that's happened. :)

Becky's Babies

A long time ago I blogged about skirts that I made for my friend Becky's adorable twins, Isobel and Ophelia. Little peanuts that they are, the skirts still fit them! I love that they're wearing bandannas in this photo. Oh, and the fact that Ophelia is doing a number on Isobel's ear.

Monkeys Needed

I've finished all the granny squares for the sock monkey blanket I'm crocheting. Now it's time to make some monkeys! That's the part I'm looking forward to. I'm not so keen on crocheting all the granny squares together, but I'll plow ahead because I can see the light at the end of the (carpal) tunnel and I think this blanket will look darn cute when it's done.

Haya's Sweater

I knitted a sweater for my dear friend Hanna when she was pregnant with her lovely (and generally quite smiley, although not in these photos) daughter Haya. Sometimes when I knit, crochet, or sew congratulatory presents for expectant parents I make them pretty big-- the idea being that the item will be in the life of the child a bit longer than if I made it to fit a newborn. Since Haya lives in Madison, WI, I figure it's great that this sweater fits her well now, in the middle of winter.

Welcoming the New Rees Baby

My wonderful friends Liz and Matt and their cute little son Nathan will welcome a second child into their family at the end of May. I used 5 skeins of Lion Suede yarn to crochet this blanket; three were the color "Moonshadow" and two were "Taupe". I got all five skeins of yarn from my mom for Christmas. I hope it keeps Baby Rees nice and warm.

Holiday Posts, Delayed

The past 10 days have been a whirlwind of activity here, hence my long blogging silence. I have a backlog of photos and information to post, which I'll get to sometime today or tomorrow. For the moment, however, I'd like to share an awesomely cute photo of Isobel and Ophelia with one of the blankets I helped their mom Becky to create.

Cuteness Overload

Meet Vonn James! My wonderful friend Andrea recently had a little baby boy. I blogged a while ago about the sweater and blanket I made to welcome little Vonn into the world. Here he is, modeling the goods. In the photo above he's wearing a yellow angora sweater. Below he's sleeping on the green fleece blanket I made, and in the final photo he's sporting a red and yellow angora hat (which he'll hopefully grow into further as the winter progresses!) and the yellow angora sweater. The final photo also features his Grandpa James, after whom Vonn James is named. FYI, Vonn means "bright" in German and knowing Andrea as I do, I'm sure he will be bright in all senses of the word.

Cuteness in a Mongolian Vest

Okay, it's sort of cheating to blog about this because I didn't make this adorable vest for adorable baby Isobel... but I did buy it from a crafty woman at the Ulaanbaatar black market, cart it back to the U.S. and ship it off to my friend Becky in Chicago, so I feel justified in sharing this super-cute photo. Note also that Isobel is sporting some toasty warm camel wool slippers from Mongolia. She's definitely all set for winter in the windy city.

Little Julia, the Adorable Disco Duck

A while back I made a little sweater for my friend and classmate Heather, who was pregnant with her daughter Julia. Julia's now growing fast, and is now the size to wear the yellow and white creation. You can't really tell from the photos but the white yarn has silver threads running through it, leading to a sparkly, disco-y effect. Isn't Julia's smile the cutest thing? I think she looks really wise in these photos, like she's in on a joke or something.

Babies in Hats

Ophelia doesn't look happy about being hatted! My friend Becky sent me a picture of her beautiful twin girls in the little baby caps I knitted for them. As you can probably infer, Ophelia is on the right and her sister Isobel is on the left. Below are a couple of individual pictures of the girls. Since they're Chicago babies, I think warm winter hats are very much in order!

Another Baby Hat

I made this little cotton baby hat for my friend John's impending arrival in Manila. I made it from cotton because frankly, being from Buffalo, I know little about head covering practices for tropical babies! Does anyone out there know what kinds of hats (if any) babies wear in tropical weather? Up here in the cold climes, we definitely are a hat-donning culture. But what about the Philippines?

Super Easy Baby Hat

Radical Cross Stitch has a tutorial for an easy-to-make baby hat using an old knit dress (though you could use anything knit, really).

Colorado Kaden

Sometimes it's hard to believe that almost 10 years have passed since I finished my Peace Corps Volunteer service in Erdenet, Mongolia. But life events like the birth of a new baby to a dear friend who also lived in Erdenet remind me that lots of time has indeed passed. Susan, congratulations on the birth of your son Kaden! I hope that he is a joyful addition to your family. If you ever feel cold in Colorado... well, just remember the weather in Erdenet in January and your perspective will quickly change. Wish Kaden a big sanbano for me.

This little sweater and hat are acrylic so they'll stand up to washing-- which is good, since I suppose off-white is a rather impractical color for a little one. Cute though, eh? I more or less used the 5 rectangle pattern that I talked about here for this sweater, though I crocheted it rather than knitted it.

On another note, I think I've got to get better at taking pictures of my crafts. Everything appears much more crooked in the pictures than it does in real life. Sigh. I guess that's why this blog isn't called Photography Buff.

Baby Sweater Pattern

Today I wanted to share the link to the pattern for the Five-Rectangle Baby Sweater that I often make (or modify and make) for friends' and family members' babies. It's a really easy pattern, a quick knit, and the sweaters are super-cute in the end.

Robot Outfits, Completed

Here are the completed robot outfits! I really like the way they turned out. They're sized at 6-9 months, and I'm sure that Islay, Ophelia and Isobel will all look adorable in them!

I sewed a little bit of fabric on the back of one of the onesies as decoration. It looks cuter in person than in this photo, though:

Mr. Roboto

Yesterday I used the robot iron-on transfers I purchased from The Mod Dots Shop. In addition to this super-cool addition to my husband's now probably-not-for-work shirt, I also made three baby robot onesies:




So cute, right? I am planning on modifying these onesies by adding little skirts. They will be gifts for Ophelia, Isobel, and Islay (Islay is the new addition to the McLeod clan who we will be meeting- finally- next weekend.) I'll post photos of the finished onesie outfits in a bit.

Every baby should have a robot onesie. Not every baby, however, should be subjected to viewing the Mr. Roboto video by the Styx. How do we explain this cultural manifestation? Stuart Hall, I need your guidance on this one. Domo arigato. (Mea culpa, I'm a child of the 80s and couldn't contain myself.)

Welcome to the World, Peter Kenneth!

My cousin-in-law and fellow Rachel (yes, that's Rachel with an "el," not "ael;" you might not believe how much it matters unless your name is Lara and you're constantly called Laura) recently had a little baby boy. Prior to his arrival, I sent a polar fleece blanket to welcome him. I understand that his big brother Nate promptly fell in love with it, however, so I believe there will be two more polar fleece blankets (for Nate and his sister Eliza) on my crafting to-do list this summer.

I like working with polar fleece because it's made from recycled plastics and the softness and bright colors are, as Nate's response indicates, fun for kids. I'd be interested to know if anyone's heard anything negative about it, such as adverse impacts of production.

If not, a tip for those interested in making baby blankets like these: If you check the discount bins for fleece remnants at your fabric store and find two complementary pieces of 1/2 yard each (or so), you can cut each of the 1/2 yard pieces into two, and then sew one of each piece together (as above with Curious George and green), do the same thing with the other two pieces, and then sew those back-to-back so you've got a double-thickness fleece blanket, perfect for a little one. Because of a special remnant sale, I spent only $3 on the supplies for this. Crafty, cozy, and cheap!