Category — family

Two Christmases ago I made a cashmere-lined ski hat for every guy in our family and many of our guy friends.  I began in January and knit like a crazy lady all year long until I had knit close to 30 hats.  Although I wish I had photographed them all together for posterity, I did come across this sampling of them in my iPhoto library…

The pattern is Whitney’s 70’s ski hat from Purl Soho.  Yarn is Cascade 220 (it’s good, it’s cheap, and I love the 70’s/80’s colors) and Jade Sapphire or Lobster Pot Yarns 2-ply cashmere for the partial lining (beautiful, but not so cheap).  I had so much fun choosing colorways for each person, and it’s a great way to make an affordable and still luxurious present since you can make the lining of two or three hats with the same ball of cashmere.

I’ve always loved cables, which look much trickier than they actually are.  Here’s a hat I finished today, on this lovely 90 degree day.  The yarn is Frog Tree merino; pattern from Linda at The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn.  It’s a perfect hat, with just the right amount of slouch.

It seems that every child of a crafty parent has a birthday banner. Well, everyone but Kate. So for this year’s grand Fifth Year Celebration, I made this happy fabric banner with some of our favorite fabrics. It was easy, fun and gratifying, and definitely one of my favorite projects.

If you’d like to create your own, here’s what you’ll need:

* Cheerful lightweight cotton fabrics. In my opinion, nothing says “Happy Birthday” like polka-dots.  (Sorry, I didn’t pay attention to yardage, but the sides of each fabric triangle will be 10″, and you’ll need to cut 30 triangles.)

* Double-face fusible interfacing so you can fuse the fabric letters directly to the fabric flags.

* Bias tape, which you can purchase or make yourself. This was my first time making bias tape, and now I don’t know why I waited so long. I recommend Clover’s little bias tape maker. You’ll need about 15 and a half feet of bias tape.

* Sewing machine. No need for fancy stitches here. I used the straight stitch for sewing the fabric flags together and the zigzag stitch to attach the bias tape to the flags.

* Rotary cutter, cutting mat and clear plastic ruler.

* Iron. Cotton setting, with steam.

* Swedish tracing paper to make templates. Although this isn’t essential, it’s very handy to have around.

Making the banner…

Step One. Choose fabrics for the flags and the letters.  I chose polka-dots and flowers for the flags and a black daisy print for the letters.

Step Two. Use the triangle located in the center of your cutting mat to trace and cut the flag template from Swedish tracing paper.

Step Three. Cut fabric triangles from template.  You’ll need 15 double-sided flags for “Happy Birthday!”, which means cutting 30 fabric triangles. This is where your rotary cutter, ruler and mat really come in handy. You can cut multiple layers (4-6) of each fabric to save time.

Step Four. Spell “Happy Birthday!” in your word processing program and print and cut letter templates.  I used Arial Black (font size 350) and printed them in landscape mode.

Step Five. Place the letters face-up on the right-side of your fabric and trace around them carefully with pencil. If the fabric is dark, you can flip the fabric over and trace on the wrong side of the fabric.  (If you do this, make sure you also flip the letters upside down before tracing!)  Following the manufacturer’s instructions for the interfacing you’re using, fuse letters onto double-sided interfacing and then cut each out with small scissors.  This is the most time-consuming part.

Step Six. Fuse letters onto fabric triangles. Before fusing the letters, it’s a good idea to lay your triangles on the floor and arrange them in a way that pleases you. Once the letters are fused to the triangles, there’s no turning back (unless you’re willing to cut new pieces).

Step Seven. The next step is sewing one letter triangle and one plain fabric triangle together. With right sides together and with edges aligned, sew a one-quarter-inch seam around the long edges of each triangle (nice to have a 1/4″ presser foot, isn’t it?). Begin on a long side of the triangle, and make sure you pivot at each corner for a very neat and tidy point. The top edge of each triangle will remain open–this is where you’ll attach the bias tape.  Turn each flag inside out and press carefully.  (Note:  you may also wish to trim the excess fabric around each point before turning to make a tidier point.)  Oh, and here’s where I got all caught up with sewing and completely forgot about snapping photos….  Oops.

Step Eight. Following the manufacturer’s instructions, make your bias tape.

Step Nine. Beginning about 25 inches in, open up the bias tape and begin sewing the flags to one side of the tape. To understand how to attach bias tape, you might find Angry Chicken’s no swear bias tape method helpful.  Although I can swear like a sailor, I didn’t find it necessary at all.  Place the triangles close together, following one right after another.

Step Ten. Fold bias tape over and pin the edges of the bias tape together neatly. Now stitch the two edges of the tape together using a zigzag stitch, removing pins as you go along.  To continue your avoidance of swearing, make sure you tuck the raw edges in at the ends before you begin stitching.

Spread out your fantastic birthday banner and congratulate yourself on such a great job.  And, hey, happy birthday!

Kate loves, loves, loves picking flowers. So do I.

We had a beautiful time in the country this past weekend, filled with running around in grassy meadows and picking flowers (and weeds), visiting with grandma and grandpa, uncles and aunties and a favorite cousin, and eating takeout dinners from the volunteer fire company chicken barbeque.

We also spent time at my childhood home again.  After years of stop-and-start renovations, it is finally habitable, and it was comforting to stand on the porch at night and see the stars overhead and to awaken with the sun streaming into our bedroom window and the birds singing wildly.

It was also our seventh anniversary, and although we always seem to be in the car driving back from somewhere, it is still a special day.  I cannot imagine life without this amazing man and this little child.

Grandpa dug up a bunch of these so we could plant them around our NYC trees.

Though the time passed quickly, as good times always do, we did manage to relax and unwind a bit and enjoy some simple things.

Kate, Tyler and Jack explore the meadow.

This is the kind of smile I get when I say "Stinky Pants" to Kate as I'm snapping her picture.

Isn't this strange and gorgeous?

I have always loved plane trips–having hours of time with nothing at all to do except knit, read and gaze outside.  But everything changed with the arrival of our daughter.  The first few years of travel were all about caring for a small child and attempting to keep her happy and entertained (truly, I’m not complaining).  Now that Kate’s almost five, she’s content to draw and color for hours at a time, while I’m free to knit again.  It’s cozy and lovely, and such a great way to pass the time until we arrive at our destination.

During our last trip to San Francisco, I finished these Misti Alpaca baby cable socks, just in time for spring in New York (hah!).  This shade of green ignites my brain, and they’re soft and warm, too.

Baby cable socks in Misti Alpaca

Socks are relatively easy to make, and very, very satisfying.  If you’re planning to make simple handknit socks, Charlene Schurch gives the best instructions.  Her book Sensational Knitted Socks is the only one you’ll need (that is, until you long for trickier patterns like argyles).

On these cool and damp spring days here, I’ll be wearing these inside my rubber boots….

After weeks of browsing quilt designs and playing with fabrics, Miss Kate and I decided that Denyse Schmidt’s “Single Girl” quilt was the one for us.  I had been toying with the idea of making a twin-size quilt for Kate’s bed, yet I couldn’t quite hit on the perfect balance of fanciness (Kate’s mandate), simple design and color without being too chaotic.  Since it also had to be a happy quilt, I chose Denyse’s Katie Jump Rope fabrics.  Thirty of them, to be exact, with one brown daisy feedsack print by Windham Fabrics that Kate and I adore.

For this quilt, I traced and hand cut 31 quirky little pieces for each large circle; the quilt contains 12 large circles (31×12=quite a number of little pieces and one nearly crippled hand).  Sewing them together was zippy using the chain piecing method, and I employed Kate to cut the chain-stitched pieces apart.  She was psyched, and ran to the sewing machine with each finished piece, though not with scissors.

Here’s the dilemma–to machine or hand quilt once the top is finished?

*Katie Jump Rope fabrics purchased from Pink Chalk Fabrics, one of my new favorite online stores.  Double-wide natural muslin from Purl Patchwork.  It’s hard not to love them.*

I had a birthday this past weekend, and we chose to celebrate at one of my favorite places.  After 27 years in New York, Central Park is still magical to me, especially in springtime.  To be there with the tender young leaves unfolding and the birds singing with such abandon was a perfect birthday gift.

This is a shot of those beautiful old elms arching over the Poet’s Walk.  And here are the loves of my life.  Gratitude doesn’t even begin to cover it.

This last family vacation has convinced me that I don’t need to live in San Francisco.  Perhaps it was the stomach bug my husband, daughter and I enjoyed during our trip.  Or the constant drumming and bad music every night on the corner outside our hotel.  Or maybe it was because everyone seems so nice and non-confrontational.

I didn’t even feel heartsick leaving Marin, where we walked around in the sweet air looking at cool sculptures and installations like this one by brother-in-law Phil:

Or this one, which was whimsical and ethereal:

There are times we wish we could leave New York for Kate–who is so beautiful and pure at almost-five and who surely needs more of a connection to the natural world–but then we always come back to the same thought.  How can we possibly be good parents if we’re bored and depressed living in the middle of nowhere (San Francisco excepted).

But there are times we see Kate light up, like when she sees a really big tree or buries her little feet in the sand, and we wonder what we’re doing here.