Rosettaluffagus

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Cassy of Knit The Hell Out came out with a pattern recently that made me find a small-ish child to put a garment on just so I could make it. Her Ruffaluffagus tunic/dress calls for sock yarn, of which I had plenty from making gloves. Or I thought I did. I ended up getting two more skeins because I think I really only had about a single skein to begin with.

The yarn I used was self-striping and the stripes really worked well with the gauge. For more complete information about the yarn I used, visit my Rosettaluffagus project page. The pinks in the yarn inspired the name, and also the accompanying headband.

Since the dress was for a little girl who loves hair accessories, I made a matching headband. (Project info here.) I am going to write up the pattern here soon, just to give myself a little practice writing patterns. I knit the band, then crocheted the flower separately and sewed it on with the center button.

The dress pattern was great. It was very easy to follow, which was good considering I had not knit (or even sewn, for that matter) an actual garment in a long time. The only thing I had any sort of complaint about was weaving in the ends, but that was my own darn fault. I had to buy two extra skeins of the yarn, obviously in a different dye lot than the first skein, so I not only had to stripe in the new skein to blend it, but keep up with the color changes to make the stripes correct. Lesson learned, next time make sure to have enough of the same dye lot to make the whole thing.

One of my favorite parts is how the short row sleeves make the stripe pattern mostly match up from the armhole to the sleeve. I didn’t even have to try to get that part correct.

Make It a Bat Cycle

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Remember how I told you there was a part 2 to the birthday gift from Monday?, and also how I procrastinated on it even more than the bubbles?

See, his big gift this year was his first ever bicycle. But that is a thing that is most definitely going to outlast his Batman phase and most likely be handed down to his brother. So he got a bike with flames on it but, through a series of random circumstances saw a picture of it and said he would rather have a Batman bike. Ding ding, birthday gift idea!

I had intended to measure the seat of his new bike (which he didn’t know he was getting yet) and all of that the day before his party so I could make a seat cover to give him the next day, but I never got around to it between laundry and lunchtime for baby brother. Luckily, I was set to stay with brother as he napped the next morning and everyone did things to get ready for the party. After everyone left I snuck in to where the bike was hidden, grabbed quick measurements and settled in at the dining room table to cut and sew a seat cover out of felt.

I had made the decal the night before, since that didn’t have to be any particular size. Then I cut out the four pieces of the seat, stitched the decal to the top, and backstitched them all together with embroidery thread to make the seams as secure as possible when hand sewing. I added a pullstring at the bottom so the cover just slips on the seat and is then secured with the string. Baby brother helped out by taking an insanely long nap and waking up just in time for us to walk down to the party and get cake.

It was a hit. He apparently wanted it put on his bike immediately and was incredibly excited about it. Mom was thrilled that he had his own logo on the bubble bottles. (And, let’s face it, at this age handmade gifts are more for mom than for child.) All around a successful birthday gift set.

How badly do you procrastinate on making things for others? Or am I the only one? Are you one of those super organized people who thinks months ahead about gifts and keeps them in a closet until the gift-giving occasion arrives?

Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere

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Well, only a little bit while I was filling the bottles, and when testing out the solution.

What do you do when a kid is really deep into a phase of character obsession? You give in and make everything about his birthday presents reflect that, or course. Well, you do if you are me and generally terrible at coming up with gift ideas.

Confession: I like to make a good chunk of the gifts I give just because I walk into a store to buy something for a person and can spend hours wandering in circles without coming up with anything. At least with making something I can tailor something generic into something I think they will enjoy.

So, what do you give a four-year-old who has a ton of toys and yet mostly just plays with whatever his baby brother is interested in because that’s how four-year-olds are? Bubbles. Also, because that is how I like to keep him occupied outside while said baby brother naps in the mornings.

I made a home-made bubble solution using 1 part baby wash (so it won’t sting so much if bubbles get blown into baby brother’s eyes, ahem), 1 part light corn syrup (so the bubbles are more elastic), and 2 parts water. I also made them slightly more special than store-bought bubbles by creating four smaller bottles of scented bubbles. I added a teaspoon of extract to each of the 3 oz containers to make chocolate, peanut butter, orange, and vanilla bubbles. Then I poured the rest of the bubble solution into the corn syrup and baby wash bottles with the labels removed and set about making my own labels for each bottle.

I created a Batman-esque symbol using his name and then labeled the bubbles with their ingredients, just because that is always a good thing to put on a label. I love Photoshop and Illustrator. Just saying. Anyway, I printed them on clear labels (and forgot how horribly the ink smudges on those labels so my mother and I had to layer packing tape over the top before we stuck them to the bottles) cut them out and stuck them on.

Did I mention I did all of this the day before his birthday party? Yeah, I’m really bad at waiting until the last minute on things like that.

But not as bad as the other part of his gift. Which I will tell you about on Wednesday since I started out writing this as all one post and it got very long and very wordy very quickly. But don’t worry, that one has a story that is just as entertaining as this was, or perhaps even more so.

Do you have a go-to gift idea? What do you get for small children when their birthdays/other gift-giving holidays come around?