Sunday, September 6, 2009

Rage, rage against the pale pink blight

Despite a recent trip to the local second hand store with several bags of the most egregiously pink baby gifts, I still feel as though there's way too much pink in db's wardrobe. Not that pink seems to bother her.















She's just started smiling.















On the one hand, it's very gratifying to finally have an interactive baby after six weeks of newborn aloofness. Adorable aloofness, of course, but still. On the other hand, I feel strangely sad about db's passage from newborn to baby - she's totally different now. Probably this won't be the last time I marvel at how much she's changed.

I've also been forced to take it really easy for the past few weeks because of the abnormally long hard labor, and one can only watch so many episodes of the Sopranos before cabin fever sets in. The solution to both problems was, obviously, stenciling. The internet is full of free stencil images, and a few trips to the local art store and several swipes of the exacto knife later, we've begun to build a onesie wardrobe befitting a thinking, hip baby girl (as opposed to a wardrobe befitting a Barbie dream mansion-esque baby girl):































I'm quite pleased with the results so far.






















Probably db is, too.

The stencil patterns are all from this website: http://www.kittybuttons.com/stencils/categories/index.html

Instructions on stenciling here:
http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-stencilb.html

In other thinking-hip-girl-baby wardrobe news, I'm knitting an earflap hat for Todd's brother's incoming baby girl. This is the swatch of the jolly roger motif:















The pattern is a highly improvised combination of this free adult-size hat design:

http://cmeknit.blogspot.com/2006/10/skull-flap-hat.html






















With this free baby hat pattern

http://heyjulie.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/babykids-earflap-hat/














I'm knitting it in Zara (salmon) and Aurora 8 (gray) merino. So far, so good, except of course the earflaps curl. I'm hoping blocking and applied i-cord will solve the problem but thinking maybe I should have done the earflaps in garter stitch. Oh, well. It's amazing what acute sleep deprivation will do to one's perfectionistic tendencies.

4 comments:

tara said...

o i think that you can get the applied icord to fix the curl, esp if you have better tension than i had. when I did the x-country ski cap they were all curly until I added the i-cord, but I hadn't ever down applied icord before that hat & of course did I try it out first? No I just went full speed ahead & by the end it looked good... meaning that the hat is a bit uneven.

Love the stenciled onesies... we're into the truck/ football stage now & i'm hoping for some bears & dinos to even things out. I'm trying to raise a good fantasy/ scifi geek here!

Anonymous said...

Awesome! (fr. Ashley)

Michelle said...

Hey Carla,

If you are bored of Sopranos, try Deadwood. I think it is the best thing to hit tv since Twin Peaks.

Michelle in Memphis

Mrs Hilksom said...

Can we have a bison one? (p.s. you could sell a zillion bison ones in Calgary!)