r u l y

The world awaits the wedding of the century (and to be sure an amazing feat of organization!) tomorrow, between Prince William and Kate Middleton. We are all getting quite an education on the royal family in the news of late, furthering our fascination with these people who seem half-real, half imagined.  Below are some of my favorite news articles on the royal wedding:

• “Their royal lownesses (Or why, at 6ft 3in, Prince William towers over his titchy royal ancestors),” The Daily Mail, December 19, 2009. – In addition to seeming larger-than-life, Prince William is a real-life giant.  He is the tallest royal ever, besting “Longshanks” Edward I and Charles II by an inch.  We owe Princess Diana for this height advantage, as she measured in at nearly 5ft 11 in!  Kate Middleton is no shrimp either at 5ft 10!
• “Royal Look-Alikes in History,” People Magazine – You must check out this photo gallery comparing today’s royals with their ancestors.  The likenesses are incredible!  What a great idea for organizing your own family photos and connecting your children with the past.
• “This will have you in stitches: How to knit your own Royal wedding line-up (… including the Archbishop of Canterbury and a couple of corgis),” The Daily Mail, March 10, 2011.
• “An Update on Maid of Honour and Bridesmaids, Best Man and Page Boys,” Official Royal Wedding Website, February 14, 2011, I am most looking forward to seeing the children in the wedding.  I loved how in this announcement some of these little girls are referred to as “The Lady ___” or “The Honorable ____” and the little boys as “Master ___.”  Can’t wait to see how the two 3-year old girls look!

Of course, the knitting article pulled at my heart.   Vogue Knitting also posted a link on their Facebook page to a similar free William & Kate knitted pattern from Galt Toys.

I decided my little girls needed a prince and princess of their own and set to work.  The only changes I made to the pattern were to cut it down to half-size so that the dolls were more pocket-sized.

Making the toys more special to us was the fact that I made them out of odds and ends of yarn inherited from my Yiayia.  My Yiayia was an incredible knitter herself and the one who taught me how.  I knew she would love that her scraps were used to make a princess for her own little princesses.

I made Kate first.

I went for a romantic Kate with hair down and flowing with flowers in her hair and a long lace train.  You may recognize the lace fragment as leftover from our Halloween costumes last year.

This was my oldest daughter’s first intelligent exposure to a wedding (although she served adorably as a flower girl at 2).  She wanted to know why Kate’s train was so long and found it very magical.

“Can she fly?”

I knew my little girls would love the Kate doll. My oldest is at the age where she makes clear distinctions between boy things and girl things with boy things being clearly less desirable.

“Would you like me to make Prince William too?”

I was expecting a “no.”  In an encouraging sign to the young princes of the world, she consented.  As I was working on Prince William, I at one point referred to him as a doll, not realizing that he too was magical in my daughter’s eyes.

“He’s not a doll!  He’s a prince!”

My William came out a little more like a postman than a military officer but the general idea is right.  The faces on these knitted folk are tough to execute.  Clearly, I need a little more practice but we are having fun with them.

We have had many interesting play sessions about the wedding.

So far, this is my daughter’s current understanding of marriage:

“When you get married, you wear a pretty dress and a big hat in your hair.  Then people sit and clap for you.”

Congratulations to the new couple! May all my readers find their Princess/Prince Charming and live happily ever after!

Will you be up at 4 a.m. (or earlier) to watch the big event tomorrow?

It was a personal challenge to use up every last inch of the cotton yarn.  The Easter dresses and tunic ate up most of it but there was still a bit left.  It’s always tough to know what to do with little bits of yarn.  I get a bit nervous that I will start something and not have enough to finish.

In anticipation of our pending arrival, I decided to make a unisex striped baby hat.

I was sort of following a pattern but I made a huge error in the gauge along with so many others that I won’t embarrass the real designer with a credit.  The resulting hat is not really at all like what the pattern said it should be but I was too jaded to unpick it and start over.  I just finished up the best I could and ended up sewing it inside out because it looked better than the front pattern.  I guess this is the danger of forcing yourself to use something that you are not really inspired to use.

There was still a smidge of red and white yarn left at this point, so I made two more little flowers.

And that was that!  There was literally nothing left.  It was a relief to be done working with the cotton yarn.  I now have some fun summer clothes instead of some stale yarn sitting in my cabinet. I also gained a better sense of how much yarn I need for a given project.  I still have TONS of yarn to work through in my stash, including a particularly large cone of pink chenille.

I will need a lot of inspiration to get through this one!

Happy Earth Day!  May you find new ways to use and transform your own clutter into treasures!

I used up quite a bit of my cotton yarn on the girls’ Easter dresses but still had plenty left! I decided to make something for myself. As I went looking for ideas, I came across this incredible Latvian vest designed by Kieran Foley for knitty.com.  I loved the colors and patterns. Also, since the overall effect was kind of a patchwork, it would be great for using up leftover yarn since I wasn’t exactly sure how far each color would go.  I needed to modify the look, however, to be more feminine.  Also, I wanted it to be appropriate for summer and warmer weather.  You don’t typically see these types of patterns on warm weather clothes but I was feeling adventurous.

I found the Sahara racerback tank pattern by Teresa Chorpeza for Tahki Stacy Charles that I used to guide the basic shaping for the top.  I changed the front to be a button front and added significantly to the length.  I then charted out Kieran Foley’s Latvian patterns to fit.  It was a bit of a challenge but fun to experiment as a designer!

The long part of the tunic was knit in the round and as I ran out of one color, I just tied on the next and kept going.

I was hoping to have enough yarn to make a dress but I needed about 6 inches to a foot more in length that I didn’t have.  So, the dress became a tunic that will look great with jeans. I am a bit of an odd-shaped model at the moment (a temporary condition to resolve in a few months!) but I like how the final result came out!

After all this knitting, I still had yarn left! Hmm….what do do? Click to see the final projects!

Two years ago, I started the tradition of making Easter dresses for my girls.  At that time, I had a bunch of leftover white satin.  I invented a pattern on the fly and my tiny girls looked like little angels.  The dresses came out so well, helped me get rid of excess fabric that would otherwise be thrown out or donated, cost nothing and exercised my creativity that I decided to try again the next year.  I didn’t have any traditional Easter fabrics last year so one daughter was in a Victorian-style dress made from leftover yellow satin lining with white puffy sleeves from scraps of white linen and the other daughter in a dolman-sleeve khaki knit dress with a red fabric rose.  Again, they were unique dresses and I had a lot of fun making them while continuing to get rid of excess fabric.  (My husband calls this uncluttering very, very, very slowly.)

Since today is Earth Day where we all focus on the tenets of reduce, reuse, recycle, I wanted to share the results of this year’s dresses.

This year, my oldest daughter made a request.  “Mom, I want you to knit me something.”  she said.  I had not done very much knitting recently but this request reignited my interest.  In keeping with my Easter decluttering tradition, however, I decided to use yarns that I already had on hand.  I settled on some large cones of cotton yarn that have been sitting around for years!  I had four colors: red, blue, yellow and white.  Since I had to make two dresses, I needed a pattern that would work up quickly.  I found a great free pattern on the Lion Brand Yarn website for a simple knit sundress with pockets.  The pockets sold my daughter.

The pattern worked up very quickly and was really simple.  I made one dress red with yellow accents and the other blue with white accents.  After all the knitting was done, however, I discovered with horror that the dress would not fit over my daughter’s head!  it was too tight.  So, I made a little adjustment to one of the side straps to make it into a button tab.  Voila!  Problem solved.

For the second dress, I altered the neck shaping to start earlier so that I didn’t run into this problem and didn’t need the tab shoulder.

At this point, the dresses were done and were really cute, but they needed a little something to make them look more like Easter dresses.  Easter dresses generally have pinks and pastels.  My primary colors were a bit bold.  So, I did some thinking and again took a clue from my daughters who were thrilled with all the spring flowers coming up in the yard.  Knitted flowers!

There are a million patterns out there for yarn flowers.  A few are knitted, like the red rose above that came from Nicki Epstein’s wonderful book, Knitting Over the Edge.  But the really extraordinary (and quite frankly a little silly) flowers are crocheted.   The blue pansy above, the white “bluebell” below and daffodils came from Flower Garden Afghans by Carol Alexander.  Knitting purists may shudder at the combination of knit and crochet in these dresses but my girls LOVE the results.

Since the flowers are a bit over the top, I put all the flowers on safety pins so they can be removed if we want a plainer look or for washing.

It was a bit hard for my oldest daughter to wait for her dress to be done and she became impatient wanting to know why I wasn’t finished yet.  But she was a very willing model.

My other model was unavailable due to naptime so we present her dress below.

It was a ton of fun making the dresses and the look on my girl’s faces was worth all the effort!  At this point, I still had quite a bit of yarn left.

What to do with all the excess?  Read on for phase two!