I kept my sewing machine busily whirring along during my spare moments this weekend.  I'm working on a bunny and a bear from Hillary's Put-Together Book; these are going to be sent to my littlest cousins.  The pattern is very easy to follow and charmingly written with little tips and illustrations. 

I am out of stuffing and need to make a craft store run so I can fluff up the bear.  He's going to be a little boy bear, with a little felt tie.  I'm ready to put the face on the little bunny; so many possibilities- I've been rearranging the little felt bits and buttons to test out every expression.  The character of the stuffies really changes with each little facial feature placement variation. 

I really enjoy making these quick little stuffie projects- they are cute, and they spread joy to children.  What's not to like? I'm very bad about making things for myself, but if our apartment was bigger, I imagine I would have a whole menagerie of stuffed animals and little creatures.  The only stuffies I still have are genuine childhood stuffies: the little Ernie doll I carried around the year I was Ernie for Halloween (I was 2), and of course, my beloved Huggy, made by my great-grandmother:

Huggy has seen better days, it's true.  In high school, I pinned some linen over the bottom of his face, which had worn clear through and was dumping stuffing all over (Rhea used thinly sliced nylon stockings as stuffing).  I couldn't bear to stitch it up... at the time, I was very disturbed at having to sew on Huggy's face... I suppose I've always been overly sensitive, especially when it comes to Huggy. 

Every August as a kid, my brothers and I used to spend the month at our grandparents' home in West Virginia. 

We would run around their beautiful backyard, get mosquito bites, capture frogs and turtles, help feed the chickens and the pigs, help with the cooking and the canning, ride on the back of the tractor, play spit on the porch... it was about a five hour drive, and one summer- I think I was about 10- I realized, halfway there, that I had left Huggy back home on my bed in his spot on the pillow.  We couldn't turn around, of course, and what with it being the 80's and all... remember the Dire Straits, Money for Nothing?  The chorus, "I want my... I want my... I want my MTV?"  It must have come on the radio, because I tearfully started singing, "I want my... I want my... I want my Hu-ggy..."  Such a dramatic kid. Huggy was fine, though. He just hung out with Gentle Heart Lamb.

I found the Ukranian Circus sock!  Um, it had fallen behind my knitting bookshelf, which makes sense.  I had only worked a couple of rows, so I wanted to start fresh and ripped it all out.  An evening of knitting to get back on track, and a little Group Therapy on Thursday night at Knit Cafe, and I got into the rhythm of the socks again... I love stranded colorwork, I love Koigu, I love Nancy Bush's sock patterns...  I still don't love the color combo I went with, but the socks are not for me.  My mom gets away with more funky prints than I do; I can totally see her wearing these while she flits around her cottage-by-the-beach!  Santa Cruz isn't nearly as oppresively hot as L.A. right now (I have no air conditioning... the power went out the other night and the fan pointed at our bed cut off and I instantly woke up and wanted to hurt something... it was awful!), so she may actually get some use out of these socks right away.

I haven't started a new knitting project in a while (unless you count socks... I suppose I don't... I always have socks in progress, but I don't swatch or plan or anything... socks are my comfort knitting).  I've been determined to finish the projects I already started.  Left unchecked, I tend to juggle anywhere from 10-14 projects at a time, mostly because I am out of my mind, but also because, frankly, I just love starting new things.  I am chomping at the bit, wanting to start a summer shirt!  For now, though, I'm being good, and finishing up some WIPs.  For now.

A while back, I bought a sampling of fabrics:  one of Alicia's Passamentarie Packs.  I really didn't have many little bits of fabric that I could play with, but I wanted to make some cute little... somethings... (anything cute and little would do) to play with patchwork and linings and, well, just sewing.  I made a whole group of the cute little tissue holders like the ones I've seen on Flickr.  I had so much fun playing with the different bits of fabric and putting together little combos!

They are all lined in simple, plain white cotton.  I have more fabric from the Passamentarie Pack to play with... but of course, now I feel like I have to buy more fabric to supplement the patches I already have!  My favorite one is sweet, purple, and flowery.  I've been carrying it around in my purse and wishing I was a little more sneezy.  The time will come when I will be able to whip it out, and everyone around me will think, "wow, what a cute tissue holder!  Pretty and practical.  She must really have it together!"  Or something to that effect. 

Also, and I almost didn't blog this, but here it is:  I found my first gray hair:

Do you see that thing?  For the love.

If you plan on finishing a pair of thick. cushion-y wool socks in the middle of July on a particularly hot Sunday in Los Angeles, the best place to do it is at Knit Cafe with several other knitbloggers in attendance.  I had such a lovely afternoon.  When I worked there, I joked that there must be some sort of time-warping factor that happens when one is surrounded by so much yarn; maybe it's all the colors in the wallpaper, but closing time always seems to pop up out of nowhere.  It happened to me this Sunday.  I picked up my friend so that I could teach her how to knit (she picked it up in about two seconds... one of us... one of us...) and we arrived early and hungry.  Brunch and mimosas at Taste!  An excellent way to pass the time.  We wandered across the street, settled in around the table, and got to knitting and chatting away.  Julia kindly took pictures of my feet (we are... such nerds, what can I say?).  As my newly knitting friend said after we left, sometimes it's just so nice to hang out with a group of women!  Time flies.  In fact, I have officially now turned in to one of those customers that wait until the last minute to be rung up, dawdling and lingering past closing time, and hang out talking in the doorway!  Hee hee.  It's distracting over there.  Suzan keeps restocking the vintage buttons!  Who wouldn't want to linger?

I finished some little sewing projects on Sunday night, too... but the elf socks got a little bigheaded during their photo shoot with the nice photographer and all the pretty background choices; I don't think they want to share the spotlight. 

Yarn source:  hand-dyed self striping sock yarn from Jessica's Etsy Shop.  I love those perfect stripes!  It makes the Libra in me very, very happy to have symmetrical feet. 

Needles:  Size 2

Pattern:  I wung it... I cast on 54 stitches, worked a picot hem, knit and knit until I thought they were long enough, worked a basic short row heel (really basic... like, I really wung it on the heel.  But they look just as good as the short row heels I've done before... yes, I know they should be getting better the more I do them... does anyone have a short-row heel they just love?  I'm a flap-er, myself) and then kept going until I held them up to my foot and realized it was time to do the toe.  I worked my default toe, which is the wide toe that I first saw in Folk Socks, by Nancy Bush.  I didn't plan for the first toe to end in the dark green, but it made me very happy that it did.  Yes, I kitchenered one row early on sock #2 to have perfectly dark green toes.  One row, I can't believe that's all the zhooshing they needed!  Love the stripes.

I came right down to the wire, but I finished my Sew?  I Knit! shirt this afternoon.  I made the Plain & Simple Fitted T-Shirt from Hot Patterns.  There are different neck and sleeve options; I made the boat-neck, cap sleeve version.  I'll try a v-neck one next, but still with cap sleeves... it is way too hot here in Los Angeles to think about long sleeves!  I've been living off lime popsicles and iced coffee.  Anyway, the shirt!  I used a Munki Munki cowboy print jersey and it already has that broken-in feel.  The print makes me smile- I wish I had bought more!  The cut isn't cropped by any means (my belly-shirt days ended when I graduated from college), in fact, I think it hits right where more people want their t-shirts to hit, but I have a complex about too-short clothes (hey, I was very tall at a very young age) that I've mentioned before; when I make this shirt again (and I will), I'll cut it longer.  I know I'll get a lot of weekend wear out of this one, though!

Of course, I have a couple more piles of sewing projects cut, lined up and ready to go...