Hearts and Stars Skirted Longies

These are made with my very favorite yarn, and I'm so pleased with how they turned out!  The pinks and green go together like a dream.  I really hope I get to see pics of these on their intended!

Grateful Dead Dancing Bear WIP

I'm totally trippin' on these :). Love the colors, love the design, can't wait to finish them!

I *heart* TRADES!

YAY!!! Someone who wanted something other than black! Now I've got to post this on Etsy so people can see that it's just as cute in something other than black, and MUCH easier for me to knit.

My boys love to play with the girls next door, who just happen to be 4 and 3 just like my boys :). When we're outside I often take my knitting out while I'm watching them play, and the girls think it's really fun to try stuff on that I'm working on. This skirt is sized for about a 3 month old, and it's a real testament to the wonderful properties of knit fabric (and particularly the resilience of wool) that both of those girls tried on this skirt and it looked like a really cute mini on both of them! It may not have fit a diaper underneath, but at least it'll still be usable after potty training! Or during! It could a really cute skirted capri pant for a little girl. They were trying on a monkey skirty yesterday. I'm thinking next time they try stuff on, I'll have to take some pictures. They're really cute.

I traded labels for this skirted longie. I'm quite excited about it. I can't wait until they get here! I've wanted a label for a while so that people remember where they got their soakers from. I love doing trades. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who want to do trades with me don't make things I need or want, and vice versa :(. But when it works, it works great!

Olivia's

This soaker was inspired by this picture. I'm totally AND COMPLETELY in love with it! I'm in love with the little pig, I'm in love with the soaker, the heart and stars, everything! It's even made out of my favorite yarn.

When I have a girl someday, I'm definitely going to make one for myself!

Easter Skirted Capris

The scrappies in the next post go with this skirty too. Or at least I hope they do. The mom said she loved them, but I haven't actually seen how they look together. I'll have to see if maybe she'll send me a pic.

I've had MANY compliments on this one. And you know, it wasn't even difficult to make. The hardest part was probably making the wave pattern for the grass. The easiest part? The yarn... ahhhhhhh the yarn :). Yarngasm. Oh yes. The purple is 100% baby alpaca. I'm not sure there's anything softer or more luxurious than baby alpaca, except maybe brushed baby alpaca, which is very fuzzy and wouldn't work for a soaker, so I'll probably never have the chance to work with it. :( Although I might have to buy a ball just to pet when I need some comfort.

I think I did put another butterfly on the bum of this one... I can't remember now. Oh well.

The green yarn is a blend of wool, cashmere and microfiber. I wonder how it would hold up as a soaker? It wasn't quite as nice to knit with as the alpaca, but then nothing is, but it was very very nice. It's a little pricey, but I would definitely like to add it as an option if it works. I'll have to design another soaker for Addy :).

Butterflies & Flowers Skirted Capri

Before I start complaining, I have to say that I really love how this one turned out. If I had a baby girl, I'd definitely put it on her. And I totally love that I figured out (inspired by a WAY TOO BUSY soaker I saw on Diaperswappers) two color linen stitch as a cuff option. I think it's my favorite looks wise. It just looks cool.

But seriously! The woman asked for a fairy and some butterflies and dragonflies. I couldn't for the life of me come up with a not cutesy fairy for a pair of soakers. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult! I scoured the internet and found lots of good inspiration pics for fairies, and then I dug in. I tried intarsia and fair isle. I tried embroidery. I even tried tracing a pattern on with fabric stabilizer and then embroidering over it. I think I spent quite a bit more money than I made on this one just trying to get the design right. In the end, the fairy proved to be completely elusive and I was left with butterflies and dragonflies, and even though they turned out really cute, they aren't what I'd envisioned, and even though (as I said at first) I totally love the way these turned out, I'm disappointed. I feel like I failed. Maybe I'll do it again in fingering weight yarn and see if I can get that darn fairy to cooperate. With a fine enough guage I could probably find a cross-stitch pattern that would work beautifully. I wonder if I have to go all the way down to fingering weight or if Dk would work? Hmm... sounds like I've got some work to do.... after the 10 orders I have on my waiting list. And the several soakers I owe my sister. And the blanket I owe my other sister. And the pants I promised my 4 year old....

Skullie's Can They Get Any Cuter?!?!

Have I ever said how much I love purple? I do. I LOVE purple. I love this purple in particular! If you click on the pics and zoom up close, you can see how the yarn is heathered with bits of turquoise and hot pink. I LOVE it :). And I totally love how these turned out. Okay, so maybe the skullie is getting a little easier to make. I'm still not wild about using black yarn (it's really hard to see what you're doing if you're not in full sunlight) but seriously... they are super cute.

I added a little skullie on the bum of the longies this time. I thought it would be a cute detail, and make them cuter to wear without the skirt. I had to pull it out a few times before I got it right, and I'm still not sure it's all the way there. However, when my sister saw it, her face lit up and she totally thrilled over how cute it was, so I guess I've succeeded :). Thus begins the love part of my love/hate relationship with my most popular soaker... the Skullie. Who knew that all I needed was some purple?

Funky Punky Monsters

I totally forgot about putting a link to the dyer of this incredible yarn! It's incredibly soft and squishy and fun to work with and the dye job is beautiful! It's from Lollytree Yarn and comes with a cute little beaded stitch marker that I absolutely love.

I love the way the face turned out on this one. The yarn was so busy that I was afraid it wouldn't work, but I think it turned out really cute. Especially the eyelashes. I've been learning so much about embroidery. Who woulda thunk? I never ever expected that I'd be into embroidery, but just making eyelashes makes me think that I need to learn more about yet another needle art.

Don't you love the way the yarn stripes on the legs? Way fun. The mom I made these for just sent me some more yarn from Lollytree (totally in love with the fact that the seller sends along a cute little stitch marker. I know I already mentioned that, but I really really love it. The newest one has a little flying cow on it. SO CUTE!) to make a pair of shorties with Hello Kitty on them. The yarn is ADORABLE in cotton candy colors. I can't wait to dig in!

Eyelashes or Eyebrows? That is the Question.

So, what do you think, brows or lashes???

Detachable Skirt and Longies - Cat

I LOVE THIS DESIGN!! I can't help myself, I really love it. The only input I got from the purchaser was brown and black with a cat with green eyes in a 2t please. I asked for some clarification, and she said that she trusted my creativity and to do what I wanted. Well! I was a little hesitant to get started on it, and put it off for quite a while. I couldn't picture brown and black together, and I wasn't really excited about coming up with a cat design. I don't really consider myself an artist, and I had a really hard time finding a template I liked. I ended up free-handing this one on my magic knitters' graph paper. It's inspired by a Halloween wallpaper I found where the cat's eyes follow the mouse around the page. Seriously too cute! Of course, I can't find the link now! Curse. The skirt was easy, and adorable and I totally loved it. The pants were a different story. I was going to do a cat face inspired by the Monkey and Monster longies, but I couldn't make it work and had to rip it back several times, and finally decided just to embroider a little cat on the bum. It's free-hand, but really, it's just a couple of ovals and a tail, so not really difficult. What was frustrating was that I put it on the fron when I'd intended to put it on the back, and getting it off the front and onto the back was a real pain.

At any rate, I can't wait to post this as an option in my Etsy shop. It was so fun to make, and I love the design so much that I'm really hoping it'll be more popular than the skullie... which I'm still not a fan of making.

More Skullies

With skirt or without? Both adorable. Still don't like doing the skull though. :)

Monster Skirted Longies

All I can say about this one is *giggle* :) I can't wait to see pics of this on the little girl it's for!

Detatchable Skirted Longies

What can I say? I'm a complete genious! Actually, I'm not :) I'm rather surprised no one has come up with this idea before me. They probably have, but I haven't seen it. I felt kinda bad when I got this order that someone was spending so much money on something that would be appropriate to wear for such a short time. I wanted to figure out how to make her valuable purchase more usable. And this is what I came up with! A pair beautiful (if I do say so myself) longies with a detachable skirt in the theme she chose! And voila! A work of art!

This was a very labor-intensive project. Color work is tricky, and the more colors you use, the trickier it is. The leaves weren't planned out. I put them in at random as I worked, hoping that there would be a nice way to weave a stem through them :). Guess I got lucky :).

I LOVE the colors BTW. The brown has flecks of both green and orange, and surprisingly the orange matches the orange yarn, even though the yarns are not only different fibers, but from completely different makers! The brown and green are my favorite of all favorite, Berroco Ultra Alpaca, and the orange is my favorite old stand-by, Cascade 220 in-- what else?-- pumpkin orange :).

Black and Blue Skull & Crossbones Skirted Longies

Yeah... what to say? I'm surprised this one has been so popular! I have 3 more that I still need to get on the needles! I've worked out some of the kinks in the skull design and I think it looks much better now than it did the first time around. The skirt gave me some trouble. I need to think harder before I dive into things. That's one of my shortcomings in life... if I'm going to do something, I want to dive in and do it. I don't really want to prepare for it. I don't want to spend hours drawing out a design. I don't want to have to get my calculator out to figure out exactly how long or wide I need to make a thing or where I need to put shaping stitches. I'd rather just wing it. Of course, this leads to all kinds of less effective things. For instance; the skirt on this soaker has turned out so beautifully... and if I'd just taken about 5 minutes to figure out just how wide it needed to be and exactly how I wanted the skirt shaped, and where I wanted the skull to go, I wouldn't have finished it, and realized it was about 5 inches too wide and the skull wasn't centered. I could have finished it two days earlier if I hadn't had to rip it back and start over. Lesson learned? Time will tell.

Purple Hearts & Stripes Skirted Longies

I LOVE LOVE LOVE working with alpaca! I lucked out and found some alpaca on sale and chose to do this one with soft, pretty yarn :) I also love purple. This has to have been one of my very favorites that I've made so far.