The Best Notebooks Ever

Moleskine Cahiers, purchased at Barnes and Noble, they come three in a pack. I use one for writing ideas, one for craft ideas, one for Bible-study notes, and one will be my travel journal in England. I like the plain, paper-bag-colored covers, but wanted to personalize them a bit. I founf acrylic stamps on clearance at Target and splurged on stamp markers at Michaels. Et, voila! Personalized, monogrammed journals. A fun project while I watched Chocolat the other night. (By the way, TJ Maxx has good deals on movies - I got Chocolat and Gosford Park for $5 each.

What I've Been Working On

More baby crochet! This was my first attempt at amigurumi, and I think it turned out so cute. Jordan and I have been joking about adopting this little fox as a pet instead of giving him to the nephew. He wasn't too hard to make, and I liked that I could use scrap yarn instead of buying new.

I think the tail is the cutest! I embroidered baby's initials for a special touch. You know, I love a monogram - apparently on pretty much anything!

Lucas also needed a hat to wear home from the hospital, so I made this, my first attempt at cabling. I love cable-knit (almost as much a monograms) and this was actually pretty easy. I don't knit as much as I crochet because knitting is harder and slower, but baby items are so small that it's quite gratifying to do something tricky because you can be done fairly quickly. I am afraid that this may be a bit too big at first (Jordan has joked that it's so long he'll be able to keep his eye warm), but hopefully I'm underestimating newborn baby heads =) Anyway, I think this will be the last baby crochet for a while. There are a couple more amigurumi I want to try, and then all the little sweaters are actually for 6-12 months, so I'll wait a bit on those.

Monet Sweater

Here is my latest crochet project completed. I am beginning to feel pretty good about how quickly I can get a sweater done now. What once would have taken several months, I can now do in a couple of weeks. I am rather pleased with the results, although I thought about scrapping the project in the beginning. The pattern would not come out to the right measurements, so I had to adjust to make it work. However, once I figured out what adjustments to make, things went pretty well.

I really, really, really love the colors. They remind me of the colors in Monet's waterlilly paintings, which is why I am calling this the Monet Sweater. The main color is that pretty jade and it is shot through with purple and pink and white and yellow and blue. So, so pretty. Thanks a ton to Natalie for gifting me her stash.

I'm not sure about these buttons. I like the kind of Art Nouveau style (my latest obsession), but I think the buttons should be bigger (these were in my stash). The pattern calls for 1.5 inch buttons, and these are on 7/8.

Anyway, I am very happy with my latest creation, and hope to later make a dress to match. I haven't done any large-scale sewing in a few years, so that will be an interesting endeavor.