Knittin' and Spinnin'...

And staying seated!

Lil Sunshine was able to sit upright for a few moments yesterday.  Then...

Down he went!  But it was fun and he landed on his side still smiling - he is such a charmer though!  He's been growing fast and already weighs about 17.5 lbs (about 65% percentile) and is 75% percentile in height.  He's very talkative and loves to test his voice by screaming or shrieking about.  I'll probably be deaf by the end of this year...

Okay, so what else has been happening? Well, there's been a lot of sewing, knitting and even some spinning!  First, the sewing - well, I've decided to try my hand on making some diapers for Lil Sunshine and so I bought a yard of Curious George flannel (can you believe that I knew nothing about George and the man with the yellow hat till a few weeks ago?  Now, I watch their adventures every day!), some polar fleece, and PUL (some fabric that's basically been laminated to make it waterproof).

I dug out my sewing machines, had them serviced, and started sewing.  I made 4 diapers with the Curious George fabric and this is just one of them - no point sewing you each one since they're the same design, right?

So far it works great, except it's missing the elastic at the back so Lil Sunshine often ends up with 'plumber's buttcrack'.  I wish I could sew a whole lot more but it's been difficult to do so unless it's really late at night...like 1 am.

So, what about knitting?  Well, that's more do-able since you can take needles and yarn just about anywhere.  So I've been knitting soakers in the hope that maybe someday I could even start selling them.  But I digress...

Now every soaker I've made for Lil Sunshine have been a day late and a tad smaller, especially since Lucas has pretty pudgy thighs.  So I went about knitting one that would fit him, especially around the thighs, and look cute, too.

I'm pretty excited about knitting soakers and longies - or shorties - I'm in SoCal after all and it's gonna get too warm for wool.  There's so much to learn in knitting, too - short rows, invisible increases, and so much more.  Can you tell I'm having fun?

What about spinning?  Well, I have been spinning, too!  I got a new wheel last month for my birthday - a Lendrum DT - and it was beautiful!  I spun a few yarns on it but it went to a new home today after I noticed that the Lendrum and my trusty old Fricke had almost identical ratios (and you don't need to change flyers or bands to spin bulky like you do with a Lendrum).  And there was no justifying another wheel in a tiny house...but he went to a wonderful local Raveller so I don't feel bad.

Here I am spinning my last yarn on the Lendrum - a Jazzturtle batt.

If you're wondering why I'm not as chatty as usual - it's called one-handed-keyboarding-while-holding-the-baby!  So here are the yarns!

Turquoise Trail
From a Jazzturtle batt with colors that reminds me of New Mexico!

Hobbledehoy batts-into-yarns!
The left one was from a batt called Tanzanite, while the right one is one of her Gemmy batts.
Liz's batts are made of uber-soft merino and they've been a joy to spin!

Two lavender yarns - merino silk blend from Alpaca Direct (left)

Grafton Fibers 407 (right) batt from a Fricke swap - corriedale fiber with wonderful colors and a joy to spin!

It's been pretty interesting adapting my spinning with a baby in tow, but I've somehow managed to spin while nursing, and when spinning while Lil Sunshine is on my back (in his Action Baby carrier - highly recommend!), when he wakes up, it must be an interesting sight to watch me spin and sway to and fro to calm him down.

But you know how it goes - you gotta do what you gotta do!  So that's it so far - right now I'm drying the latest navajo plied yarn I just finished spinning, using fiber that I received from a nice fiber person online, that I washed and dyed myself.  I can't wait till it dries tomorrow and I can take photographs of it.  It's not much - about 108 yards only, but for fiber that I managed to scour and then dye by myself, it's an impressive feat, at least for me.