I've been a little preoccupied....

A lot of people who read here already know this but some of you don't....

I had my baby last month; she was born 6.5 weeks early. Her name is Lauren and she was 4 lbs. 8 oz. She stayed in the NICU for 12 days and has been home with us for a week and a half. Click over there to the right on my flickr for a couple of pics. I was in the hospital for a week before she was born and came home a week before she did. I'm so glad that we are both home and heading towards getting settled in to our new life with her on the outside.

I have finished one sewing project since I've been home; a blanket and burp cloth for her out of the cutest pirate flannel I got at JA like a year ago, way before I was even pregnant. I saw the fabric and had to get it just in case I had another boy baby. Well I had to use it even though she's a girl. I'll put up a picture soon. Other than that, I'm thinking about what I should do for a blessing dress. We don't know when that will be, I really don't want to take her out into big crowds much any time soon.

She is still too small for the clothes I've made for her but is growing well. She is up to 5 lbs 6 oz as of yesterday.

Some more baby clothes

I finally got these ready to show off here at the blog. I'm getting the hang of using my new coverstitcher but it is easy for it to go a bit crooked and not always easy to undo the stitching. I'm really glad I bought some bulk needles for it and need to do that with regular ball point needles since they get dull fast. I need to order some snaps; I'm afraid the ties fastening the romper are going to be really annoying. Oh well. These things were made from Ottobre and New Conceptions Baby Essentials patterns; more info is on the photo labels at my flickr. (Click up there on the right, see it?) I'm especially proud of the green jacket; it's made from a $1.47 remnant of fleece from JoAnn's that was just barely big enough.

I have some flannel I bought at the JA sale so I might make some blankets, burp cloths, and diaper wipes next.

Baby Clothes

I finished this little set up on Monday; these are the first baby clothes I've made for the new baby. Patterns are from Ottobre Design 5/2006. I modified the bodyshirt to just be a regular t-shirt and made the shirts and pants in size 50 (tiny newborn). The hat is the smallest size so it will probably be outgrown really quickly. This is partly to make up for the stripey baby hat I am knitting--I'm afraid it will not fit until the baby is 6 months old. Also the hat still needs some ribbons for the ties but Hobby Lobby didn't have anything that matched well enough.

I really like how this turned out and wish the photo was a little better.

Skirt

Someone I know is turning 3 and I made her a skirt. I used pattern #16, Bell-shaped skirt, in Ottobre Design 5/2006, with some modifications. And, the directions on that pattern totally don't make sense. But I was able to put it together anyway. It took about an hour, maybe an hour and 15 minutes, including tracing the pattern, rethreading and changing needles on the serger, searching for my brown thread, and threading the sewing machine. Oh yeah, and hunting down the child in question to get her waist measurement for the elastic.

recycled Koolaid pouch pencil bag

I made this little pencil pouch this afternoon using this tutorial. I'm probably going to make a few more for the rewards "store" in my son's classroom. And I want to find some other cool projects to take in also (I'm looking at things like Poptart box notebooks over at Craftster). I did the zipper wrong on this at first, and it turned out a little bit weird anyway. But it will go faster the next time I made one. Overall it didn't turn out as cool as I imagined; I'll have to see what my boy thinks of it. There's another picture over at my flickr if you want to click through.

Wrap Mei Tai Baby Carrier

Last week I finished up this wrap mei tai for Lorilee. I'm nearly finished with a second one for myself. They are made from a long Storchenwiege Inka wrap sling that Lorilee found and bought at the kids' resale store. I'm really happy with how they are turning out. The hood is too long on Lorilee's and we need to fix it but other than that I think it's going to be a great baby carrier. I'll post an action shot as soon as I can but it'll be a while yet.

"The Dangerous Days of Daniel X" by James Patterson

I recently read The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson for the
Mother Talk blog book tour. It's an adventure alien story targeted for ages 10 and up and I found it pretty enjoyable. I signed up for this tour thinking that my 8-year-old son and I would both read it. It turned out that my boy started it but didn't finish it, and I was ok with that, because in our case he probably really wasn't ready for this book at age 8. It has some scary parts that would have been too intense for him, and some boy likes girl parts that he just wouldn't be interested in yet(that's what I keep telling myself). I don't have a 10 year old child yet but as I read it that age recommendation seemed pretty spot on.

The story was pretty interesting, and it got intense with Daniel battling some seriously bad aliens through much of the book. The language was clean and I was impressed with that. I did think the scary/intense part of the book went on a little too long. I was really surprised and happy with the ending of the book, really the last fourth of the book or so.... I don't want to spoil it but it was a good ending and resolution.

The short chapters make reading this book seem to go by quick. The story has some slightly graphic violent details (if you're thinking about it for a kid) but has clean language and a good message in the end. I will probably encourage my son to read this in a couple years and I'll probably look for the sequels when they come out. I think it would be a great book for boys or girls around age 10 as long as they are ok with scary and sometimes violent scenes.