Works in Progress

So many projects going on! The number of WIP's (Works in Progress) around here is getting a little excessive.

1. The adoption! (Longest. WIP. Ever.) We're still waiting (waiting, waiting ...) to be matched with a child, but we have made a little progress recently. I sent off our I800-A packet today, which is a stack of forms and documentation that goes to U. S. Citizen and Immigration Services. The next thing on the to-do list is assembling the dossier. (DOSS-ee-ay) Many forms, much paperwork. Actually, there are 24 separate forms or documents that we have to fill out/acquire for the dossier. 2-4. 24. Some of which have to be notarized.

2.

These are 4 long-sleeve t-shirts for Munchkin and Twinkle that I've cut out but not sewn together yet. I cut these out from some hand-me-down t-shirts from my brother. I love making clothes out of clothes. Not only do I often get to reuse the hems (definitely not my favorite part of sewing), but it's an awesome way to recycle clothes that still have life in them. They are baseball style t-shirts, so all the shirts, so all the shirts except the white print t-shirt are two colors, with the sleeves and body cut from different t-shirts, so I'm actually reducing the number of t-shirts in the world!

3.

These are the fabrics for a project I'm super excited about. Ikat Bag, one of my favorite sewing blogs, has a fabulous stuffed animal pattern for sale. It's called Menagerie, and it is one pattern that lets you do many many different animals by switching out the ears, noses, tails, etc. The plan is to transform this little stack into a fox, a blue jay, a penguin, a cat, and a blue raccoon (Twinkle's request). I've cut out the many many paper pattern pieces, but that's as far as I've gotten.

4.

This is a sweater that I'm copy-catting. (I checked, there is a free pattern, but it's adult size and in Norwegian.) I'm aiming for a child's size 5. What's that? You in the back? Yes. Yes, the sleeves do not match. Let me explain. The vision for this sweater is that it is a dark gray sweater with a light blue round yoke that will be patterned in a way so that it seems to fade from blue to gray, even though you're only using two colors. I had 2 skeins of gray and one of blue, which seemed sufficient. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I knit the body and the first sleeve, and a wee prickle of concern began to make itself known. There was definitely not going to be enough gray. So, I went back to the drawing board, and designed a little cuff that would echo the idea of the yoke, and would take up some of the gray. A full cuff, plus several rows more. Surely that would be enough, yes? I would knit this sleeve, then I would take out a chunk of the bottom of the all-gray sleeve, and knit the blue pattern in reverse, (going top-down instead of cuff-up) and I would unravel the chunk and add it to my gray ball to knit the yoke.

Awesome plan. Except. I ran out of gray before I even finished the second sleeve. Which meant that one chunk of a sleeve was definitely not going to be long enough to finish the other sleeve and do the yoke. Which means I now have to find another ball of Cascade 220 Superwash 900 Charcoal dye lot 150158. Should be a walk in the park.