The Best Room on the Block

We used to have a guest room.  Now we have a Best Room (half baby room/half guest room) – all hand made and dragon themed, of course!  Here are some shots of the awesomeness:

two handmade pillows, a dragon, and a teeny tiny velociraptor!

My all-time favorite poem - someone made this for my mom when SHE started having babies! She knew I loved it & surprised me with it... isn't she awesome?

One of my aunts made this when I was a baby - it's been hanging in my bedroom since I was born, and now it's hanging in my baby's room.

 

A dragon-y mobile my sister-in-law created, and an awesome dragon tapestry hanging over the crib.

The handmade wall (that's Husband's artwork on the left, and a few little dragon appliques I framed on the far right).

 

and, of course, more granny squares! I made this green blanket when we first started trying for a baby... after almost 3 years it's finally going to see some use! (Oh yeah, and one more pillow case)

 

It was surprisingly difficult to decide on decor for a baby’s room-slash-guest room, but I think we found a happy balance (I only cried two or three times!). There’s a baby sleeping device and a dresser along the back wall (beside the rocker), and some short bookshelves under the handmade wall.

See the top of the bookshelf there? It used to be the headboard for an old, old waterbed. We painted it black & voila! Instant toddler-sized toy storage!

 

We also used some things that Husband & I had saved from our own childhoods – Bugs Bunny, for example, was mine way back in the day, and the Pac Man lunchbox & Glow Worm were Husband’s.  In the end, the room turned into a nice mixture – some hand made things, some new things, some vintage things, and some repurposed things.  Considering the small amount of space, the fact that we couldn’t do any major renovations since we’re renters, and the dual-use this room’s going to see, I’m pleased with how it turned out.  And, honestly, baby boy isn’t going to remember living here anyway, so I’m pretty sure we could have just slapped some sheets in a laundry basket & he’d be happy.  =)

 

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Killing Time, Granny Style

I have a dilemma.

I don’t want to start any long-and-involved projects before the baby gets here, but I also don’t want to sit around twiddling my (granted, Miss Piggy-esque) thumbs together & doing nothing.

I want to have a transportable project available to take with me to doctor’s appointments and hospitals to combat the “sitting around being bored” syndrome, but I don’t want to have to take a pattern with me, nor do I want something so involved I’ll have to stop counting and/or rip out a row to get back on track the next time I work on it.

Translation:  I want a project I can work on for five minutes, put down for three days, then pick up again & still be on track.

Solution?  Granny Squares.  And rectangles.  And pillow cases.  LOTS of them!

...a pillow case for the baby's room...

...a girlie granny throw made with alpaca homepspun...

...green-and-white-and-blue cotton WIP...

The problem is that granny squares projects work up quickly.  Like, Oh-dear-I-just-sat-down-and-now-I’m-out-of-yarn-again quickly.  Lucky for me everyone I know seems to be stocking up on babies, so I’ve got plenty of Welcome to Earth projects to keep me busy.  I’ve also used up my entire stock of scrap yarn – I started an awesome ALL-THE-COLORS granny quilt that will likely take years to finish (it’s an experiment in asymmetry…we shall see how my brain copes with the lack of perfection):

And, since I discovered that the amount of arthritis/swelling/pain in my fingers doesn’t subside even when I DON’T make lovely yarny things (and likely won’t subside again until baby gets here), I switched to some back post/front post double crochets and kept hooking – I made another pillow case:

And a throw blanket for Nina & Fraidy Cat, made entirely of scrap yarn from my Dr Who Scarf, which the kittens refuse to snuggle (because the box from our Roomba is a much more appropriate cat bed, obviously).

...handmade blanket-in-a-basket = definitely less comfortable than a cardboard box...

 

I’ve got enough yarn to finish one or two more projects… think it’ll last me until baby boy arrives?

Embroidery? Well, okaaaayy…

Some silly someone-or-other put all the embroidery kits at Michael’s on clearance last week, and since my hurty fingers were looking for something to do other than crochet, I picked up a few kits and got to work.

Not bad for my first attempt at needlework, eh?

 

It was a total cheater pattern – the design was stamped on with some sort of washable blue ink – but I figured no one would really begrudge me some cheating on my first attempt, right?

 

 

A better mommy probably would have ironed these before taking pictures of them, but since the very first thing that’s going to happen to them is that they get vomit on them, I opted to forgo the ironing in favor of, well… not ironing.  Also, I don’t really know where my iron is right now.  Also, I think ironing is stupid.   I stayed home the day of President Obama’s inauguration (because ZOMG DC traffic on inauguration day = seriously don’t leave your house) & thought I’d save Husband & I some money by washing and ironing all of his work shirts instead of taking them to the cleaner.   I’m still feeling a bit traumatized.  Maybe I’ve subconsciously hidden the iron so I don’t ever have to iron anything ever again… Hmm…

We’ll see how my stitchery holds up after the nine or ten thousand trips these little guys will likely make through the laundry, but for now I’m calling my first attempt at embroider a win!  Hooray!