Hoppy Easter!

When the day starts so early, it’s hard to get non-blurry photos of an increasingly active (and expressive!) little one. She’s just on the cusp of toddler-hood these days – walking more than she crawls and understanding things and almost almost talking. But Easter started around 5:30 AM with opening the basket/bucket and a low-key egg hunt with 6 or so eggs placed in highly visible places filled with cereal puffs.

Having put my clothing-making energies into her birthday dress not that long ago, I turned my maker skills to toys this go around. The rabbit is Alicia Paulson’s Miss Maggie Rabbit kit, which was a joy to put together. I misplaced the yarn that came with the kit, so I made the capelet out of some Berroco Vintage DK I had left over from earlier projects. I also dyed a pair of playsilks with Kool-Aid (Mixed Berry blue and 2 packs of Lemon-Lime green), which was quick and fun. Of course, I got totally upstaged by her Memere who showed up with a tricycle! Not that her feet touch the pedals yet, but I imagine they will before too long.

Little Miss Cleaver has become obsessed with belly buttons of late, whether it’s spotting mine and poking and laughing or displaying her own upon request. Onesies are definitely out. So obviously she had to check her new bunny for a belly button.

After some unwelcome snow on Tuesday, the weather seems to be settling into spring. My daffodils are blooming, with tulips coming not too far behind. It means we can go to the park, try out slides for the first time and play in the yard. Now if only we could convince LMC to wear shoes. Right now it's like putting booties on a dog, with much awkwardness and whining.

We’ve already had one happy afternoon with a batch of neighbor kids in the driveway. We’ve got sidewalk chalk and digging tools at the ready.  I’m hoping to get together with our neighbor in the next few weeks to have a raised bed building day. It’s been so long since I’ve had a veggie garden  and I want to get out there and grow some things!

String and Strawberries

String I:

I finished this dish towel at the beginning of the month, but for one reason or another it's sat in my photos for about three weeks. It's not as though I have a backlog of a bazillion projects to post, but as cute as this piece of embroidery is (it's an ironing scotty dog!), I didn't think it warranted a whole post to itself, so I'm lumping it together with a few other bits and pieces.

The Scotty Dog Pattern is from the Hoop Love Vintage Transfers Group on Flickr, which has a treasure trove of patterns you can print out an stitch. They have an especially large collection of mostly complete days of the week patterns like the Scotty above.  I'm alos planning on doing Wednesday (mending) and Friday (baking).

I worked on this mainly while my bum wrist kept me from knitting and in the after period  when I struggled to get my knitting mojo back (which happily it has, thanks to Kate Davie's Manu and some Malabrigo Silky Merino). I haven't yet done the pattern transfer for the second towel, but if our current levels of humidity hang around for much longer I will, since they're only so much wool I can handle in humidity :)

Strawberries:

On Saturday, Mr. Cleaver and I picked four pints of strawberries at Maxwell's, two of which went to his mother and the other two which ended up on my cereal and this strawberry shortcake I made last night.

The recipe is from Posie Gets Cozy and the only changed I made/would recommend is to make 6 or 8 dough "blobs" instead of the listed 4. mine were doughy in the middle until I cut them in half and baked them some more, and the smaller biscuits (it's a very biscuity shortbread) were about all I could handle to eat at once.

String II:

I have plans for a fantastic Fourth of July dress from Vogue 8184. It's a fairly simple dress (especially since I'm skipping the boning- since my version has straps), so I 'm taking the time to do my first go at tissue fitting, especially since I fell in between two of the multi-size envelopes.  I'm somewhat obsessed with fit these days - what with the pattern drafting I've been dabbling in and all (and I'm close with another sundress I drafted). Since the Fourth is only ten days away, we'll hopefully have results soon!

The 24-Hour Pillow

When I was little, my dad had a book called How to Be Your Daughter's Daddy, and the only parts of it that I remember was a section that had a bunch of little "date" type activities for dads and daughters to do together - things like roast mini-marshmellows on toothpicks over candle flames and the stipulation that every girl needs at least three pillows on her bed.

Well, if you don't count Mr. Cleaver's pillows, I have been languishing with only two pillows for years now. Well no more, says I! I had a pillow form sitting around for about a year and this weekend I gathered all the materials together and made this throw pillow.

I drafted out a quick envelope back pillowcase and spent the majority of yesterday morning watching MR. Cleaver play his first tennis game of the season and doing the embroidery, which I had bookmarked for this pillow since it showed up on Sew, Mama, Sew! I definitely got to practice my french knots. I love the way the pillow turned out and it really ties the bedding together.  And really, it makes me feel as if I've fulfilled my girly quota on pillows.