Make-It Mondays

My sons are both wrestlers, and after sitting through the first couple seasons clenching my teeth and knotting every muscle in my body, I learned it was wise to bring a handwork project to distract me and keep my blood pressure down. I've mostly stuck to knitting, making things like scarves or afghans for Project Linus. This year I'm working on tiny hats for premature babies to donate to Magee, the Pittsburgh women's hospital. They're a great project -- quick to knit, don't take much yarn, and they're, well, so cute.

My beloved Tiny Tears doll is modeling the first one I made, using this super-easy free pattern from an organization called Touching Little Lives. The turquoise one, on the navel orange, is the same pattern, just using a slightly heavier weight cotton yarn. And the striped one (on the grapefruit) is from one of the incredibly sweet free patterns on the blog Carissa Knits. I've been knitting for years and years - my mom taught me when I was six - but this was the first thing I ever knitted in the round, and I can't believe I avoided doing it all these years. The first couple rows are a bit tricky, but after that it's as easy as working on two needles.

My daughter says I need to get some girl colors too, but I think the bright colors are unisex, don't you? Anyway, the green and periwinkle one is the same color combo I used for Mimi's room in my book coming out in June, so that makes it clearly feminine.

By the way, I was blanking on the word "periwinkle" so I googled "bluish purple" and found this great website that defines color names. Can't decide whether to make the next hat eau-de-nil (pale green) or gamboge (reddish yellow).

Okay, one last thing. I should have saved that last bit for Wednesday. I've decided to add a little structure to my blogging, partly I need a little shove to keep it up regularly, and partly because I like to blog about a number of things, and I realize not everyone will be interested in all my topics. So here's my plan:

Make-It Mondays: Crafts, recipes, maybe some gardening projects (basically, all the stuff I've been working on over the weekends)

Wednesday Word Days Stuff related to writing, book reviews (especially children's books), cool words.

3-D Thursdays Peeks at my in-progress art work, tips for anything tricky I've figured out, begging for help with a project, maybe a little history about how I got into 3-D art, etc.

That still leaves 5 Things Fridays for me, and Tuesdays to think up something cool to blog about. Plus the weekend.

NOTE: This does not mean I promise to blog every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. It just gives you an idea about when to look for topics that interest you. (But I do hope having a little structure will push me to sit and type...)