The Handmade Dress

Hey friends! Ben fussed at me Saturday night for not posting in so long. I really meant to do better through the holiday, but my goodness we were just having so much fun that I never stopped! We had our very sweet friends from New York, Brandon and Katie, and their four sweet babies, staying in our home through Thanksgiving. We had such a good time! Their kids, who usually don't get to play outside because they live in the city, LOVED staying on a farm for a week! It was so much fun to see them playing with the animals and in the good ole southern mud for the first time. They would literally roll out of bed every morning, put boots on over their footie PJ's, and head out the door to see the "sheep" (Our goats!). My kids loved teaching them how to get dirty, and showing off their animals. It's so cute how proud of their animals they are. I got to sit in my chair, catch up with close friends, and collect kisses from the seven kids that kept this house full of gigg...

Little Claire has some booties to match her blanket now! Yesterday I started on these cute little crochet booties that I found on Ravelry . (I bought the pattern here . If you go to her shop, look around, there's all kinds of cute things there!) They really came together fast and the pattern was well written. I don't normally follow patterns well because I like to put my spin on things, but yesterday was one of those lazy sort of days when I just wanted to follow a pattern and not have to think about it. The pattern calls for two soles, one is gray and one is pink. I think the two soles give the bootie a real shoe feel, because it holds it's shape nicely. I may crochet a pink pair too (with a gray sole), and I think I'll try just one sole this time and see how it goes. I don't mind it being softer and more like a bootie, especially in the size 0. I still haven't started on the Little Silas booties yet because I've been waiting on a kni...

I thought that it may be about time for a new bump update, and I couldn't resist sharing these two pictures of some of my most favorite girls! I think you already know these two cutie-pies. The bump is definitely coming right along, sometimes now I can even see it bouncing and moving out of the corner of my eye! This little one parties a lot during the day, let's hope that the "daytime" part doesn't change. :) These two are pretty special too! On the left is my baby sis Rae (Lily, Iris, and Abraham's mama) and on the right is my sweet sis-in-law Cristina (Luke's mama). All three of us Caffee women are expecting little ones in the coming months! (Yes, Rae is a Caffee too because she is married to Ben's baby brother Jake, but you probably already knew that.) I'm telling ya, the "Caffee Tribe" just keeps getting bigger! Rae's little "Violet" will be the first, then a few weeks later (hopefully a FEW) my little Sila...

Lately I've been thinking about how knitted booties look much more boyish than crocheted booties, so I decided that I need a crocheted pair to match the Claire/girl blanket and a knitted pair to match the Silas/boy blanket. Then that got me thinking about how I need to get past the "swatch" stage of knitting and learn to knit something useful. I watched a few You Tube videos, and spent waaay too much time on Ravelry (a girl can get lost there ya know), but I finally called my friend Cami who last time this year was knitting boy booties for her own little one. She came over yesterday and walked me through this simple little baby sock/bootie and I was really surprised at how easy it really was! I can knit! It's not perfect (at all) but I didn't expect to get this far! Now I want to try these booties in the gray yarn that I'm using in the boy (Silas) blanket. I can't wait to see how they turn out! I'm going on a little outing tomorrow an...

This is the "filled in" version of the original granny square baby blanket which is very lacy. I love this pattern because the result is a nice warm blanket with a beautiful mitered look. The pattern is also great for beginners because it is so easy that you can have it memorized by the end of this tutorial. To achieve the striped look in the blankets above, you will just need to follow this tutorial and change thread colors every two rounds. For the blankets above and in this tutorial, I used a US size G crochet hook with cotton sport weight yarn. Here we go! (Click on any picture below for a closer look.) Chain 6.   Slip stitch to beginning chain to form a loop. Chain 3, this counts as your first double crochet. Work 2 double crochet through loop. Chain 2. Work 3 double crochets through the loop. Work the pattern - chain 2 and 3 double crochet - until you have four sets in the loop. Slip stitch to the top of chain ...

So, I changed my mind about the girl blanket. For some reason the purple was just throwing me off, so I started another one with pink, gray, and natural......then my crazy pregnant brain kicked into overdrive and I thought about changing patterns, changing colors.....You get the idea. I finally decided to stick with what I had because I was obviously just going crazy and clearly incapable of making a rational decision. (That's not like me at all. I'm usually fearless when it comes to making decisions with colors or patterns!)  Then I went to the store, sticking with my decision, to get more natural yarn.....and they didn't have it anymore! So I got to change my mind again, but it couldn't be helped. I got the new "natural" that they were selling (which is really off-white if you ask me) and when I got home I changed the order of the colors up just a bit and now the phycotic pregnant woman is happy. Very happy in fact! Now I'm thinking of makin...