Dancing Sheep: A Tisket, A Tasket

Bunnies for a Basket...

We celebrated Easter today at Chez Moutons Dansant and we had a very pleasant, though, quiet time. We roused ourselves a bit earlier than usual and plopped Pooh Bear into the bathtub for a quick scrub down before I got to torture her by dressing her up in her new Easter dress. We were early for mass (amazing) and found seats by the aisle which is a must-have feature when taking a wiggly almost 15 month old to church (we were especially glad when the service ran really long - an hour and 20 minutes??!!). After church we went out for brunch and were stunned to find the brunch is not a big thing for Seattlites on Easter - there was no line at all, and this was a restaurant that normally has a little bit of a wait on normal weekend mornings... go figure. I'd love to sow you a picture of my little girl all dolled up in her adorable dress complete with matching shoes, socks and headband but unfortunately we did not take pictures before church and on the drive home from brunch we experienced The Chocolate Incident* so suffice to say there are no pictures. I plan on recreating the look later this week and taking some pictures then.

*The Chocolate Incident - still too painful to go into in great detail, but let's just say Daddy let a certain little girl hold onto a foil wrapped chocolate Easter egg on the car ride home and the combination of a warm little hand, a sunny day's greenhouse effect through car windows, and a pale yellow dress trimmed in white was NOT GOOD. BTW, should you ever need to put your baby's hair into a mohawk hairstyle, let me suggest chocolate as an effective gel/mousse substitute. Oh, and Hubby's famous last words: I never thought it would melt that way...

Back at home we gave (a newly cleaned up and changed) Pooh Bear her first Easter basket - at this time last year I just didn't have the energy to give a 3 month old a basket, in fact, I don't have any recollection of last Easter at all. No candy for her this year, but she did get a new outfit for spring, a new book and two new Mommy-Knits: a toy rabbit and a new hat.

I decided two weeks ago that she "needed" a bunny in her basket but since I have banned the buying of stuffed animals (something my mother-in-law conveniently forgets on a regular basis) for Pooh Bear owing in part, to my already large collection I decided I would knit her a new bunny instead. The rabbit is the Toy Rabbit from Natural Knits for Babies & Moms. It was a quick knit although the seaming & finishing took a bit longer than I expected. The instructions for the knitting part of the project were very clear but I would have appreciated a bit more detail in the finishing instructions. The rabbit turned out fairly well I think (just don't inspect my seaming too closely, please, I am still a relatively new knitter and my seaming skills leave a bit to be desired), even my husband admitted it was cute.

Details: Toy Rabbit from Natural Knits for Babies & Moms; Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton in Nut Brown and Bone, knit on size 7 Crystal Palace Bamboo straight needles. I completed the project in a week and a half and I did not work on it exclusively during that time.

I finished up the rabbit on Wednesday and I was thrilled to be done ahead of time so I wouldn't have to panic about finishing something at the last minute. Very proud of myself.

And then, well, then a, um, wild hare got me, if you'll pardon the pun.

It wasn't my fault, really. I fell victim to the overwhelming cuteness that is baby knitting. I succumbed to the power of Itty Bitty Hats. I really don't understand it. I have looked at Itty Bitty Hats on several occasions and was never moved to buy the book. I read other people's posts about their Itty Bitty projects and yet, I was not moved. But after reading this post over on Knitty Bloggy Baby Bumpers I HAD to make the Bunny Tail Hat for Pooh Bear.

No problem really, hats are generally quick-ish knits except that I make this decision at 11:00pm on Thursday night! Um, note to self, Easter is on Sunday. That would be two days. This still might not be a huge issue if say, I actually owned the book and could cast on immediately (assuming I had appropriate yarn in the stash and the correct size needles). But I don't own the book. Fast forward to Friday morning, I conveniently manage to work picking up the book into my other errands and find to my great delight that I already have the prescribed yarn and needles.

See. I am clearly destined to make this hat.

What was I thinking? I can't cast on until my daughter goes down for a nap which doesn't happen until 1:30 on Friday. Even the mathematically challenged amongst you can calculate that I have less than 48 hours to complete this project. Folks, I feel the need to remind you that I am a slow knitter. Clearly, pregnancy induced insanity has gripped my brain as I enter my third trimester.

But wait, you say. There is a picture of a bunny hat in the basket at the beginning of this post.

Ah. Well. You see, aside from suffering from insanity, I also have insomnia (which now that I think about it, might contribute to the insanity). Under normal circumstances this is a bad thing but when you have a knitting project to complete in a short amount of time this is a good thing. When I can't sleep on Friday night I whip out the Bunny Tail Hat and I get the main body of the hat complete through the decreases. Yesterday I managed to get the first ear done and last night ear number two. And lickety-split, I added the pom-pom tale and ribbons. Ta da! A hat, in under two days. Although I wouldn't suggest this process to anyone not suffering from insomnia.

Details: Bunny Tail Hat from Itty Bitty Hats; Rowan Classic Yarn Baby Cashsoft DK in White knit on Size 7 Addi Turbo circulars and Skacel bamboo dpns.

And so my darling girl had wonderful handmade with love from her mommy gifts for Easter.