I love being an aunt

I love being an aunt. I have four nephews and one niece, and they are all amazing. A few weeks ago I was talking on the phone with my middle brother about Christmas ideas for his four kids. Their family has started using an online wishlist, to help keep all the ideas together, so I was going over some of those ideas with him. In the background I suddenly heard his oldest boy pipe up with “but doesn’t she usually make us something?” I have to confess my heart melted more than a bit at that. Six can be a hard age to please sometimes, and I love that he looks forward to things that I make for him. He and his siblings are the main recipients for the toys and fun little things that I make, and it’s a perfect excuse for me to be like a kid again and play with those toys!!

It’s been so long since I’ve posted that I lost track of the projects that I’ve finished in the meantime. For a while I was in a writing funk, but was the complete opposite with yarn. So without further ado, the beginning of FO parade.

The twins – my youngest nephew and niece – are lucky they’re adorable, because I almost kept their birthday gifts for myself. For my last birthday I got Susan B. Anderson’s Itty-Bitty Toys, a fantastic book and one that will have a permanent place on my bookshelf. I had already made the bunny for my friend’s daughter, so I knew how easily the patterns flowed – I really like how Anderson constructs her toys as they go, it makes the final bits of assembly and finishing so much easier. The bunny was one of the few patterns I’ve done where I didn’t really change anything, or have to rewrite anything to make it easier on my poor literal brain.

For the second birthday of the indomitable E & E I decided to make a go at the reversible toys, and they turned out to be a ridiculous amount of fun. Don’t get me wrong – the little fiddly bits like the mouse feet and nose, and the turtle’s spots were kind of a pain, because they were so small. But the final assembly was like magic. It turned a mass of turtle spots and wiggly frog legs into something that made me giggle like a little kid. I finished what I dubbed the Furtle or Turog at work during my lunch break and promptly had to show it off to my coworkers – one of whom almost stole it from me! The pictures do not do this toy justice – they can’t show how fun it is to turn it inside out, revealing the hidden toy.

Start to finish the Furtle took barely any time at all. I worked on it a couple of hours a night, and during some lunches, and had both the Furtle and Cat/Mouse done in a week. [One recommendation to help with turtle spots – do pin them all on before sewing. That helps a lot with getting the proper spacing.] The reaction from E & E was everything I could have hoped for too. My nephew immediately found the turtle side and proudly walked around with the “tuh-tle” the rest of the night. His sister greeted Cat/Mouse with the cutest little “meow” and had great fun trying to switch them back and forth – for a two year old that does require quite a bit of concentration and maybe some help with coordination for the switchover.

But back to Christmas . . .

After overhearing my nephew, I took a look at their online lists to try and find some inspiration, thinking maybe I could find some kind of fun hat or small toy or something to go along with something from the list. Coming from a medieval history and literature background, as soon as I spotted The Knight and the Dragon and The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions on the lists of the two oldest boys, I was sold. A quick search of Ravelry found me a perfect companion – chainmail hats (available originally here)! In a perfect twist of fate, as I was telling my brother about this, he told me that the oldest had been wondering if I could make a chainmail hat for them! In order to help distinguish the two hats, I’m going to do a mess of i-cord and sew the outline of a crown around the top of the hats, red for I., and blue for J. For the twins, so the boys hats don’t get immediately stolen, are coordinating princess and prince hats. The princess one is nearly done (I just have to sew the hat bad down), and the prince one is begun.

Pictures will come next time (and there won't be a 3 month wait, I promise!).