Monkey boy

So I finally put a face on my sock monkey and the first knitted item for my son is complete!


Cute, isn't he?

With a Sharpie pen to show his size.

And a backside view.

I had a little laddering with my dpn technique, but that's just the way it goes sometimes....

I am tickled pink with him. Now we just need to work on getting the crib finished (no, we still don't have the crib together...we got the new front in November and need to put it onto the crib). Then we can get the rest of the nursery together and more or less presentable for photos.

This pattern is the Monkee 2.0 from mybootee.com. Her patterns are free and she also sells kits for the animals that run from $14 - $20. This monkee is done with her Retro yarn. A kit provides enough yarn with a little extra left over for good measure in both the natural color and the hand-paint. Plus she includes fiberfill, embroidery floss, and a tapestry needle. I like her yarns because they really stripe well.

I ordered three more kits about a week or so ago and they are here...

I caved and cast-on for the hippo in the wee hours of this morning. I have kits for the giraffe, the hippo, and the turtle. She has a frog pattern in progress and the monkee 2.0 pattern can also be used for a bunny...you just change the ears and tail. I also need to get the piggy kit.

Now I need to go tackle this:

This room is so frustrating to me. I keep a generally clean house. Oh, sure, the yarn clutter piles up to a breaking point every now and then and the dust bunnies occasionally accumulate under the TV cabinet and I've been known to leave dishes in the sink for a day or two. But this room...this room rarely stays clean and organized for any amount of time. Ever since I cleaned out the closet in this room, the room has been a mess. There needs to be a happy balance between an organized closet and an organized room. The wall I don't show here is all shelving that is well organized with fabric and I am wondering if I need to add some more shelving in above my sewing area. (Can you even see my sewing machine in the upper right of the first photo?) My scrapping stuff is pretty well confined to the left side of the room, but I have too much and it is a fine line there between having it out to use and putting it away for sanity's sake. And whenever C gets tired of the yarn clutter in the living room, he knows that the cutting table is where he can put my stuff and at least I will know where it is. Thing is, the cutting table is buried and I really need to go deal with it all. What I'd like to do is work on my hippo, but that will wait until tonight.

I really need to cut fabric and sew today. I need to finish Florida SIL's Christmas gift and that requires sewing. We are also very lacking in quilt tops for NIN right now. The lady who usually brings a ton didn't come to the last meeting, so the rest of us quilt-top sewers need to whip some up for this month.