Stripy Hat

It is amazing how satisfying it is to finish a project, especially when I created it from an idea in my head. Nick's Stripy Flap Hat is done. I had yarn left over from the green soaker and realized that I have made hats and mittens for myself, Tim, and other family members, but not for the kids. My first go at this hat was a bit small (more infant sized). I purposely made it smaller, knowing that Malabrigo grows when it is washed, but the first hat wasn't going to fit. The second time around I made it the right size and changed the construction around a little so I only had three ends to weave in and it was less fiddly.

The hat is so cute on Nicholas. I know the tassels on the ends of the ties are going to get ratty fast, but it was a good way to deal with the ends, since I bound off the bottom, did a little finger crochet for the ties with the bind off end and then wound the end into a tassel to finish it off. Now I need to make some thumb-less mittens to match

and he will be set. Next is a Tiger hat for Andrew and some mittens.




We had a good long weekend. After the fair on Friday, we took most of the rest of the weekend to work on the house. We have a bunch of stuff that just needs to be finished. The playroom is our current focus. We took down the crown molding and put it back up so it looks better this time. A work of advice, put on work gloves when using a coping saw. I have a nice pair of mostly leather work gloves I bought when we did the plumbing, but didn't actually put them on until I nicked my hand a few times. Monday we took the kids biking on the Gateway Trail. Andrew rode his trail-a-bike (which he loves) behind Tim and I pulled Nicholas in the trailer. We biked to the beginning of the trail (a little over a mile), biked for about five miles and then turned around. We stopped for a few minutes about four miles out.


Today we took advantage of the heat and not having preschool start until Thursday and went to the pool at the YMCA. Both the boys were little fish. Andrew was diving for his toys and swimming underwater. I had a mom ask me how he learned to swim so early. Nicholas wasn't sure he wanted to swim at first, but after watching for a bit I swung him through the water, which he loved, and he wanted to "swim" (laying on his tummy, holding his head up while I move him through the water) the rest of the time. I sat him on the ledge of the pool for a minute at one point only to have him try to propel himself back into the water. I also signed Andrew up for more swim lessons. Hopefully, he will be more interested in the teacher's agenda than his own this time.

We also had preschool activities tonight. We had a conference at Andrew's speech preschool and a open house at his regular preschool. When I saw that both were scheduled for the same evening on opposite ends of St. Paul, my first thought was to reschedule the conference. Then I decided that it would be better to just run around one night than multiple nights. We are hoping that Andrew won't need to go to speech preschool for long this year. He went from most people not understanding him last winter to having almost everyone understand what he is saying now. Andrew won't be completely happy to be done with speech preschool, but it will be nice to have the extra two days a week to do things like go to museums, story hour, parks, swimming, etc. that we just don't get to do as much when there is preschool everyday. Last year Andrew was also just tired by the end of the week which told me that there was just too much going on. He is very excited about starting school again though. He loves to learn new things.

Nicholas has changed so much this summer. Being ten months was a big turning point. In the course of a week he cut his eighth tooth, clapped, waved, and crawled for the first time. Now that he is an expert crawler he likes to crawl over to something and pull himself up to stand. He also likes to eat. With all those teeth he sometimes eats as much as Andrew. It is hard to believe how fast the last year went.

I seem to get climbed on a lot lately.

Ok, Ravelry is back up now so I'm off to continue updating my stash and projects. I haven't even gotten started on my queue. ;)