Present for a baby boy

This is what baby shower present you're bound to get when your parents named you Rafaël... Although the final result is OK, this wasn't one of my most successful projects :-(
At first I cut out the pattern pieces for a little shirt, but I ruined them at once by trying to sew on those fleece wings with my sewing machine. Both fabrics stretching in all directions of course, why on earth did I think I could pull that off? Running out of time, I bought a ready made onesie, and started anew. I stitched the fleece wings onto fusible interfacing, medium quality, and then zig-zagged the black lines on. That was a time consuming enterprise, argh! That done, I cut them out carefully, ironed the wings onto the onesie and zig-zagged once more around them. When I finished it, it occurred to me that I could just as well have painted the wings on with fabric paint. Oh well...

Animal farm

When I stumbled upon this delightful (and free!) paper model by Fantasy cutouts.com, I thought my daughter might like to do a room box project with me. A shoebox was found quickly enough (my sisters don't call me Imelda for nothing LOL!). We collected some moss from the garden, and cut out landscapes from an old magazine for a background. With glue and sand we made a winding path to lead right up to the front door of the little shack. The shoe box proved too small for the cottage though, and she kept taking it out anyway, so the project was never really completed, that is to say... in my eyes it wasn't. I guess the concept of making this box 'just to look at' was a bit lost on my three year old ;-)) Laura sees it quite differently: she lets her tiny horses and care bears play in the 'miniature garden', as she calls it, with a swing, a slide and a seesaw. The cottage she just puts up wherever she fancies it, in the window between the plant pots for example. The roof is removable, so the cute little farm animals can stay indoors when it's cold outside. They are also free cutouts, located at Agence eureka (blog entry of January 22). I found her through Meggiecat, who's lovely and generous blog I truly like. Check them out, if you haven't done so already!

Bow hairband

Half a year has gone by like a whirlwind, with no time to craft, let alone post to my blog! Slowly, ever so slowly, our baby is now learning to sleep through the night, leaving me a little less exhausted than I have been all these months. Arrival of the spring season makes me want to clean up and finish all those projects that had been put on hold! As each year, by the end of winter, mice become a real pest at our house. They raid our laundry basket and eat the stains in the children's clothes, thereby ruining many a favourite piece ;( Ofcourse I'm to blame too: because I can't bear to kill them, we set live traps an expell them from the house when we catch 'em. I bet they slip right back in when our backs are turned ;) Last week I found my daughters bow hairband full of holes, and man, was I vexed!!! Taking apart what was left of it, I proceeded to make a new one right away, taking pictures as I went. This little tutorial came out of it. Enjoy!

She's three...

I can't believe how fast it all went... my baby has just turned three. A nostalgic present I made her was this travelling pouch for the little bunny rabbit. I wonder if many of you remember them from your own childhood. I recall making several when I was about 10 years old: cut off the bottom of a plastic canister (shower gel, fabric softener, whatever), pierce holes along the rim, and crochet a lovely pouch in no time! The exciting new thing in it for me was knitting an I-cord. I saw this at knittinghelp.com and had wanted to try it for a long time (just never got to it until now).

Arrrrr!

My little sister recently gave birth to a little boy, named Flint. That name rang a bell somewhere... Suddenly I remembered the TV-series I watched years ago on German television: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. I enjoyed it very much, but when I hired a copy of the Walt Disney version sometime after that, I was sorely disappointed: it didn't come close! We're talking 1994 here, no Internet yet, I didn't even own a computer at the time... I knew of no way to get hold of that film. My enthusiasm instantly revived, I did a Google image search for 'Jim Hawkins' and recognised *my* film at once. It proved to be a French/German co-production: Die Schatzinsel (L'ile au trésor). Amazon.de carries it, so I ordered a copy right away. Arrrrr!!!! Anticipating it's arrival with delight, I made this hat for the newborn pirate (here modeled by my sweet and patient DD). It's loosely based on a tutorial at Tomlitoo, but done in fleece instead of paper.
For those of you that love the book and would like to read a few passages: Dead Men Tell No Tales offers the complete novel online for free, and sells tons of delightful pirate goodies too.

Chestnuts and acorns

How to amuse an -almost- three year old when it's raining AGAIN? The enormous amount of chestnuts in our garden prompted me to do a quick internet search. At Tête à modeler I found a tutorial for a cute little animal. Inka Grebner has some good suggestions too. I came up with this little bug; now ain't he sweet?

Keeping those tiny legs warm

It comes as no surprise that having a new baby in the house has kept me very busy. What spare time I had left those past ten weeks, went into sewing diapers and covers in all kinds of colours. I had previously made a number of different waterproof diaper covers to find the best fit, they did turn out gorgeous, but... I ended up liking none of them for the red marks they leave on my babe's tender skin. I like the felted wool covers much better (in the picture Lucie is wearing a triangle style felted wool cover, how to make those I learned at borntolove.com and Bright New Baby) and in addition I whipped up a bunch of fleece covers, using Stacey's method to draw a pattern. I also tried various kinds of diaper patterns, and for Lucie's slender thighs, Shar's version of Wee Weka Side Snap pocket adjusted to a NB size had the perfect fit. I left out the snaps and the Velcro though, as I prefer using Meghan Wyant's Velcro closer, which allows me to toss the dipes in the washing machine without having to bother about the Velcro tabs.
So far the only really new thing I've been able to try is making these baby leg warmers. I made them out of children's tights, as they appear to come much cheaper than ladies knee socks ;)) How to make them is shown by Baby Hopes. Can you believe we needed leg warmers in august this year!?!

VBAC

Now here was something I desperately wanted to try: to give birth to my second child the way my body was made to do. My first birthing experience wasn't too good. Our peaceful homebirth got all messed up. A cascade of interventions (all done in my best interest, yeah sure...) led to an emergency CS 24 hours later, and my sweet little girl I didn't get to hold or even touch the first few lonely hours after they stitched me up. I was grinding my teeth all through this second pregnancy, doing lots of research on VBAC and finding out how this happens to countless women around the globe. Visiting the pregnancy and birth forum at MDC almost every day, I became very well informed on the subject. So when my OB suggested we'd plan for an ERC at 38 weeks gestation, I freaked out. Because my scar didn't heal at all well at the time, she was afraid VBAC would be too risky, maybe even holding a 10% chance for rupture during labor. Eek!!! We asked for a compromise: doing an ultrasound of the lower uterine segment at 32 and again at 38 weeks, to see where we'd stand, and decide from there. And so we did: at 38 weeks I measured 4,4 mm, which is way beyond the cut-off (3,5 mm) most studies state as 'safe'. The deal was on!
We wrote a very clear birth plan, mainly stating that I wanted to be left alone, no drugs, no interventions whatsoever, and no staff in my room except for the (hospital) midwife. In return we agreed to constant EFM (external monitoring only) and promised to show up in hospital as soon as contractions were coming 5 minutes apart for over an hour. Now that was the nerve wrecking part. I knew that I would probably not be dilated much by then, but would need to maintain my calm to make any progress. And sure enough, contractions petered out once I set foot in that hospital room. Grrrrr! I don't exactly remember how I regained my confidence, but after three hours I was able to concentrate again, and things went smoothly from there. We called my acupuncturist and she came over to do some needlework on me. Contractions became much more intense right away, and as I was on the monitor, the midwife came running right in to find out what was going on. She never saw an acupuncturist at work before, and was quite puzzled by the obvious result :)) When the midwife came to check on me a few hours later, I couldn't believe my ears: 9 cm!! It was going to happen! My body did great! Then my bag of waters kind of exploded (really impressive that was, ha ha) and after 12 hours of labour, I was ready to push. Our Lucie was born easily: three pushes was all it took. They placed her on my belly right away, and three hours later we were home!!!
In retrospect I'm really thankful that my OB treated us so respectfully, thinking with me and not for me. And I'm delighted our birth plan was followed to the last detail. Who would have thought this was possible: same hospital, totally different birthing experience!!!