Purple Haze

Have you ever found yourself yelling at your child "Put this sweater on it's alpaca!"

No?

That's just me?

The Queen will never understand how spoiled she is.

 Seriously.

Who looks that unhappy when they're wearing a hand knit alpaca/wool blend?

I think she was just too busy to model.  She needed room to run and play.

Pattern:  Cozy Saturday

Yarn:  Knit Pick City Tweed DK

Needles: Maybe the size 6 and 7 the pattern calls for.  Maybe.

Modifications:  As always when I knit a sweater for the Queen I shorten the sleeves and lengthen the torso.

Review:  First let's talk about this yarn.

Look at all that tweed to love.  I am have a torrid affair with tweed right now.  I can not get enough of it and I want to knit ALL.THE.THINGS. in soft tweedy yarn.

What's not to love?

The Queen was incredibly busy.

So I had to bribe her with a donut

So I could try to get a shot of these gorgeous cables and lace.

Seriously.

I need to knit ALL.THE.THINGS in tweedy cables.

The pattern was pretty straight forward and easy to use.  It runs from size four to adult sizes so I am incredibly tempted to knit one for each of my daughters.  They are too old to think dressing alike is fun anymore.  But maybe if I knit each of them one in their favorite color they'll make an exception?  Just this once?

I think I just hatched an evil plot.

Must order more tweed!

Changes

I've known for some time that the Queen needed to move out of her crib. 

Night after night I could hear her banging around in there.

Yet I resisted.

She was safe in her crib.  She was contained in her crib.  And most importantly she was sleeping through the night in her crib.

I was unwilling to mess with any of that.

If it ain't broke don't fix it!

But I knew it was coming.  I had tentatively scheduled the change in my mind over spring break.  That seemed like a good time for a big room redo.  Because it wasn't just a matter of moving the crib out and putting a bed in.  Having the Queen free to move around the room requires next level baby proofing.  Having the children around to help supervise the Queen while The Greatest and I worked on her room seemed like a good plan.

Last week I moved her twin size mattress into her room to store until spring break.

When the Queen saw the mattress in her room she threw herself down on it.  She giggled and giggled and giggled the happiest of giggles.

And she refused to move.

So I laid beside her and sang "lullabies" to her (and by lullabies I mean I sing her old songs from the nineties that are way more inappropriate for children than I realized during the nineties).

And she slept.

There was no returning to the crib for this big girl.

Cue five days of frantic quilting

And painting

And more painting

And Lily-proofing until we had a perfect

 Big Girl Room.

With the exception of her humidifier and essential oil diffuser everything in her room is safe for her to touch and move and play with.   All outlets are locked.  There are multiple baby gates between her and the stairs (not that she can't safely navigate stairs, but I worry about her trying in the dark, and honestly I don't want her wandering downstairs at night.)

While she is not sleeping through the night in her big girl bed she does enjoy sleeping in it.

This morning she refused to get out of her bed.

When I finally managed to get her out of her bed and downstairs to get ready for preschool she was so angry at me she hid in the dryer in protest.

So all in all Operations Big Girl Room was a huge success.