Autumn in Santa Barbara

Enjoying the harvest at their uncle's house:



Picking the perfect pumpkin:



Finding lizard friends at the park:



Making and re-making the Autumn Nature Table:



Practicing dressing up for Halloween: (The amazing felted fox hat is from vaiva nat on etsy.)

Incredibly Easy Baby Sweater Pattern

With so many of my dearest friends pregnant, I have been knitting a little again. This sweater just happened organically, but it turned out so cute I wanted to share the pattern. It is suitable as a first knitting project so even if you are very new to knitting, this is one that you can do in a couple of days:



I used a chunky weight alpaca yarn.

To make the front piece:
cast on 28 rows
knit 52 rows (26 wavy lines)
cast off

To make the back piece:
repeat what you did for the front piece

To make the sleeves
cast on 20
knit 32 (16 wavy lines)
(do this twice so that you have two sleeves)

Arrange the front and back pieces so that the front piece is right-side up and the back piece is above it, upside down.
Whipstitch the shoulders together, leaving a lot of room in the middle for Baby's head to come through.
Arrange the sleeves so that the lines are going the opposite way as the lines of the body. Whipstitch all the way across so that you now have a shape like a cross. Then you can fold the sweater at the neck and whipstitch from the edge of the sleeve down to the armpit, and all the way down to the bottom of the sweater.

Make a Heavy Baby

Both the girls love their heavy babies, which I made as birthday presents this year. The pattern is from www.dreampixie.com, and is so easy! There is something different about a handmade toy that we have never captured in the store-bought variety. I think my girls can feel the love that went into making their dolls every time they hold them. I wondered if watching me make them would diminish the magic of seeing the finished baby, but I don't think it did. If anything, it made them appreciate the effort it takes to make a toy.