7 Quick Takes Friday {Take 14}

-1- It's a gorgeous fall morning here, which has heralded...sickness in our house. :( Anne and Henry were both coughing last night. Henry managed to fall asleep, but Anne required some tending. She startles a lot in her sleep, so I heard lots of "Mama!"'s throughout the evening and night, but if I still heard her after 30 seconds I went in to do a soothe. I have to say, I rather enjoyed it. :) She was *extremely* snuggly and for an active toddler who doesn't want to sit and cuddle anymore, I'm taking advantage of this to it's fullest. Henry is home from school today, having lots of coughing attacks this morning, poor babe, so I'll be doing some fussing later. It's what I do best.

-2- Also later, I have dance class, and our new troupe top and belt sets have arrived from Egypt. Claire has heralded the news on Facebook by reveling in the fact that the tops, after YEARS of our asking for this very thing, are *finally*, drum roll...DIFFERENT SIZES!!! We've had multiple costume designers, and this top problem is consistent with each one of them. Do women not have different sized breasts in Egypt? This is just confounding. But we have troupe members ranging in bra size from A to DD, and yet the tops never account for this, despite our sending the measurements. The larger cup ladies end up having to sew additional fabric into their tops for modesty, and the smaller cup ladies are tucking things that aren't supposed to be tucked and padding with desperation to try and assure that the tops don't gap open. It's not so easy to alter a heavily beaded and sequined fabric, as you can imagine.

Want to know what we did differently this time? Claire procured foam balls from the craft store, and we all measured them against our feminine charms, cutting and shaping them appropriately, and *sent them to Egypt* so that the male designer would have breast sized foam balls for each needed size. There was a bit of confusion in the English-Arabic translation on this one ("What are you sending me?! Models?!" God only knows what he *thought* was going to be in the box) but all is well that ends well. Class is going to be fun tonight. :)

-3- I have been hard at work on my Jesse Tree ornament assignment for the swap I'm in, which is the lamb.

*angels sing*

A LAMB!! I have the pleasure of making 32 lambs for the enjoyment of others this Advent. :)

-4- On that note, my first order of business was determining how I was going to make aforementioned lamb. I knew that I wanted to crochet them, but I obviously needed a pattern that would be quick and easy to make, while maintaining all possible cuteness. I found a pattern for a crocheted nativity set and loved the lamb in it, so I thought I'd experiment with that. The pattern calls for sport weight yarn, and in fact the ornaments need to be on the small side for ease of use and shipping, so this sounded perfect. An archeological dig through my stash revealed a *perfect* fuzzy alpaca blend in the very color of a sheep's body, but it is worsted weight. No matter, this was just an experiment to see how long the pattern would take me to bang out one lamb, so I used it. Over an episode of Breaking Bad, I made the body according to pattern:

Hum. Great nubby texture, and the halo nature of this nature is just awesome for sheep, but we're getting on the large side, are we not? I was planning to order some sport weight yarn, although it isn't available in this awesome fuzzy yarn, but still, I'm concerned. Once I stitched the head:

You can see the problem here. :) It's too large, yes, although a lot of that would be remedied in a sport weight version, but even just these 2 body parts took me an entire evening to crochet. That doesn't even account for ears, tails and legs. What is a girl to do?

-5- Consult her knitting group, that's what!! After much helpful consultation and lamb manipulation (no lambs were harmed in this experiment), we have:

TA DAAAAAA! Isn't he precious? All he needs is a string, and he's ready to go on your tree. :) This modification of the pattern means that I can still use the perfect fuzzy lamb yarn (ordering more today) and yet he turns out the perfect size. I can also crochet several of these lamb bodies in a single night, and will likely do all the legs and stuffing together at the end. He is small and soft and wonderful in all his lamby goodness. I knew I had a winner when Anne came up behind me making kissing noises and wanting to commandeer him as her own. As soon as my yarn order arrives, mass lamb production will commence. You will see updates as events transpire. :)

-6- Assuming the kids are feeling better, we're going apple and pumpkin picking this weekend. Have I mentioned how much I adore the fall? Gosh, I love it so much. We're aiming for a vigil Mass so that we can have our outing Sunday morning. We'll see if the children cooperate. But Anne is obsessed with pumpkins, so she's highly motivated to make this happen. Perhaps I could crochet her an amigurumi pumpkin. Wait, what am I thinking? MY CUP RUNNETH OVER WITH SEASONAL CRAFTING. Somebody stop me.

-7- If you have any prayer requests for me, just leave me a comment. So glad to have you here reading my humble blog. :)

And here's another lamb cavorting shot, just for good measure:

Have a blessed weekend! Head over to Conversion Diary for more 7 Quick Takes!