The new puppy and his coat

My sister Eliza just got a new puppy. His name is Wilson and he is a cross between a french bulldog and a pug. Henry and I have been spending a lot of time in Mississauga this past week enjoying the new puppy and enjoying the company while Kevin is on a business trip.

Yesterday I sewed him up a doggy coat using the pattern from One Yard Wonders to keep him warm this winter.


And here are some pictures of Henry meeting the puppy. So far Henry loves watching Wilson when he is moving around but when they get close Wilson tends to lick Henry which Henry does not like. Henry doesn't cry or anything he just pulls his hand away or turns his head (depending on what is getting licked) and pulls a yucky face. He's started pulling the face before Wilson even gets too close to him.


Henry's favourite part about the new puppy though is probably all the new toys lying around. We tried to keep their toys separate at first but that was too difficult and they probably all have equal proportions of baby and dog slobber on them. It is funny how similar the 9 month old and the puppy are.

Another Sweater for Henry

I used my new sewing skills and the Ottobre pattern I used last week to whip up another sweater for Henry yesterday. I used an old sweater of mine and changed up the pattern a bit. I like how it turned out, totally something I would wear, exactly how I want to dress my baby.


You can see in this picture how I used the sweater, making the sides of the old shirt the middle of the new which looks kind of cool with the ribbing in the middle.


And I just cut a slit in the front to make a little V-neck. I used other parts of the sweater as binding all around the neck hole. And other than that I used finished edges of the old sweater as the finished edges of my new sweater so there was no hemming - important when working with knits. This material is a thick knit cotton so we'll see how the seams hold up to wear and washing. Not sure about fraying even though I zig zagged all the seams.

Moving Moving Moving

Henry has gained super mobility power over the weekend. All of a sudden he does most of his crawling up on his knees as opposed to slithering, he can move from crawling to sitting himself, and he's pulling himself up on the furniture all the time. He's just about to turn 9 months old and he's so grown up all of a sudden. He's even gotten into climbing the stairs. At Nana's he crawled all the way up one flight of stairs (in pursuit of his cup tower of course). And so now he's getting into all sorts of trouble as you can see in these pictures.

Henry's Second Chair: a dino chair

I finished Henry's second chair that I've been planning since I was about half done his first chair. I'm pretty darn proud of it, in fact I think it turned out awesome! I should mention Kevin drew the dinosaur for me.


Like the first chair, it is made of 2x4s, about $3 worth of them. Except the dinosaur was cut out of some pine that I still had left over from when I would take the scraps home from carpentry school. But unlike the first chair there is not a single screw or nail showing. (Screws hold the seat on but they are only visible from underneath.) Everything else is attached by biscuits or dowels or just 'routered' out spaces and glue. It was really fun figuring that all out and putting it together like a puzzle. I am already thinking about making the next one with a squirrel instead of the dino and leaving it unpainted and after that maybe experimenting with an upholstered chair. Such fun!

Henry's New Outfit and Sewing with Knits

I made Henry a little outfit! The top is a pattern from an Ottobre magazine and the pants are just the pattern I made from his existing pants that I've used before. I bought myself a couple of back issues when they were offering a 30% discount through Soulemama's blog a little while ago. I made both the top and the pants from a large women's long sleeve T I bought from the thrift store just for this. And the purple is from an old T of my sister's. Purple is both Henry's and my sister's favourite colour so it works out well.


I am so happy with how it turned out. I think he will probably wear the two pieces separately more than together to avoid the prison look. And I'm so proud of how well I did sewing with quite a stretchy material. I didn't learn any big secret or anything. I was just very careful and patient. And I did binding with the purple instead of hemming and I know that helped.

In the brewery: Clove Wine and Pineapple Wine

We did some bottling tonight. Bottled our clove wine and our pineapple orange juice wine that we started a few months ago. This meant we also got to taste them! The clove wine tasted like cloves but tasted better and not as weird as we had guessed. And the pineapple orange juice wine had a lot of pineapple taste but no orange taste. And it was weird because it wasn't sweet at all. Mostly though it really tasted like a white wine and it was pretty good. We just had a gallon of each and we did half of each sparkling and half flat. We will be drinking them soon.

Both of these are recipes from First Steps in Winemaking.

And Henry was keeping us company while we bottled and was being a bit moany. Until we put him in the bucket that is. He loved it in there and played happily for around 15 minutes.

Slippers for me

I knit something for me for a change. I made these slippers with some yarn I had. And as you can see I ran out of the green yarn. But I like the blue tow - wish I had done that on the first one too. Oh well. I like them, they're warm and comfy and think they look cool.

I used this pattern that I found on ravelry.

And The Ducks

I somehow forgot to add any duck pictures in the last post, oh well I'll do a separate post. We came across this group of ducks at the end of the walk so I took Henry out of the carrier to give him a better look.

Nature Walk

We've been getting some lovely warm weather this week and Henry and I have been taking full advantage and going on lots of nature walks. He loves them. We walk to Hillside Park and I take him out of the ergo and let him do some exploring. He gets to check out the creek and the leaves on the ground and the trees. And each day I seem to let him get a little dirtier than the day before.


The past couple days I didn't take my camera and totally just enjoyed the moment but it was so picturesque that today I brought the camera. And so of course it turned into a full on photo shoot and these are some of my favourites.

Henry's New Hat

I made Henry another hat. I was attempting to make the Sweet Pea Pilot cap last week and the one I was making was coming out way too small so I scrapped it and rather than start all over again I came up with this.

I just took a hood off an old adult's sweatshirt, cut it to about Henry's size, had to dart along the existing seams to make it fit right. Then I zig zag stitched along that seam with the purple just for looks and added the purple binding around the edges and as a strap, very similar to the Sweet Pea Pilot Cap. The purple binding is the waistband off another old sweatshirt. I found the sweatshirts to be very easy to work with as well as soft and warm, will have to come up with some more projects to use them for soon.

I have actually been doing loads of sewing recently but it is mostly for Christmas presents so I won't be posting it till later.

Oh and the very best thing about this hat which makes it better than any other I've made is that it seems Henry cannot pull it off his head! A very important requirement for an 8 month old.

Henry's Favourite Thing

Henry's favourite thing right now is standing at the windowsill. He'll stay there for an hour especially if there are birds at the bird feeder. And he gets to practice his standing and now hiw walking too. He's started shuffling from one side of the long windowsill to the other. Sometimes to get a toy we put out and sometimes to try and reach the ivy that hangs in front of the window on one end. I've always loved our humungous living room window and now I love it even more.