Monday, February 18, 2013

One Week Old

 
A week ago today one of my dear friends gave birth to a beautiful little boy. You may recall last month when I threw a baby shower for Brandon, well she's the new mom!! Congratulations!

Ages ago I made a tiny Yoda hat; it was for Brandon's little guy. I thought it would be funny to make matching green Yoda mittens and booties. I was mental before the baby shower and only ended up getting the mittens done with the promise of booties at "some point."


The mittens looked tiny to me. I compared them to some mittens K had when he was a baby that were massive on him. These were a tad smaller, but I just couldn't imagine them being much tinier and actually fitting.

I found a pattern online (although I can't seem to find it anymore - if I come across it again, I will link it here) and thought that the design was nice and simple. A lot of the crochet patterns I was finding were quite lacy. Cute perhaps, but not quite suited for Yoda-inspired wear. These work up super quickly. In fact, I started and finished them while waiting for a doctor's appointment to see my baby.


After the baby shower I had a bit more time, but as I've mentioned, I've been exhausted. I figured I would get the booties done between the party and the due date, but they just kept getting put on the back burner.


I'd started them ages ago on a Shinkansen ride home fromYokohama, but there they sat, half finished for a few weeks.


Brandon and I had plans to meet for lunch last Wednesday, so that was my new deadline. I got to work and finished the final bootie on Saturday.


Again, they look so tiny to me that I can't actually imagine that they would fit the little man, but it was too late to make new ones.


Once I'd made the Yoda hat, mittens and booties, I thought about what I would dress my kid in to wear all this. Everything would just look a tad silly. Separately the items are fine, but all together it would look fairly ridiculous. I decided that just to be a bit over the top, I would dye a kimono-style baby outfit grey to match all of the other Yoda-inspired pieces. I took a look through K's old baby clothes and found a long, pale yellow one that he probably never wore since it was too hot when he was born to be dressing him in the long version.


I really did not want to dye the outfit using Rit dye or something with chemicals, so I looked online for natural ways to dye and found that grape juice is supposed to dye things grey. Perfect!


I let the outfit sit for an hour or two and then finally took it out and gave it a good rinse.


It was hardly grey. Definitely purple (and a bit tie-dyed - whoops!). I was so bummed. I looked through the closet again, but this was the only long version I could find. I decided that maybe the color would be better if I dyed it in tea. So I made SUPER strong jasmine tea and soaked the outfit again.


When I washed it out and then put it through the laundry, I found it had turned a nice shade of tan. It's not grey, but definitely better than purple.


As it turns out, Brandon and I (obviously) never met on Wednesday. We talked on Sunday and she told me that she might not make it until then. Alas, she went into full-on labor and the baby was born on Monday. We weren't able to go see the little guy in the hospital, but we stopped by on Saturday bearing the gifts above, and a baked treat as well (stay tuned). OMG is the little dude adorable!!! He's just so tiny (yet really not tiny at all for a 6 day old), and of course the mittens and booties are massive.

Congratulations again, Brandon and Shin! I am so excited to see more of the three of you!!

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