She's Good People

I tried the Lentil Sausage Soup that Ouiser recommended the other day. Unlike Ouiser, I did have leeks on hand, but the two recommended by the recipe was not enough to get 4 cups. I needed more like 4 leeks. But I made up the lacking 2 cups with the abundance of onion I had. The recipe recommends 3 large yellow onions to make 4 cups, but I got 4 cups with 2 onions. The celery and carrot estimates were right on, though. It was especially good with the recommended parmesan sprinkled on top, so make sure you don't skip that, if you try it.

The hooded towels are finished, in all their glorious hoodiness. I kind of wish they made these for adults, they look so comfortable to me. They'd have to be much, much bigger. In fact, these look to me like they will be huge when Baby Girl first arrives, but all the better to swaddle her in. In fact, the hood looked strangely small to me when I first cut it out, but now I think it just looks small in comparison to the size of the towel. Hopefully they'll keep a little of the wet off us. They were ridiculously easy, for anyone who's thinking of making some.

Also silly easy? Burp cloths. I didn't really make these, I guess, so much as embellish them, but either way, they have been fast, easy, and pleasing. I got some flannel on sale at JoAnn's. A quarter-yard made 2 burp cloths and cost about 60 cents each. The cloths themselves are the cheap, bird's-eye cloth diapers. The kind you don't dare use for actual cloth diapering, but that are supposed to make great rags, burp cloths, changing pads, etc. They're prefolds and I just topstictched the flannel onto the center panel of the diaper, so there are lots of absorbent layers in that middle part. I considered folding in the thinner sides and sewing the whole thing up as a more narrow rectangle, but decided that extra width may save some shirt sleeves during the spit-up process in case one's aim is a bit off. Anyway, I got through these before my back was getting to me, so I'll finish up a few more tomorrow for a nice, round dozen. Should be plenty, no?

Last, but so far from least, this sling arrived from Stardust Shoes yesterday!

Back in July I saw this beautiful baby sling that she had made and posted about. I asked her for any tips regarding a good pattern or how to make one size-appropriate for a 5'10" slinger, such as myself. Instead she offered to just make me one! I can't get over how generous she is. It's awesome, Stardust! I love it! And I love blogland so much, where women just do these things for one another, out of pure good-heartedness. She doesn't even know me. I'm blown away with the thoughtfulness and the time she took to make it.

(By the way, in purusing Stardust Shoe's blog tonight, I discovered she just recently created a tutorial for the very same burp cloths I made above! You can find it here. And there's another tutorial by her for appliqueing onesies. Remeber I tried that a little while ago? Looks like I used a similar method, though I still need more practice. She's also updated her cloth baby shoes tutorial, which I plan to reattempt someday soon.)