Things I make for Maddy: more Maddy-pants!

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I posted last, but it was long enough ago that I’d forgotten what my last post was about – how funny that I’ve got two posts in a row (but almost 2 months apart) about the same pattern! I ended up going up two sizes with the (modified) Vanilla pattern in hopes of being able to finish before Maddy outgrew them, and it worked:

I used the brown shade of Lion Brand Fishermens Wool this time around, and I’m really happy with that choice! I also added a little detail that I didn’t use with the first pair of Maddypants:

See that little mini-cable running up the side “seams”? I figured that since I crossed the stitches when I joined to knit the main part of the soaker in the round, I’d just keep crossing them this time, every other row. The purl columns on either side of the mini-cable are just carried along from the sl1-p1 edge I used along the part of the pattern that’s knit flat. I like how “fancy” this little soaker looks, just from one really simple modification. All of the other changes I made for these Maddypants are the same as the ones I made the first time I knit the pattern.

The fit is great – there’s still some room and stretch for her to grow into them a bit, but they’re not baggy on her. Right now I’m using these less as a true soaker, and more as a sort of soft pair of shorts over her Thirsties covers (which in turn are over a cotton prefold). Right now we don’t have a good set-up for drying wool soakers if we used them that way, so I don’t particularly want this one to get “soaked” until we figure something out on that front!

I’d like to say I’ll be posting more frequently than every 2 months or so, but I have no idea – life is just crazy right now! Maddy and I just spent 10 days traveling to Minnesota and then Kansas to visit family, and now that we’re back, I’m trying to make progress on my dissertation, prep next year’s class that I’ll be teaching, and most importantly of all, get me and Maddy sleeping better, because I’m so sleep-deprived I can barely function! This week I celebrated my 29th birthday. I took a picture with my girl to mark the first day of the last year of my twenties:

Just for good measure, I’ll close this post with a picture of my dear girl that includes her lovely face and not just her bottom or the back of her head:

4.5 months old and so very big already! I still can’t believe that tiny little me produced such a giant baby. She’s developing in leaps and bounds, and it’s so exciting (if exhausting) to watch her grow into the intense little person she’s becoming.