Double, double

There is lots to be said about "doubling" up on things.

My daughter Anna Maria's best childhood friend is expecting twins in a few months. We were excited to be part of hosting showers for her--one in my home for her high school friends, and another at church today for our parish community.

So far, my handiwork for baby gifts has been quilts, but I decided to break the mold this time and knit baby blankets. So I "doubled up" on some knitting. I did learn in this knitting process that the same size, but different composition, needle will yield a different guage. I used bamboo on the first (blue) blanket, but because the joint from the needle to the circular's "wire" was not smooth and my yarn kept catching, I switched to all plastic for the second (pink). Wow, what a difference. By the time I realized there was such a difference, I was too far along with not enough time left to go back and redo the pink for them to be identical. You can probably see the difference in the photo that I took as I was ready to wrap them.


There were several hostesses for the church shower today and a joint gift was purchased. My task for the shower was to get the corsage. I also volunteered to use my poinsettias for the serving table decoration. "Doubling up" all the way around here. Keep that stash ladies, every last bit of it. You never know when you can use the tiniest pieces of fabric.

The decoration theme for the shower today was rubber duckies.


Guess what, I made flannel duckie PJs for one of my granddaughters a couple years ago. I had only 2 small pieces of the fabric left, probably only 5x5 inches. Just put some craft weight "wonder under" on it, cut out the duckies with my embroidery scissors and voila, with a glue gun, there's a little something extra in the corsage!


Use another little duckie, along with some more stash (just plain gingham, again stiffened up with some "wonder under") and you've got a themed floral arrangement. These same poinsettias, by the way were wrapped in pink and blue gingham for the shower at my house earlier in the week--after being in the gold foil from the nursery for Christmas. (I usually use red poinsettias, but this I year opted for the white, knowing that they might soften the Christmas decor a bit for the shower.) Gee, I guess that's "tripling up"!


But I wouldn't wish "tripling up" for you, Jennie--doubling up with your twins is quite enough, don't you think?