Banju to You!

Hello! How are you today? Are you enjoying the weather where you are? We are! Everyday we take the girlies outside so they can play for a bit. Well, Amelia plays, Alyssa falls asleep in her swing.


Amelia is finally getting to play in her water table we got her for her birthday (February 11). We actually didn't tell her about it until we put it together. I generally don't tell Amelia about things until right before they happen that way if things change she won't be disappointed. Which stops any meltdowns that would follow had she known.


I also just bought them a little dollar store pool. Amelia loves it but Alyssa would rather just sit on my lap and chew on my fingers. Yeah, she's teething already. Well anyway, I have the neatest thing to show you...


It's called a banju pillow, I think. I was browsing google images for cushion ideas and ran into this particular pillow through indulgy.com. I followed it to see if it came with a pattern but it was written in German. And being that I don't speak German, or read it for that matter, I couldn't find where the pattern came from.


I did search for quite some time and just decided to dive in using the picture(s) I found as my guide. After I had one side done, I finally found the pattern but decided against buying it because it was going so well without it.


I sewed some fleece in the middle on the wrong side because there are gaps between the second and third/fourth rounds and I didn't want fiberfill to spill out. I got some great new needles by sewology from Hobby Lobby that are super sharp (ask my thumb... Ok! I purposely poked my thumb on the needle to see how sharp it was) and they made it so much easier to poke the yarn through the fleece.


These are so much fun to make, so much so that I made two! The rainbow one for my sister and the larger one for my bed. It's now Elliott's pillow, just so you know.


I used my I hook on the larger pillow and did double crochet for the edges. I liked the way it looked but it made the pillow harder to stuff because it would just stretch instead of getting firmer. I used my H hook on my sister's and did half double crochet between the two halves. The smaller gauge and hdc made it easy to stuff and it wasn't as squeeshy as mine.


And if you're wondering, I didn't get all fancy with the green blanket as my background. It's just the thing that Alyssa was rolling around on in the living room.


And of course, the best part of making anyone a gift, is giving it to them. My sister had no idea what it was going to be though I sent her a couple picture updates. She liked it so much she asked me to make her another one in all blue for her new house she's moving into in August. Why, make something with yarn? Don't mind if I do. :-)