Res Completa: Geeky Baby Solar System Mobile

When Neill and I started telling people we were having a baby, a frequent inquiry from friends and family was about how we were going to decorate the nursery. Now, I really do enjoy arranging and decorating spaces, but I'm not very organized about it. I have a really hard time visualizing what I want a space look like, so I usually just start with colors and stuff that I like and that feel right and go from there (my mother and grandmother, both decorating GENIUSES, are cringing right now I know it!). So I had no idea what I wanted to do with the nursery. And Neill, usually quite opinionated about these sorts of things, was surprisingly neutral.

I started by thinking about how I would want to decorate my own nursery if I were a baby. All white, clean, and modern was the first idea. But there was no way we could pull that off -- it's just not us. Baseball-themed? Maybe. GIANTS themed? Oooh, now we're getting somewhere. But all that orange and black would look crazy. Animals? I did have some cute fabric... Then one day it hit me: space! Neill and I both work on a NASA program, I myself loved astronomy as a child (my own room growing up had a striking combo of floral wallpaper and a giant poster of the solar system), and it sounded like fun. So that's where we went. And we're not going crazy with the theme...just a few things here and there. Starting with this mobile...


(Sorry for the awful, dark photos!)

All the planets (plus sun) were created using the Stockinette Short-Row Sphere pattern by Brent Annable using various scraps of my favorite/most meaningful yarns and changing the stitch counts to create different sizes.

Please keep in mind that I took a little artistic license in both the sizing and coloring of the planets...


El Sol...out of doubled Kidsilk Haze. I thought the purl side looked a little more solar, so turned it inside out before stuffing and finishing.


Mercury...out of wool a co-worker's wife brought me from Sweden.


Venus...with leftovers from Peponi held with a strand of KSH.


Earth...with wool from my Bohus (continents really, really not to scale. You can't see it here, but Crete ended up the same size as Antarctica...oops!).


Mars...out of the red wool I used for Aundrey in Unst, which I think I may have purchased when I met Barefoot Rooster.


Jupiter...more from Peponi.


Saturn...the blue is not really special, though was left over from these hats. The ring(s) are Malabrigo Laceweight from Citron . I created the ring by doing a 9-stitch i-cord and not caring what it looked like in the back. This created a sorta flat tube which I then stitched around the planet.


Uranus...more from Citron and i-cord ring(s) out of the Wabi Sabi Lush Lace I used for my second Citron...one of my favorite yarns ever. I know Saturn is usually depicted as the ringed planet, but I just had to do Uranus' as well since I (am going to name drop right now) actually know two of the guys who discovered them.


Neptune...more of the Wabi Sabi.


And Pluto. Which isn't a planet anymore, but whatever. Dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt need love, too. And I wanted some purple in there to balance things out.

And, finally, the spokes are just balsa wood wrapped with some Tess' Designer Yarns Superwash Merino (hmmm...I haven't shown you the project this is left over from yet...).

This was a ton of fun to make and I'm kind of in love with it. Hopefully it stimulates the baby sufficiently while he's in his crib, too (I keep reading about those special mobiles designed to make your child a genius and thinking I'm already failing as a parent by not buying one).

More to come on the nursery...there is some fabric involved that I am very excited about. And I'll see if I can get a semi-flattering photograph of my ever-increasing bump this weekend. As of tomorrow, we'll be inside the two week margin of error surrounding the due date. So, really, that bump could be a baby very soon!