Every once in a while the planets align and I get a bit of time to do just what I want. Right now is one of those times, so I’m going to keep this short and get back to it. P is having a nap and A is doing his own thing, C is holding down the fort. I am outside on one of the last beautiful days of summer, eating chocolate frosting out of the can (because I’m classy like that), while knitting another pair of adorable booties. The best thing? I’m getting paid to knit! Bliss!
Even though I love summer, and this one has been particularly awesome, I always enjoy a change in season. The cold mornings and crispness in the air these days is making me think of cold-weather things like stew, apple pie, jumping in the leaves, and knitting. Yes, it’s true, I’m pretty much always thinking about knitting, but this time of year is specialer (apparently spell-check is totally okay with that word… what is this world coming to?) I’ve got little mittens and hats and sweaters on my mind now, and I can’t wait to get started. I loved the stuff I made for the kids last year, it’s going to be hard to top them. Here are the mitts I made for A last year, rainbow colours and all! What are you going to knit to keep you warm this winter?
(sorry for the photo quality, I had to steal them from Ravelry since I couldn’t find them on the computer)
The Mother Huddle’s Fat Quarter Pillowcase Dress is another pattern I’ve used a lot. I’ve made three already and have the fabric to make another one this weekend. I think I originally found this on someone’s Pinterest board and knew I needed to make it ASAP. The first one I made was so cute, but P absolutely would not wear it. The monumental fights we had over this dress made me alternately irate and sad. Eventually I felt so bad about it that I decided to start again from scratch for P. This next one turned out even better and she is willing to wear it on occasion so all was well in the end. The other two dresses, as well as the dress-to-be, are going to my friend’s three little girls. I hope I get a chance to see them all worn together!
The tutorial is really great. The pictures are clear and so are the explanations. I did have a bit of a problem in that my fat quarters were not quite wide enough to cut the bottom panel correctly for size 4. I ended up just trimming the sides up a little and making it a bit narrower than it called for, but it still fit fine. I’m sure that part of the problem was that my fabric wasn’t wide enough. I got the fabric for the first one from Fabricland but apparently they are discontinuing their fat quarter bundles. Fortunately, I discovered that Walmart carries tons of really cute bundles for $12. Unfortunately, there are so many that I can’t help buying more and making more dresses. If you are a friend of mine and you have a little girl, don’t be surprised if she receives one of these for her next birthday.
I’ve made three pair of Julia Noskova’s Spring Breath Booties now, and I’m sure there will be more in the future. The booties are absolutely adorable without being overly cutesy and they stay on really well. You should hear the oooohs and aaaaahs when a pair of these puppies gets opened at a baby shower! And the best thing of all was that the edging forced me to finally learn how to crochet a little bit.
Here they are on handsome Mr. Quinn.
Now that I have finished Ryan’s socks I can turn my attention to the sweater design that is brewing in my head. My original plan was to use this beautiful plum-coloured lace weight alpaca yarn from Misti Alpaca. I had never used lace weight yarn before so I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go. So on Friday night I got a chance to sit down and start a swatch with my 2.25 mm needles. Result: yuck! Speaking as someone who generally has very good tension, it is damn-near impossible to do so with tiny yarn and tiny needles. So that idea was scrapped.
Then I got to thinking, if I’m going to knit a sweater for a toddler then the yarn definitely needs to be strong, and it needs to be superwash. I also want it to be fingering weight yarn. What does that leave me with: sock yarn! I didn’t have anything on hand that was appropriate for this project so I just had to head to The Loop and pick up something pretty. I ended up with the most beautiful teal Cascade Heritage sock yarn, 75% superwash merino, 25% nylon. Perfect!
I started my swatch and really like the look of it in stockinette stitch, but the lace pattern I picked out just wasn’t going to work on a toddler shirt. That, coupled with the fact that Pippa screams like a banshee any time I try to put anything hand-made on her lately, may mean that this turns into a sweater for me. While I don’t relish the idea of making an adult sweater with fingering yarn, I think it would be very pretty and appeal to a wider audience. There will be more swatching tonight so we will see.
Also, I was a jelly-making machine today, pounding out a batch each of mint and jalapeno jellies. Stay tuned for jelly-post-palooza.
Cowtown Knits 