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.
My friend Ryan is a great lover of hand-knit socks. If I have the story correctly, he has an aunt who knits him socks that he calls “power woolies” because if you push them down your leg then they pop back up on their own. I think those socks must be made of some stout stuff!
Ryan is also a great photographer. When the time came to take some pictures for my Everyday Hoodie pattern I knew he was the guy to call. He was such a great sport and came to the playground on a hot day and took pictures of less-than-accommodating models. I couldn’t be happier with how they came out.
So, as a thank you to Ryan, I have just finished a pair of Anne Hanson’s Sign of Four (a Sock for Sherlock) in Trekking XXL. I don’t knit socks very often because I’m usually ready to be done after the first, and this was the case again with this pair. But it was for a very good cause and I kept on truckin’ until there were two. They look great, I just hope they fit!
I’ve already introduced you to my kids so now it’s time to tell you about the other VVIP in my life, my husband C. He is a mild-mannered scientist by day and a mild-mannered sports-fan by night. He is an incredible father who took paternity leave to be a stay-at-home-dad while I finished university. He really is my “better half” as he possesses all of the important qualities in life that I lack. Like, say, organizational skills, money skills, anger management skills, garbage removal skills. Girls really do like guys with skills!
He’s also very knit-worthy. He has already worn through the first pair of socks I knit him and is pestering me for more. His Rogers-esque Cardigan Jacket gets worn a lot. The sweater was pretty labour-intensive, with a lot of seams and a lot more stitches than your average cardigan, but it was worth it. The look would not have been the same if it had been a simple top-down raglan. We both love how it turned out, and I’ve been known to steal it from time to time.
I learned the basics of sewing back in junior high school home economics. I actually got a C- in that class, which is pretty ironic given that my current occupation is home-ec in a nutshell. I hope I’ve improved, but I guess it is possible that I’m still barely-passing. My husband would never tell me if it were true, and that’s just one of the things I love about him.
Though I learned to sew way back then (more years ago than I’d like to count), I never had my own sewing machine and didn’t feel like I was missing anything. But then I became a mom, and lived in a house that wasn’t a glorified bachelor pad. Suddenly it seamed like a sewing machine was something I was supposed to have. So last Christmas I asked for one and, lucky me, I got it! It took a while to get my sewing mojo as it required taking some of my precious free-time away from knitting. But once I got started I was off to the races. I’ve finished a few projects since then, and I’ll share some of them with you in the coming weeks.
This afternoon I was inspired to show off my most recent project, the Urban Unisex Hoodie by Heidi & Finn. I got some cute pictures of A wearing it while running around at the park and wanted to share them with you. My choice of fabric (a light-weight fleece and lightweight jersey) wasn’t the greatest as some of the seams got very thick and my machine had a hard time getting through. I also think the nap on the fleece bunged-up (that’s a technical term) the machine so I had to do some impromptu manual-reading to learn how to clean it. The thread frayed and split a lot, which I’m chalking up to bad thread choice for the fabric, though that is a highly uneducated guess. In the end, I’m eager to try the pattern again with different fabric as the finished product is quite cute.
Cowtown Knits 