Not Much Knitting Going On Here...

Instead I've been working on a few more baby things:


...crocheted blanket stitched in panels, part of Soft Shells Baby Blanket, a free pattern by Marilyn Losee published by Caron International.

and a few crochet hats from a very cute and easy pattern shared with me by one of the ladies in the Guild:

...plus quite a bit of baby sewing:

Receiving blankets and burp cloths:

Gowns, Onesies, Jumpsuit and Top/Pants (cute print from JoAnn's Fabrics):

   

and every girl needs a few pink flowered headbands:

September 2010

Virginia & North Carolina

The trip to visit my daughter and son-in-law was fun.  We visited Williamsburg and Jamestown in Virginia, then headed back to NC where we spent a day in New Bern and another at the beach.

            

In New Bern, NC we went to a paint your own pottery which was fun and a new experience for me. These were the three projects we completed:  a mug by my Daughter, a dragon by my Son-in-law, and a devilled egg plate by moi.

           
 

Yorkshire Terrier

Before we left I had been working on this project for my daughter.  The pattern is "Perfect Pups, Yorkshire Terrier" by Alan Dart; although the pattern calls for Sirdar brand yarn, I substituted Bernat Satin for the body and Lion Brand Homespun for the fur.

  

It doesn't much resemble my real yorkies (Dorie & Buddy) but was an interesting project and a change from shawls, socks and sweaters.

  

More baby hats

This one is a pattern I just made up, worked top down, notes on my Ravelry Project Page.  

The yarn (Plymouth Yarn, Oh My!)  was really soft, I would use it again although I did read on Ravelry where several people stated that after washing projects from this yarn holes developed in the finished object.

This hat was fun to do, it's called Poppy Baby Hat; 

yarn is Plymouth Yarn Dreambaby DK Prints.

Another Baby Blanket

Spiderweb Baby Afghan by Carole Rutter Tippet published in Leisure Arts #3205, Snuggle Up Baby Afghans.  

The pattern calls for DK weight but I used 9 skeins of Phildar Pegase +, a worsted weight acrylic.  

This afghan could have been a little larger if I hadn't left the 10th skein in the seat pocket of the plane my earlier trip to North Carolina.

 In The Pink

I've been working on this shawl (In The Pink by Izzy Knits); I am using Jojoland Melody for the swirled sections; the edging will be a solid color of Jojoland Ballad.

  

Summer Knitting

Embossed Twining Vine Leaves 
This is a stitch pattern in A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns (and other stitch pattern books) that I have long admired.


This yarn (Swiss Mountain Sea Sock by Hand Maiden) is beautiful so I decided to marry the yarn to the stitch pattern.

A lot of ripping and re-charting went on; still the socks did not turn out as well as I planned.

Actually these were done in April/May but I was too annoyed with them to post it.

Soon I'll try it again.

Baby Projects
My daughter is having a baby in January:

Good thing I made this pink sweater with matching socks and headband because it's a girl (yay for PINK!).

This is the Wool Eater Blanket by Sarah London (crochet), the yarn is James C. Brett Baby Marble Double Knit, Shade 3M 9, it took 3 skeins in order to make it crib size.

Next is Kisses and Hugs Blanket of my own design.  The X's and O's are cabled.  The main yarn is three colors of Schoeller Stahl Baby Micro mit Glanzfaden, Wool/Polyester/Acetate, 12 skeins @ 25g.  When I ran out of that yarn I used lavender Bernat Baby Solid, 100% Acrylic.  

Seems like it took forever to knit this and I don't even want to talk about how many ends there were to weave in. 


Technology today is amazing, they already know that the baby will need surgery right away.  Since she will be spending a couple weeks in the NICU I thought it would be nice if she had her own hat wardrobe for the duration.  She is surely going to be a fashionista [a designer, promoter, or follower of the latest fashions].  Later we can donate the hats to the hospital.   There are numerous preemie hat patterns on the internet, this one is my favorite to date.

I'm having a lot of fun shopping for pink baby bargains and trying to guess what size she might be next spring and summer.

Here is her very first 'photo':  

My daughter said "she looks exactly like me" !

Daughterly News

Last month I travelled to visit with my daughter and son-in-law in North Carolina which was a lot of fun, wish I could have stayed longer.

It was only for a few days so I brought only two projects to work on. A baby blanket and the second Bayerische sock.

On the way there on the plane I put a ball of yarn in the seat back in front of me and naturally walked off the plane without it so I couldn't work any more on that project. When I picked up the Bayerische sock I remember too late that one of the needles had broken, since I forgot about that I hadn't brought any extra needles in that size.

Now I was project-less.

Not to worry - daughter took me to three local yarn shops. At one I bought a skein of Malabrigo sock yarn which the shop owner wound for me and I was back in business. By the time I got home I had almost finished the first Pomotamus sock. I really like the Malabrigo sock yarn - very nice to work with and the colorway is pretty too.

My daughter learned to crochet within the past year and likes to do amigurumi.

She designed and worked this dragon up herself - isn't it adorable?

For Mother's Day she made this sheep for me - it is just too cute.....

A few weeks ago I started a pink baby sweater with this pattern from Garnstudio......just as I was closing in on finishing the sweater my daughter and son-in-law called to let us know that we'd become grandparents next January - yay! Double yay for someone to wear the sweater (ok, I know it could be a boy, I'll just have to make a blue sweater too).

Rona Shawl Redux

My fuschia beaded Rona shawl at 56" diameter was just too small, no way around it except to frog back and add more rows before the edging. I still had almost a full skein of yarn left. 

It took several weeks and lots of playing in Excel to figure out how to enlarge this shawl.

Finally it dawned on me that what I needed to do was increase until there was a multiple of 16 (the repeat for the edging) and then do the edging. The original pattern has 48 sets of 16 sts at the start of the edging. The edging on the first version was really tight so it seemed to me that there needed to be a lot more stitches allowing for increasing the diameter. I decided to work a simple stitch pattern with increases until there were 96 sets of 16 stitches and then work the edging. This would add about 20 additional rounds.

That went fine for a while and then it became apparent that with twice as many stitches I would soon run out of yarn. So I reworked my spreadsheet eliminating several rounds in the edging pattern but keeping the 'integrity' with the quintuple yarnovers in the edging design.

That decision made it also became apparent that I would soon run out of beads. Back to LadyBug Beads for a third tube of fuschia beads. Surely that would be enough, wouldn't it?

At the start of the final edging row it seemed there were still quite a lot of beads and I decided I might as well use them up, they give the shawl better drape due to the weight and why save them. It was very difficult though to add the beads at the same time as the crochet bind off, so I worked a round slipping two, adding a bead, slipping two, adding a bead, etc.

As I neared the end it seemed there were barely enough beads to finish. Now I had to go fishing down the side of the sofa for whatever beads I could find there (plus three dpn's and assorted crumbs and dust), then my son moved the sofa so I could hunt down more beads that were hiding in the carpet.

Just when I was thisclose to adding the final beads things got a bit hairy. First I accidentally knocked over the container of beads and they went hither and yon across the floor and I had to gather them all up again! Then as I neared the very end I could see I'd be short about a half dozen beads. There had to be more of those little buggers in the carpet. With Ott Lite in hand I went behind the sofa to hunt down more escapees. It's close quarters between the sofa and the bay window and when I stood up I stepped down on the plastic vent cover which shattered on impact. While picking up pieces of the vent cover I noticed red stains on the carpet and thought one of my dogs must have bled on it until it dawned on me it wasn't the dogs - duh - my toe was dripping blood - I had sliced it on the vent cover!

Could anything else go wrong? I so wanted to get this shawl done and over with.

Finally I began the crochet bind off which was taking about 5 minutes for each repeat even when I didn't accidentally drop a stitch or two and have to take time to recover the stitches, that meant it would take about 8 hours just to bind off! Not only that - the yarn supply was getting suspiciously low.

In the end there were two beads left and several yards of yarn - whew! I decided I had better carefully check if there were any dropped stitches at the bind off before blocking the shawl. Good thing I tugged on it all the way around not once but twice and found a couple dropped stitches the first time around and a few more the second time around. Quickly repaired those with a length of yarn at each occurrence and then spent a couple hours blocking.

I am pleased to say that this Rona Shawl is finished for the second and last time...........it now measures 60" across, only a few more inches than before but the extra stitches made all the difference.