Baby stuff

A good friend had a wee baby boy a week ago, so I interupted my Ravelympics efforts to whip up a pair of bootees to go with his gift (good grief, its not as if I didn’t have 8 months notice to make him something!  How slack am I?)

Anyway, this is my first ever pair of booties, made to a Shepherd booklet pattern.  I enjoyed knitting them but not the seaming!  Yet another reason to learn magic loop I think!  Anyway, the yarn is some baby wool that was given to me, and I dyed it with Americolor gels in practice for my yarn swap.  The colour is a little bright in this photo, you have to trust me that they look COOL in real life )

And these newborn longies are for my nephew who will arrive in October.  I actually made these a while ago, I just haven’t shown them until now.  His baby shower is this weekend so at least I feel a little bit organised, although I want to make a hat to go with them, and booties if I have time.  The colour in this pic is a bit too dark (why is it so hard to photograph knitting?).  The fabric underneath is actually white.  A thought the flecks of pink and purple are too girly for a baby boy, but I figure that a newborn can carry it off!  I made the legs extra long by adding a ribbed cuff that can be turned up. 

Who said its too small?

Ready…

Lets go!

Snug as bugs in rugs

Last week when D came to play and the kids were getting sleepy after lunchtime, Mum wrapped them up in blankies and they giggled and rolled around on the floor.  D kept wanting to snuggle up with his head next to E’s, but she wasn’t too keen on that idea LOL

Dashing again

So this is what they look like in daylight, on adult arms.  Darn, I shouldn’t have cast off that right one on 5mm needles.  nevermind.

Ravelympics update

I’ve finished Dashing, and before the Closing Ceremony has even started!  woot!

They still need to be blocked  but that can wait.  E was happy to model them for me (photos taken with a flash though, so the colour is a bit too bright).  They still need to be blocked (they are curling a little at the ends) but overall I’m pretty happy with them.

  As you can see, they turned out looking quite different, thats Vintage Hues for you.

hmmmm, I cast off the right one on 5mm needles to make sure that the bind-off was stretchy, but its curled back all funny.  I thought I had done the left one the same but maybe I hadn’t, cos it hasn’t got the curl thing happening.   On further reflection, I think I only did the left thumb on the 5mm, not the hand cast-off.  Ooops!  Hopefully blocking will sort that out.

Just because

all kids love bubblebaths!

TNN dyed yarn swap goodies!

Well my swappee Nikki has got her package now, so I can show you the rest of it.  With a bit of help from the lovely Kelly, I chose the theme of West Wind Drift and it was rather educational!  (well for me anyway, I don’t know if Nikki already knew all about ocean currents!) I prepared a wee document to explain the theme, and this is what I wrote:

The West Wind Drift is another name for the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, a circular ocean current (also known as a gyre) which flows from west to east around Antartica.  The West Wind Drift is the dominant current of the Southern Ocean and connects the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. It keeps warm ocean waters away from Antarctica, enabling Antartica to maintain its huge ice sheet.  It strongly influences regional and global climate as well as underwater biodiversity.

The colourway of your yarn is inspired by the swirling teal hues of spiraling ocean gyres and the colours of the Southern Ocean

 

For the pattern I chose spirogyra (see how it matches the theme? huh? huh?  I thought that was pretty cool and I DON’T take credit for that cos Kelly made the connection with the ocean gyres)

For the yarn I wanted something soft but strong that wouldn’t pill or felt, since its for wristwarmers.  So I chose a machine washable crepe yarn, Patons Merino Totem.

For the recipe I chose a fish cake recipe of my dad’s and renamed it Southern Ocean Fish Cakes, cos well “curried fish cakes” just isn’t very exciting, and sounds a bit blah.  But really they are very yummy.

For the knitting gift I made dpn protectors, from a scrap of felt, some embroidery floss, some hat elastic and two shell buttons for decoration.  I got the idea from this tutorial but I modified it slightly by attaching the elastic to the felt at both ends, because I figured that if they were separate it would be easy to lose one.  The buttons disguise the stitch to hold the elastic as well as look nice and tie in with the theme.

The other gifts were a bar of “sea vegetable” soap from Lush (and I discovered that their mail order office is about 200m down the road from my work!  sweeeeeet!) and some Guylian seashell choccies (cos any sea-themed gift has to have chocolate seashells, right?)

Here it all is together (the yarn looks a bit bright in this pic though cos the light was a bit funny):

 

Ravelympics

I use Ravelry quite often to browse patterns and look at other people’s mods, so I thought it was about time I started uploading some projects myself. I’ve started with a couple of Ravelympics projects – a couple of items that I’ve been meaning to cast on for a while, and having a time limit will help motivate me to get them finished!
The first is another pair of toddler longies in Utiku gems. I’ve gotten as far as the 2nd short row and then I put them down for a break, and cast on Dashing. My sister and I picked up some Cleckheaton Vintage Hues for $3 a ball a couple of months ago, and she grabbed some orange stuff which to me looked, well, too orange, but she liked it and asked me to make her some long wristwarmers.  I chose Dashing because they are fairly simple, and I saw that someone on Ravelry had made them on 4mm needles, which means I can make them on my 30cm addi turbos rather than have to use dpns which I suck at (I don’t have any circs bigger than 4mm).

Last night, while watching the Evers-Swindell twins and Valerie Vili win gold, I managed to finish the first one.

This morning I discovered that its really hard to photograph your own forearm LOL

 

I hope the thumb doesn’t look too wierd, because it is a lot darker than the yarn where I have picked up the stitches.  Thats just Vintage Hues for you I guess!  I wasn’t about to chop up the rest of the ball just to find the more orangey yarn.

I have to say, that while I didn’t like the colourway at first it has rather grown on me, but the most amazing thing is A said he liked it and it looked like a flame.  He doesn’t normally say much about my knitting other than mumble about me being a nana, so this was high praise!

Before I cast on the next one I have to whip up a couple of newborn hats for pressies – I’d better hurry if I want to get my Ravelympics stuff finished!  It will be interesting to see how the 2nd one knits up, no doubt the colours will be completely different!

Wordle attempt

So I saw this cool word cloud thingy on SweetP Knits so I went to Wordle and made a word cloud from my blog. And then it took about 3 hours for me to be able to get the image to work! Thankyou Vanjeffery for helping me crack it in the end!

So, 3 guesses what I’ve been knitting a lot recently? Oh and Kelly, you are on there too!

shhhhhhhhhh!

I probably shouldn’t be showing this here, but if Kelly can get away with it then so can I!

Its the yarn I dyed for the yarn swap and I lurrrrrrrves it!  It looks even better IRL I think:

 

For some reason though, I am messy at winding balls even on a wool winder.  And there are two balls and I think I’ve wound them up in different directions so I’ll have to rewind one before I send it.