How could I resist...

... a Tikki Knit Along!  Georgie Hallam (designer of Tikki knits) has just released a new pattern for the boys, and with the release came a knit along in her ravelry group for the month of March.  As I was a little late to the party, and making one of the bigger sizes (a size 7 chest, with 8-10 length) I did worry that I wouldn't be finished in time, but I just scraped it in, blocking it yesterday.

 I do love a vest and collared shirt on my boy - isn't he so deliciously handsome?!  I couldn't help but tell him he looked so delicious I could gobble him up.. forgetting how he takes things so literally. 

    "Don't be silly, Mum" he told me.  Then hesitantly, "You couldn't really eat me could you?".
     "No darling". 
    "Then why would you even SAY that!"

He still modelled nicely for me and tried super hard to give me a nice smile (okay, I admit - he was bribed with a red frog lolly!)

I started knitting on the 17th, as I had to wait for my yarn to arrive, and then dyed it myself.  I was aiming for a deep navy colour with some lighter patches, but it decided it wanted to be less varigated and more of a denim shade.  I don't mind - it works well with jeans, and goes with just about every shirt in his cupboard.

The pattern was a little tricky to get started, I haven't worked "saddle shoulders" before, but once I got going it was easy... and addictive.  The cable was a nice simple design and the rolled hem on the sleeve edges is a cute touch.  Another one of Georgie's patterns to add to the "I love" list! 

I used just 200g of the 300g I dyed.  The neighbour just gave birth to a baby boy, so perhaps I can use the last 100g there... maybe a baby vest just like this one is on the cards!

Designing for a special little showcase

I have been designing again, but this time for a different cause.  I will be releasing this pattern as another freebie on ravelry in the next few days. 

 

Chevgirl Knitting is hosting a showcase called "Hats for Ethan" to raise money to help pay for Ethan's treatment.  Ethan is just 6 years old and has been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.  You can read about his journey here.

As soon as I read about this, I knew I had to make some kind of contribution, so it was the least I could do to design a hat especially with him in mind.  This prototype hat will be offered up for sale in the showcase on May 10 (which I think will be held on her facebook page).

Surprisingly, my not so obliging model became my obliging one, while the other wouldn't have a bar of it!  So yes, that's my daughter, happily modelling a boy hat.  I am so happy that she did exactly as I told her and amazingly... STOOD STILL!  I wish I could get her to do that in the dresses I make her.

Sole mates!

After nearly two years in waiting, my sock has found a friend.   I think I am just as much in love...

 

 

Being a me project, these socks took position at the bottom of my list.  I am also famous for Second Sock Syndrome (a knitting conundrum where you just never get arounsd to making that second sock).  But I am glad I did.  There is nothing like lounging about in some soft, pretty, handknitteed socks.  Especially in winter - they are warmer than anything money can buy.

 

 

Lotta thinks they are fabulous too - she slept on the first sock while I knitted the second, and I am sure she thinks they are hers.  She tried to lick them while I took my photos!

 

Knitters - the pattern is easy, and free on ravelry here.

WIP Wednesday #5

I am alost feeling a bit unworthy to link up to Wednesday's WIP linky at Freshly Pieced today.  I made the mistake of clicking on a couple of other linked posts before posting mine, and lets just say - I wish I could magically pull a quilt out of the air to keep up.  There's some gorgeous things turning up in blogland lately!

I really don't have a whole lot to show for the week, except a few more grey hairs and bags under my eyes after our son was turned away from after school care last Thursday.  They will hopefully sort it all out soon so I don't have to fight too hard, but in the meantime it has meant even more driving after work, and less energy to do anything crafty.  I haven't even felt like knitting!  Fingers crossed that we hear some good news from them soon.

I did finish a little test block for Kirsty, at Quiet Play.  She has just released her new paper pieced alphabet pattern and will be turning these test blocks into a disaster relief quilt.  I tested the capitals and loved every minute, but it was a little more fiddly and time consuming than I had first expected.  Definitely worth it though!

Then I got going with my February Lucky Star block.  It seemed so easy after those tiny 5" letters, and I was on a roll... until my calendar started beeping at me to tell me it was time to put the fabric down and call the US for an international conference call.  So close to finishing, it was so difficult for me to drag myself away and pick up that phone, but my concience kept me out of trouble.

I am not too sure if there is enough contrast in this block.  I wanted to make sure I used dark blue, aqua and grey in every block so they tied together nicely, but perhaps a bright yellow would have looked good in place of the blue to give it a bit more pop.  I think they will look great together though and the main colours do look rather soothing together.

 

My little yarny WIP has been sitting in the naughty corner a bit - not because of the knitting or pattern but because of the yarn.  You can't really see it here, but the gradient I was loving so much in the ball has given me some disappointment in the form of specs of the next colour in the colour bands, and then, while every other gradient has been rather gradual, the darker purple shifted over only a couple of stitches to make it look like I have done a poor job of combining two balls.  I will knit on though, and move onto bigger and better things. (Woops, did I really just order 6 skeins of gorgeous Mosaic Moon Superwash to make something in my size?!)

Flashback Friday #1

I have a bit of an unblogged project backlog - some things found their way onto facebook but others were never shared, so I thought I might use Fridays to flashback to projects that have not had their 5 minutes of fame.

I always wanted a little girl, so I could knit her a little layette like I made for my first niece, back in 2001. In fact it was for this reason that I opted to find out what we were having second time around. But because we were keeping it secret, and because there was a little voice in my head telling me that sometimes little girls turn out to be little boys, all I managed to knit while I was pregnant with Madelyn was unisex: a little aqua raglan cardy, and a sweet little cream lace matinee set (hat, booties and jacket) which she wore over a pink hand sewn dress. I was a bit scared to commit the time it takes to knit a little dress and have her turn out to be a little boy! A bit ironic that now I have finally gotten around to knit her a dress she's wearing a size 6, and that newborn dress would have taken far less time! Admittedly I have used 8 ply (and 10 ply for the second one) which is a bit faster than what it would have been to knit a seamed, lace, 4ply dress from one of my antique pattern books as I was planning for her as a baby, but there is a heck of a lot more knitting in this size!
I am forgetting - I did make her a dress from 4 ply when she was about 10 months old, but of course she grew out of it as soon as I finished it, so it always looked like more of a top than a dress and didn't last long. But now she has two dresses from my pre-Christmas knitting adventures that she can wear next autumn and winter. 

She has worn thisTeacher's Pet a few times already, as it is great for sunny days in the early 20's (Celsius) which we were blessed with in November. After finishing this one, I was on a roll, so signed up to test knit another dress!

This Primrose dress is a little big so she can get a bit more wear out of it with leggings and long sleeves next winter.  The oversize was a bit due to my poor measurements, and a bit due to the wool growing when I blocked it. Not so great as I was test knitting and was unable to help much with sizing, but I am happy because my little princess just keeps on growing!  She is already topping Austy's 5 year old mark on our growth chart and she only just turned 4!  It won't be long before she catches up...

Both dresses were designed by Julia Stanfield.

WIP Wednesday #1

Another thing I aim to do this year is to keep up with this blog a lot more than I have the in the past couple of years.  The idea of WIP Wednesday is certainly not new, but I have never played along, mainly because I felt it too difficult to do when I am working during the week.  You see I hate my photos from late at night, which is usually the only chance I get midweek.  But that perfectionism is crippling me, and driving me away from blogging, and I do want to blog! I enjoy looking back over past entries, and have been disappointed that I haven't documented recent times.  So if you can put up with average flash photography, then I will try to ignore it too, and post every Wednesday about something I am working on.  

My other problem with WIP Wednesdays is that I often don't have much to show for the week especially when life gets busy, but hey, if I don't have much, I will pull something out of hiding, and it might give me that push to do a bit more work on it.  I can do this!  To keep me accountable, I am joining the WIP Wednesday linky party over at FreshlyPieced.

This week I was hoping to show you a sparkly rainbow knit in progress, using my much loved Wooltopia Sparkle DK from last year's Every Little Girl's Dream Rainbow Gradient Club.  Unfortunately though, It isn't behaving for me.  First I tried to turn it into a Tropical Fish Skirt (by Elena Nodel), that I know Miss M would absolutely LOVE, but I got to the third of the way mark, and found I had already used half of the 200g of yarn!  So I checked the yardage only to find I had highlighted the wrong size for the yardage on my pattern in my haste to cast on!  I love using my iPad to highlight patterns, and mark where I am up to, but it looks like I didn't check, and check again before I cast on.

Too sad to rip it all out straight away, I decided to knit from the other end of the ball.  I put a feeler out on Ravelry to hear some suggestions for what WOULD work for a size 6 little girl (yes, Miss just-turned-4 is definitely well into size 6!) with a graidient, Georgie Hallam's Milo came up, but that's how I used my last gradient, so I wanted to try something different.  It needed to be relatively sleeveless for a top to get the gradient to work, and someone suggested a very new and pretty pattern, that would be such a sweet little summer tank.  It is called Nina, by Rachel Evans, which also has two dress options included in the pattern.

Unfortunately, that pattern splits after the sleeve cast off, so the fronts and back are worked separately for a little bit.  I thought I might get away with it, but it seems that the gradient has decided to start to change just as IU began to work the separate right front.  So by the time I have done the back, it will be on the purple when I get to the left front.  The yarn is too gorgeous to snip for working separate bits, and while it might not look too bad if I put the right front over the left instead of the other way, it won't do the gradient justice.  So we are back to square 1 - pattern selection!  But before I go hunting, let me show you the beautiful sparkles!

I am now thinking something a little plainer - like the Cyclades vest (by Elena Nodel) - might be a better option. I couls also knit a cowl or something for me, but I got a cute little matching rainbow hairclip with the yarn, so I would love to see the yarn and clip in an outfit together some time soon.  But it has put me off knitting for a bit with all this ripping back.  Good thing I have the January Lucky Stars BOM to take my mind off it in the meantime!

I spent ages playing around with colours last night, and finally decided to just jump in and go with it.  I wasn't sure about the orage, but it isn't as bright as what this picture shows,so we'll see how it goes.  I can always switch it out with green, or red in some of the other blocks and give them all a try.  My main colours are the blue, turquoise, pale grey and white.  I want this to be a spare quilt for when we have visitors, and possibly used in the boy's room on his trundle, so I wanted to use lots of blue and keep it fairly unisex.  So far I have only managed half of the block.  But I have been working on Maddy's quilt, and my Blockapalooza quilt as I mentioned in my last post, so there has been a lot of sewing going on this week.

So snugly!

I finally got around to finishing off Madelyn's winter cardy, with just a little bit of winter left! This one is the thickest I have ever made, using super soft Gaia Bulky that I impulsively bought one evening on hyena cart, and a gorgeously squishy woolganics 12ply I dyed up as trim. I wanted it to be super soft wool up near her neck, although I may wish I had picked something else once it starts to pill.




I bought some super cute strawberry buttons from Tessa Ann and patiently waited for them to arrive from the US, but I should stop doing Internet purchases so late at night - I misread and they are far too small, so it had to wait a little longer for me to get around to making some buttons myself.



They look a bit more handmade than my usual standard. I thought it would be a great idea to get the kids to create alongside me, making fridge magnets. But I spent more time softening their clay and helping them than making my buttons. So in the end, I kind of rushed them a bit as it was time to cook dinner. I don't mind too much, but I do think little cherries or apples would have been cuter. Unfortunately the red I had was far too light and I didn't have anything to darken it.
Madelyn hasn't slept today, and refused to model it. So I decided not to push things and went ahead and did the photo-shoot without my grumpy model. Maybe she will indulge me next weekend!

Since I don't have anything new to show...

I thought I should post a photo of the doll quilt I sent out just after Christmas, for last years EBDQS. The little doll modelling it is Madelyn's Baby Stella, who is wearing a little dress I made her using left over wool from a summer top I made for Madelyn.

Here is the top that I made, using the same wool, which I hand dyed to match a delicate pink flower headband I had picked up at a craft market.

Little Declan and a visit to the Gaol

Remember the preemie doll I was working on, to help me get the sizing right for my preemie donations? I found some wool roving at Spotlight and added it to his head, which was the defining moment for me that helped me decide he was indeed a little boy.

I made a little hospital gown using a scaled down version from Milly's (of Tin Whistle) pattern and added an applique boat, and then thought he needed a good seafaring kind of name, and so little Declan was "born".

I tested my own angel nappy pattern on him for size (and am happy to report it is perfect!), and since he looked a little cool in his smock and nappy, I had to knit him a hat. Don't you love how floppy and poseable he is?

After entering him in the doll net contest (and you can vote or check out the other entries over here), I made him a tuiny little sleep suit, which adds so much of a "pick me up and cuddle me" vibe that I wish I had got to it sooner so that he could look all cute and cuddly in his competition photos.  Oh well, I still think he's adorable.

Although not quite as adorable as these to "gaol birds"!  Yep, that's my little munchkins at the Adelaide Gaol, where we visited today for their open day.  Its a little macabre but I wanted to do something special with them as I haven't had much time for them lately, and there was a threat of rain so it seemed like a good little outing where there would be plenty of shelter if we needed it (in the cells!).  We gave the mock execusion a miss, as that wasn't something I wanted to explain to them just yet. The kids loved exploring though, and took home their mug shots and finger prints on a souveneir card and were very happy that their rooms are much nicer than the prison cells.

I love how they were both wearing mostly handmade today.  I finished Austy's Explorer Vest this morning (just needed a few ends darned in) and it is super soft and snuggly, so he has enjoyed plenty of cuddles today.  Of course I can't resist when he's so darned cute! He was also wearing the handmade cords that were made for him in last year's clothing swap, which have had quite a bit of wear now, and still look great.

Maddy didn't miss out - that's her handknitted hat I made her for childcare last year (and her only one that fits her now as her home hat is too small and has disappeared so I think another is on the cards).  She is also wearing her "Little Butterflies" cardigan that is made from yarn I dyed, and perhaps my favourite knit for her so far.  Her cords are yesterday's effort as she is badlyt in need of new clothes since she just keeps getting taller!  There are 3yrs and 3 weeks between these two, and they are both wearing the same size trousers in these photos!  Okay, so Maddy's are a little big - size 110cm from Ottobre 1/2008 but I wanted them to last longer than a few days!  Because of their bagginess I think the front pockets look a bit odd, but with time I am sure they will be fine.  No they are NOT on back to front - there are pockets on the front and the back.  She loves the pockets as they have butterflies and dragonflies in them, like a special secret! So it's great that theyt are on the front so she can access them.  Austy loves my analogy that handmade clothes are like an all day hug, because they were made with love.  He has been thanking me for hugging him all day - precious!

Last Minute School Holiday Sewing

Austy had a school holiday assignment to restock his pencil case.  He complained that his pencil case was smaller than everyone else's and he wouldn't be able to fit much new stuff in there, and expressed a desparate need to have a pocket to keep his sharpener and eraser separate.

So yesterday, after a trip out to Officeworks to get some more stationery, I decided that we would make him a new pencil case with a pocket.  This was such a last minute decision that I didn't even have the right thread colour (and hate the messy look of the contrast navy stitching) but he doesn't mind at all. And better still, I recycled the bottoms of Andrew's jeans to make it (having recently cut off an hemmed said holey-knee jeans by request).  Austy is facsinated by the idea that something old can be recycled into something new, so it adds to the charm factor for him.

What I did, was applique his name and attach the pocket and zip and then pinned it together inside out for him to sew.  He had no idea what he was sewing but he followed my directions, and sewed the outside edges.  Then, when he turned it right side out, the beam of excitement when he realised he'd juist "made himself" a new pencil case, was priceless!

 

And an update on my preemie doll - I have decided he's a boy doll now that he has hair and limbs attached, but no idea what I will call him.  I don't want to use the "angel"names like Gabrielle, or Angelo because I think of this as a doll of a live baby.  Sometimes making tiny garments and knowing they are for little angels can be quite sadening, so I have given this little guy some colour in his cheeks and lips to make it a nicer process.  Name suggestions welcome!

Finally, a very rushed photo (since she can't stand still!!) of my last project of the Summer (finished late February), an Olearia shrug for Madelyn, made from white cotton I had in my stash for several years.  I have a bit of a backlog of projects that I will be adding in here whenever I feel like it needs an extra photo or two! 

Little things

 I haven't had much time for crafting, let alone blogging lateley, but when I have had a few spare minutes to myself, I have been working on tiny things to donate to Little Angels Memory Boxes for grieving parents of babies born too soon. I like that I CAN achieve something with the small amounts of time I have, and that at the same time, I can make a difference in someone's life, to help make an unspeakably sad time just a tiny bit easier.

To help me with my pattern design, I have been creating this little preemie doll, sized at 22w gestation. It is filled with plastic beads so it has soime weight, and has a loose floppy neck just like a real preemie. I have used Sandy Eding's Preemie Doll Pattern which has fabulous instructions and photos to make things easier, but for any budding doll makers out there, it is quite a bit more fiddly than I first imagined. I guess I should have started on something a bit bigger for my first cloth baby doll!

I was going to make a smaller baby, as it's the smaller angels that seem to be uncatered for in the preemie market but then I thought better of it looking at the pattern pieces, and realised 22w was going to be fiddly enough. The limbs are just sitting there at the moment, waiting for me to get to the sewing shop and buy some upholstry thread to attache them, and the toes need sculpting.

I am not sure if this is a boy or a girl baby yet, so haven't decided on a name. I would be happy to take on suggestions, and this baby will be my model for designing and showing new micropreemie items for LAMB and Angel Baby Nappies. The set photographed on the baby is destined for Angel Baby Nappies.

I may be entering this baby in the doll net challenge too, if I can get it finished and fully clothed in time. I know I have no chance of winning, but it's worth a try, even if all it does is promote these worthy charities.

The other photos in this post show a sampling of some of the donations I have made and sent to LAMB over the last few months.

My First Pattern Release!

Yes, it's a small project (can be knitted in one night!) but I am chuffed, that I have finally built up the courage to hit the "activate" button on the first pattern in my Ravelry store!

You have to start somewhere, right?

You can download the pattern for FREE here

 It is my Otis Baby Hat pattern, designed to compliment Georgie Hallam's Milo Vest.  I designed this hat for two very special boys, almost a year ago and it received a lot of interest in Ravelry (probably because Georgie's Milo pattern is so popular - I have knitted 7 of them and I hardly ever knit something more than once!) so I decided to have a go at pattern writing and publish it for free. 

Look out for baby, toddler and child sizes in the next couple of months.

Here is my final test of the newborn size, a new hat for Madelyn's baby doll Zoe.

Some photos of the week in knitting

Austy's Star jumper (because he's our little star) - just the sleeves to go now!

My latest hand dyed wool - ready for a second pair of longies for my boy.

What's on the needles for someone's baking twins!

And a confession - I am now addicted to hand dying! I have so much wool sitting there waiting to be dyed, and I am one for not buying wool unless I have a project planned for it... I think I have broken my own rules in the name of colour!