Let the baby knitting begin!

Sometime, mid-January-ish I will be provided with a new niece or nephew. Courtesy of my brother and his lovely wife. We do not know the flavour of this baby, we will find out in January. I am very much looking forward to that phonecall.

Until then I will continue to collect various cute little baby patterns that I may or may not knit, I keep changing my mind. Legwarmers? Buntings? Sweaters? Burpcloths? Bibs? Blankets? Ahhh, yes, blankets. As much as I love the Mason-Dixon Moderne Baby Blanket I have made two, here and here, and I'm not quite ready to make another just yet. I have been denying an itch to do some stranded colourwork for awhile now, and I am also in love with the adorable Sleepy Monkey Blanket as I think I have mentioned in the past. So about 3 weeks ago I sat down with the express purpose of purchasing yarn from Webs to make this blanket. I finalized my colour choices and placed my order, a little bit of Rowan Calmer may have jumped into my basket as well, my wee girl needs this.

Well, when I started writing this post, I was going to whine about how the yarn was taking it's sweet time to get here. Well, it came and I have knit the monkey side, in less than a week. Man I love stranded colourwork. However, one of the colours is on backorder, and another was more red/less orange than I wanted it to be, so I ordered two more colours from webs and now I am in a holding pattern waiting for them.

I have finished one baby knit though. I bought a Tulip Sweater Kit over a year ago intending to knit it for a special baby. If this baby is a girl, she is that special baby. We were going away for an extended weekend with my husbands family that involved a 4 hour car ride, each way. Perfect for a little baby sweater. I started in in the car on the way up, and by the time we got home I only had the i-cord around the neck to do.





The problem with said I-cord, is that it's a different colour than the i-cord around the rest of the sweater. The kit didn't have enough of the blue to do the bands and i-cord. So I used purple, the baby won't mind. And I'll probably be the only one who knows it's not really supposed to be that way, well, except for the internet. And anyone who looks at my Rav page.



And because I had leftovers, I made a colorful hat for baby to go with this adorable little sweater.





I love this set so very much. It was easy, quick, fun and looks AMAZING. If I do say so myself.

This year, I decided to enter a few items into the local fall fair, held over Labour Day weekend. It went quite well. I entered my Icarus in the 'Any other knitted item' category and won first prize. I entered Queen of Beads in the knitted sock category and won first prize. And, I entered a toddler dress I knit years ago in the Childs knitted dress category and not only won first prize, but also won best overall knitted or crocheted item, of the whole fair! Needless to say, I'm pretty darn pleased with myself. I'm already trying to decide what to enter next year. Winning is fun.

Well, in the weeks since I started this post, my yarn has come for the Monkey Blanket and I am cruising away on the ring side. Still loads of fun. It should be done before I go to Knitting Camp next weekend!

Late again

Once again I have been writing a blog post in my head for weeks, but have yet to sit down at the computer and actually type it out. In the mean time, I have finished, and started more projects. Shocking right?

First up, the beloved, Shawl that Jazz, that I finished almost a month ago. It's thick and cozy and warm and squishy, and blue. I love it.



I really enjoyed knitting it to, I thought I would get bored of all the garter, but I didn't. It may have helped that the bulk of it was knit on vacation with friends, but I did knit the super long edging rows at home where the tedium certainly could have set in. For the most part, it was a very well written pattern, the instructions could have been clarified a little for the beginning of the edging, but if you just trust in what is written and don't think about it too much it works just fine. I've said it before, but I used Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted in the In The Navy colourway on a 5.0mm Addi Turbo and it blocked easily to the measurements given in the pattern (which I can't recall at the moment).



After this was done, I sort of had to make myself finish my May Rockin' Sock Club socks before we went away with Jer's family for a few days. It's not that I didn't like the socks or the yarn, I like them both. But knitting them hurt my hands. K3tog, and SSSK at 8 sts/in is not fun. But I buckled down and got them done. They fit great and despite the crazy pooling, they look pretty good too.
Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club May 09
Fraggle Squiggle Socks by JC Briar
Socks that Rock Lightweight, Pepe LePlume
2.5mm KnitPicks nickel circular, magic loop







Then we went away for a few day with my in-laws to a location that required a 4 hour drive. I knit a baby sweater. But I'll leave that for next time, that and the knitting results from the local Fall Fair.