Whoops, I did it again

So after all the months of catch-up blogging I did...I let the blogging slide again and now I have more catching up to do. Typical me! (Le sigh.)

First piece of news: I finished the baby blanket for my brother's friend and was super, super-pleased with how it came out, and the parents-to-be loved it. Hooray! I also submitted it to a magazine, where it's currently awaiting a verdict. Hopefully the pattern will be coming to a publication near you sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Also, I finished the tuxedo cardigan for my co-worker's boy twin. Here are the two pieces together so you can get the full impact of the adorbs:

I wrapped them up and handed them off this week to another co-worker who will be swinging by her place hopefully this weekend. The twins, incidentally, were born recently, and seem super-healthy: one of them was more than 6lbs at birth and the other more than 7, which is amazing! I've seen pictures and they are very adorable.

In other baby news, my husband's cousin had another grandchild very recently, so I whipped up a few things and sent them off:

That's the bonnet and booties from my "Darling" layette set of patterns.

But perhaps my greatest achievement recently was the cardigan for my oldest daughter.

You may recall that last time I wrote, I was going to order sock yarn in the same colourway as the worsted I started with, and if the dyelots were similar I would just double up the sock yarn. Alas, the dyelots were markedly different: the sock yarn was just greener and lighter enough to be noticeable. 

But then I got a design inspiration for some socks, and needed to order some more yarn to get the specific colours I was going for, so I ended up having to make another Knit Picks order. What the heck, I thought, why not try ordering sport weight yarn in the same colourway as the original worsted for DD1's cardigan? The gauge won't be exactly right, but I can fudge that if the dyelot is a good match.

Well, the order came, and the colour was the worst match of all. Way too blue. (FML.)

But then I looked at all the colours I had, and thought...what if I combined the sock weight and the sport weight dyelots? Would the blueness of one combine with the lightness and greenness of the other to approximate the dyelot of the original? I tried it and discovered that I had a very close match. Not so close that I could do a straight substitution - I still had to work the doubled-up yarn in every few rows - and the sport/sock combination is a bit thicker than the worsted by itself...but it worked, which was what I was really going for.

It appears to be her new favourite garment because she wears it A LOT.

But the sickening irony? When I washed it, the sleeves expanded and became too long. (Seriously, FML.)

More catching up in my next post!