Baybeeeeez!

Early last week I found out that a co-worker is pregnant - with twins! She's due in March, but of course it's quite likely the babies will come before then, so I need to get going pretty soon on the gift knitting. She's already got two young boys, and she's expecting a boy and a girl. This means she's going to end up with three boys and a girl.

Now, I usually don't go for the whole dressing-by-gender, put-girls-in-frou-frou thing, but with three boys in her house, I don't think it's such a horrendous thing to make something ridiculously girly for the female twin. Fortunately, I just happened to have ordered some yarn at the Knit Picks Cyber Monday sale, which arrived this week, that will be perfect: pink sock yarn...with sparkles:

This is the perfect excuse to make Summer Pelisse, which is a little girl's cardigan from the same issue of Jane Austen Knits as my baby bonnet pattern, and I love it. It calls for a DK weight yarn rather than a fingering, but I want this cardigan to be small enough to fit the baby shortly after she's born (and she's likely to be born rather smaller than average), so I'm going to size it down by using thinner yarn and smaller needles than called for.

For the boy twin, I really want to go with the Robin Hood Jacket pattern, by Zoë Mellor. It's been in my queue for ages, it's gorgeous. I have some very nice blue sock yarn that I recently bought at Lettuce Knit that I think will work great with it. Again, the pattern calls for much thicker yarn than that, but I will take advantage of that discrepancy to shrink the jacket down to preemie size. Now I just need to get my hands on the book that contains the pattern.

In other news, my mom called this week with super-awesome news from her sister (my aunt, obviously). Firstly, my aunt's niece (on her husband's side, so not my cousin, but definitely a family friend) has just had her first child! A little girl. I am very thrilled. (My mom emailed pictures - she's gorgeous, and you can totally tell already that she has her mummy's nose.) Clearly, I must knit something. Once again, I will be dipping into the queue and making the Ellis Dress. I've got some wine-coloured yarn that I expected would look great and so far, I have definitely not been disappointed:

Best news of all, though, is that my cousin and his wife are expecting their first! This is so tremendously squeeful I can barely stand it. :) DH pointed out (quite rightly surprised that I hadn't thought of this before he did) that a motif fusion reflecting the baby's ethnic heritage would be ideal. (He's brilliant.) I won't go into more detail because I'm sure I'll submit the design somewhere when it's all done, which means it needs to stay hush-hush until publication. I think I can say, however, that I might use some of this, also a Cyber Monday purchase:

That thar is twenty freakin' balls of Stroll sock yarn in a fabulous red. I bought that many a) because it was being discontinued, and b) it was $1.84 a ball. That's $3.68 for an adult pair of socks. Couldn't pass it up.

So...SQUEE all round! Add to that the lovely baby news about Will and Kate (yes, I'm a Royal watcher) and I'm surprised I haven't floated into the air yet.