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!

Acquisitions

KnitPicks recently had a sale and marked down a number of their Barbara Walker stith pattern collection books. I believe I've wiped out all my fun money, but in return I now possess these:

Of course I eventually want to get the third and fourth treasuries, but at least this brings my stitch pattern library up to a respectable level, I think. And that's important.

Today was also my and my husband's fourteenth wedding anniversary (yay!), and part of the reason we've done so well together over those fourteen years is that he knows not to bother getting me dumb (IMHO) things like flowers or jewellery because yarn is something that will always make me happy.

That's two balls of Katia Darling in colour #209 - pink and red and purple and orange and yellow and brown. 

I've finished the knitting on my brother's friend's baby blanket (I'm so excited about this design, it came out great!) and am almost done the baby tuxedo cardigan for my co-worker (just need to buy four white buttons and sew them on), so I felt perfectly justified in casting on this afternoon for a Good Day Sunshine mini-shawl:

Although I'll probably put it aside pretty soon to start making some serious headway on the blanket design for my cousin's coming baby. In the meantime, though, this is a fun distraction.

Impending babies, everywhere

So let me see if I can get this all straight:

• I have a co-worker expecting twins (one boy, one girl)
• I have another co-worker expecting his second child
• My cousin and his wife are expecting their second child
• My brother's best buddy and his wife are expecting a long-hoped-for baby

I think that's it. I think.

(Just watch; I'll find out tomorrow that someone else at work is expecting.)

I think the twins are the highest priority right now. They're not due for another few months, but twins tend to come early, so I should really get the gifts finished up ASAP. Fortunately, the baby girl's gift is all done (see my previous post). The baby boy's actually saw backwards action yesterday (woe), because I had to frog most of the first sleeve and do it again with more frequent increases so it wouldn't turn out so long. But I'm now working on the cap sleeve decreases, so I'm almost back up to where I was before, completion-wise.

My brother's buddy's baby (lookit all that alliteration!) is probably the next priority, I think. I'm not sure exactly when the baby is due, but I suspect early spring. Fortunately, the blanket that I started is coming along at a very nice pace since I've been concentrating almost exclusively on it since Monday.

I think my co-worker's wife is due before my cousin's wife, so on Tuesday night I cast on for that project, too. He's into fantasy-based gaming as well as reading stuff like Game of Thrones, so I thought it would be perfect if I broke out a pattern that I've wanted to make for a while: Dragon, by Ruth Bramley. It's a "woobie" (combination blanket/stuffed toy). I dug out a whole bunch of superwash DK yarn from my stash and I am LOVING how it's coming out so far.

(Why yes, I did create 3mm straights by putting elastic bands at the ends of two DPNs. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.)

Admittedly, it's smaller than I had envisioned, but I can always make it bigger by making the border wider. I'm planning to seriously modify the border anyway because it looks like it's all crochet, which, uh...yeah, not my strong suit. I'm not sure I feel like bugging my mom to help me figure out what all the instructions mean. I'd rather trawl through one of my stitch dictionaries to find a knitted edging that will be just as effective.

Non-Christmas gifties

I do a lot of gift knitting, and not just for Christmas. Other occasions come up throughout the year that make me want to break out the needles.

A classic one is the arrival (or impending arrival) of new babies. Especially co-workers. It is always a lot of fun to choose patterns for wee ones. So when I got word that one of my co-workers was expecting twins, well! What an opportunity for knitted fun!

My first plan was to make a set of Duffle Coats, by Zoë Mellor. This is an adorable and cosy coat that's been in my queue for ages, and it doesn't hurt that it's from a book called "Double Knits: Pairs of Patterns for Babies and Toddlers". My plan was to knit two coats in two different colours, but then to trade the colours for the sleeves and hood so that you would know they were part of a set (e.g. a blue coat with grey sleeves and hood; and a grey coat with blue sleeves and hood). I found some good acrylic/wool blends in the stash, in grey and blue, and got going:

Grey not pictured because, well, I haven't taken a picture of it

Unfortunately, although I thought the grey was aran weight, it turned out to be chunky, and not only were the two fabrics obviously very different in terms of feel and drape, but there was no way I was going to have enough yardage in the grey.

And then the mum said that they'd found out the sexes of the babies and knew they were having a boy and a girl. So that gave me a brand-new inspiration! I am therefore making a cardigan that looks like a tuxedo for the boy, and a dress for the girl. They're both coming along really well and I think they look adorable:

(Not pictured: first sleeve. Which is actually too long, I think, and I'll probably redo it with more frequent increases.)

(It's actually further along than this; I've started on the bottom edging. Also, I ran out of yarn, but fortunately my mom had given me some leftover sportweight from KnitPicks that she'd used for a cardigan for DD1 that is an almost perfect match. That's getting used for the bottom edge. I'm hoping like heck that it's not too obvious a colour difference.)

The tuxedo cardigan is L'il Tux for Baby by Judy Lamb, and the dress is Glockenblume, by Helga Torres.

And then about two weeks ago, I found out that one of my new co-workers (new thanks to our recent re-org) is also expecting! Fast forward to this week, when I had a meeting with my new team (all of whom have their cubicles near this expectant father), and asked casually when the baby was due. The answer: ANY DAY NOW. Oh, and today I found out that the work shower will be tomorrow.

Why don't people tell me these things?!?

Fortunately, I happened to have, kicking around the house, an almost-complete vest that I made as a prototype when I was working out yardage requirements for my Wuv pattern. And it's green, which is perfect, because nobody in the office knows if the baby's going to be a boy or a girl. (Except the future dad. And he's not telling; I strongly suspect this is because he doesn't want to receive gender-stereotypical gifts. Smart guy.) Two buttons and a bunch of sewn-in ends later, and we have...

Another event that gets my fingers itchy to start new projects is a birthday. My youngest turned three this past August, and about a week or two out from the big day, she confided in me that she was absolutely certain that she would be getting a rainbow for her birthday. I tried to tell her that, y'know, everybody's bought the gifts already and it's very possible that a rainbow is not one of them, but she was adamant. She would be getting a rainbow.

Okaaaaay, so she's getting a rainbow, I guess.

Pattern is I Can Knit a Rainbow, by Clare Doornbos. (Thank heavens for Knitty.)

And then, DD1 got an invitation to her best friend's birthday party. Unfortunately, despite her close friendship with this girl, she absolutely could not tell me any ideas for what we could get her as a gift. "What does she like?" I asked. "I dunno..." came the answer. Finally, with just a day and a half before the party, I threw up my hands and decided to knit something, because from talking with this friend, I knew, at least, that she was a big fan of my knitting. I used my own Flutterby Tam pattern and managed to crank it out and block and dry it in time for the party on the Sunday afternoon:

The friend was apparently very appreciative and has since worn to school it a lot. In fact, I know she's been wearing it this week specifically because it accidentally came back to our house in DD1's backpack a few nights ago. :)

Anyhoo...

So when DD1 came home at the beginning of the winter holidays with a generous surprise Christmas gift from this friend, and a request from her for something else knitted by me, I thought, oh, fine, what the heck. The new winter Knitty had just come out and I was itching to find an excuse to make Ashley Knowlton's Drogo reversible slippers anyway:

DD1 says her friend loves them. Yay!

And finally, sometimes I don't need a gift-giving occasion. Sometimes I just want to make someone something. That someone is usually one of my children.

For DD3, this week I finished Sophie Missgraindesel's Gilet noeud noeud:

And for DD1, I'm working some serious yarn-conserving magic to make her Chocolate Passion from DROPS:

(I'm actually way farther along than this; back, fronts, and sleeves are actually all done, I'm just in the process of sewing it all together.)

I made substantial mods to this one - to see what they were, you can check out my insanely extensive project notes.

Future giftie projects include a few things for DD2, including a cardigan and slippers at her request (and to her specifications, naturally). Oh, and something truly epic for my cousin, who has just announced that his wife is expecting their second child. (SQUEEEEEE!!!)