My favorite model

If you have been reading my blog over the past year and a half, you know that I have a special little one that I have been knitting for.  Here is a review of some of the items being lovingly worn.

The baby surprise jacket was knit with handspun yarn, I think that she has gotten good wear out of it!

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I made this sweater prior to knowing if we were going to have a grandson or granddaughter, thinking that it was a good gender neutral sweater, although it looks so feminine on her.

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And for her 1st birthday I gave her this sweater which she wore to her 1 yr old checkup.

I also made this poncho for her birthday, it is a Dale of Norway child’s pattern, but a heavier gauge yarn than the Baby Ull.  The beauty of this is that it can be used for quite some time as it is a loose fit.  I really like how it turned out.

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And for her birthday, I gave her the Butterfly sweater, hat and dress.  Butterflies have special meaning in our family, so this was not only fun to make but evoked many memories.  The dress is a bit large.

Now, I am trying to decide what to make next.  I have this lovely cotton yarn that I recently got, and thought that it would make a cute summer coat.  Need to look for a pattern.

 

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Birthday Girl

Of course I had to make many things for the 1st Birthday of my Granddaughter.   We were out to celebrate with her and have a birthday cake in December.

I made her a Dale of Norway cardigan.  Everyone should know how much I love the DoN patterns and yarn.  Sadly, when my stash is gone, I will not be able to get the yarn that I love for these projects.  In the meantime, I am loving knitting with it.

That photo is unfortunately a bit fuzzy, but her parents are always putting her in the things that I make for her.  She wore this to the Drs office for her 1 year old checkup.  Apparently the staff was greatly impressed by the sweater.  Myself, I think that the model is far superior.

She will have a bit of wear on that sweater.

The other item that I made for her birthday was this poncho type pull-over with a hood, a bit big right now, but hopefully will come in handy in the future.  Again, another DoN pattern, but this is the Daletta yarn, so a worsted weight.  I love how this turned out, and will post when I see it modeled.

And lastly, a pair of mittens with thumbs for the Colorado winters.  I think that these are the favorite mittens that I have ever made.

The pattern is from Jorid Link’s Big Book of Knitted Mittens.  I made the previously posted squirrel mittens from this book also.  I love the patterns, and have some on the list for myself to make.  If you love fair isle and mittens, I highly recommend purchasing this book.

My Best Model

My beautiful Granddaughter.  I made several sweaters for her before she was born, and this Baby Surprise jacket has proven to be my DIL’s favorite.  I need to make a Totem for her next.  I also have some Dale of Norway Fair Isle sweaters in the waiting to take out next time we visit.

The hat pattern has received several inquiries.  It took a bit of sleuthing, but I finally found the pattern.  It is a Dale of Norway baby book #129

And the pattern is #12908

Here she is in the baby surprise jacket when she was a lot smaller!

End of an Era

My beloved Dale of Norway has decided to close their North American operations.

This makes me so sad, I learned how to knit Fair Isle with DoN, and it has been my go-to yarn for baby sweaters for years and years.  The Baby Ull is the softest, best wearing baby yarn, and the colors were always amazing and vivid.  When DoN decided last year to only sell to one distributor in the US, Heart of the Mitten, that was a big red flag.  Little did I know that the relationship with them would last less than a year.  So sad.  Luckily, as access to these yarns have become more and more difficult over the years, and I love to knit baby sweaters, I have been purchasing them whenever I see them available, particularly when they are on sale.  My stash of Baby Ull is quite extensive, almost yarn shop quantities I sheepishly admit.  But that did not stop me from purchasing a few more while they were still available.

And, if any of you like the DoN books, which I must say are amazing, you can purchase them while they last for $1/each at the Heart of the Mitten.  I took advantage of that to add to my already extensive library.

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I do have a couple of DoN ski sweaters that I knit, and for the Olympic sweaters, they came with a patch.  I will miss looking for what is available for the next winter Olympics.  A friend is visiting Norway right now and was going to stop at the DoN store, I will be curious to see what she finds there.

HA DET…

Coming up for Air!

Wow, over 2 months since I last posted.  This past semester has been tough, I way over committed myself.  Teaching almost a full load, taking 2 classes myself (Architectural History and Japanese), and doing some private design work left me way over my head.  And in the midst of this, I got a really bad cold that wiped me out for about 10 days.  I could barely keep up with the pace, and I am so glad that it is summer.  It will take me awhile to gather my senses, catch up, and deal with some of the house chaos.   Thank goodness my husband takes care of a lot around here, and I have a cleaning lady, otherwise we would be in serious trouble here.  This summer I am looking forward to finishing some abandoned projects around the house and having lots of knitting and spinning time.

In spite of my schedule, I have been knitting this entire time, so will have some catchup to do on the posts.  First, I want to talk about Yarn Con this year.  My son, DIL and beautiful grand baby were here that weekend, so I literally rushed down for 1/2 hour to see what was available, and snatched up a few items.

Vibrant rainbow type colors attracted me this year. Lorna’s Laces has a new owner, and I have always loved their yarns, this one spoke to me:

While it will not self stripe, I love the color combo, kind of like a vibrant spring feel.  I really think that I bought this color combo years ago.

And the next 2 were new to me dyers.  The first is Bumblebee Acres, and I came back twice to look a this.  They did not have a sample knit up, so I went with their description of how it would look.  More on that soon.

Lastly was this sock yarn from Mode Knit Yarn.   Not quite as vibrant, but still has that rainbow vibe.

And how could I resist this cool bag from Bunny Badger for Izumi, looked like it would be a good toy bag.

The fabric is so fun.  Kind of wish that I had snagged an extra one for myself!

The same vendor had some fun buttons:

And I leave you with Izumi modeling one of the baby shower sweaters!  This is the last time that we saw her, she has changed a lot in a few weeks.

I promise myself to not be away this long again.

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Baby Gift

The daughter of a good friend is expecting her first baby.  I knew that I had to make a sweater, and wanted something special.  It also had to be gender neutral – I love when the baby sex is a surprise, there are so few surprises in life.  Of course, it was to be a Fair Isle, with Dale of Norway yarn.

I chose this pattern, but in the cardigan version, that I knit the green one for Franklin so many years ago, and the blue as a gift.

I struggled to find the correct gender neutral yarn, and looked at these combinations, with the blue-grey being the main body.  This was a little different with the light color being the base.

I opted for the combination with the green color on the left.

And it knit up nicely, I did knit the top color work a couple of times to get it right:

Luckily I too this photo at knitting a couple of weeks ago.

I was finishing up the sweater, and weaving in ends, sewing on buttons the morning of the baby shower.  It was only after I had wrapped the sweater up that I realized that I had not taken a final photo of the sweater, and I needed ot leave.  I snapped this one of the wrapped package with my cell phone at the baby shower.

Hopefully I will see the baby in it in the future.  It was knit for 12-18 month size, so it may be awhile.

Moral of the story:  Make sure to take the photos.  And do not wait until the last moment to finish up projects (that one might be harder for me)

 

Best Baby knitting book

Recently I was asked by my friend Michelle where the pattern came from for this sweater that I knit for Izumi.

She also received the bonnet to go with the sweater:

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I have knit almost every pattern out of this baby book.  It is the one that I go back to time and again, as I love the raglan sleeves for little ones.  The front cover shows a carriage blanket that I knit for Ethan when he was a baby, and gave to them for Izumi.  That one was a beautiful coral color, with a sparkly sheen, unfortunately, I do not have a photo of it.

In fact, this was not the only sweater from this book that I knit for Izumi before the was born, I also gave her this one at the baby shower, along with the matching hat:

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You can see that the book is a bit worse for wear, so I decided that it was time to order a replacement.  It was pretty easy to find on Amazon, and not at all expensive.

One would think that I could then give away the scrappy copy, but I opted to keep both.

You might be wondering why.  I want to keep knitting these patterns, and my original book was not going to last long.  However, sentimentality kept me from giving away the first.

This book was published in 1973, I was the big knitter in the house at the time.  Even though my mother had taught me to knit, she was not knitting at that time.  In fact, she never took up knitting again, but delved into crocheting lace doilies, and extensive quilting.  So, when I saw her name at the front of the book, I was not sure why, since this was most likely purchased (at Meijer Thrifty Acres, next to the Red Heart yarn) for me to knit gifts for family and friends.

I know that i knit this green sweater for a neighbor’s new baby:

And here are my favorites, I love the raglan sleeves and how they fit so well on babies.

This coat is on my “bucket list” to make for Izumi.  I never had time to knit something like this when Sofia was little.  I think that this would be a cute coat to have.

If you are interested in this book, it is available on Amazon here.  And, it is only slightly more expensive than the $1.50 we paid IN 1973!

 

My Favorite Model

Izumi has been sporting some of the sweaters that I knit for her.  Recently she was spied wearing this lovely green variegated sweater out on the town.  There is definately room for growth in this.

I couldn’t ask for a better model.  These rabbit booties were given to Sofia by my mother when she was a baby.  They were my favorite booties for the kids, kick as they might, they never were able to kick them off.  I should try to reverse engineer these.

And just in case you need a bit more of this cuteness, here goes.  My husband gets to go visit her next week, and me next month.

Izumi

On December 19th, my beautiful Granddaughter, Izumi was born.  We were fortunate to arrive the next day and to stay near her for 2 weeks.  Ours will be a long distance relationship, coupled with sharing photos and videos, Skype and visits as often as feasible.

Last Fall I had made 3 sweaters for her to give at the baby shower.  One of them was this Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise sweater.  This was knit with my handspun yarn from a few years ago.  I love how the thick and thin yarn worked out on this.  And the square buttons were the perfect touch.

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So, on New Years day, my daughter-in-law and son brought Izumi to visit at our Air BnB, and she was sporting this sweater.  I think that the colors look beautiful on her.

It has plenty of room to grow into, but worked perfectly on a 2 week old.  It makes me happy to see her in it.

I know that every parent/grandparent thinks that their baby is beautiful, but she is just gorgeous, and has been since birth.

And here is the proud Papa.

Butterflies

Seeking never ceases to make me nervous, I always have a glass of wine to get my courage up to sew and cut something that I have put so much time and effort in to.  No matter how many times I do it, I still need to muster up the courage.  To date, everything has been just fine, and I have not ruined anything.

This sweater and set is being made for my granddaughter to be.  I love the butterflies, and they hold special meaning to my family.  My sister Anita, and my mother both loved butterflies.  Whenever I see butterflies in the spring, it always brings both of them to mind.  I knew when I saw this pattern that I had to make it.

The colors are so lovely and fun to work with.  Makes any grey day brighter.  And the steeking, after a nice glass of red wine, proved not to be so bad.  Just have to make sure to pull the strings to the opposite side when sewing.

And once this is done, the cutting is actually fun, and you open up the tube, now it starts to look more like a sweater to be.

This is progressing nicely, now for the details and edging.  I still have to set in the sleeves, which is not my favorite part I must say.  It involves 2 more steaks, and another glass of wine.