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.

Snow Day

Today was a snow day for our school.  While we did not get a lot of snow here, 4-5”, west of here there was a lot more.  I am taking advantage of this day off after the long holiday weekend, to just craft away.

Mittens have been on my list as of late.  Here are a few of the ones that I have finished.

The squirrel mom and baby were meant for a child, but they ended up being a small adult size.  These were made with Daletta yarn from Dale of Norway.

Next I worked on these mittens, again intending that they become a child’s mittens, but these were too small, so are heading off to Izumi.  Yarn is Baby Ull.

Having trouble getting my sizes correct, I finally asked a friend of mine who teaches 2nd grade to trace a couple of her students hands.  That was so helpful, and I finally got a right-sized pair of child’s mittens.

These mittens had been on my knit-to list for many many years.  When my son was little, his best friend Sam had mittens like this knit for him by his grandmother.  They used to love to play Stop and Go on the side-walk with these.

Vintage by Berroco was used for the mittens, I was able to get the correct colors and a machine washable yarn. Next, I needed to duplicate stitch the letters on.  None of the white yarn in my stash was the correct weight, so a couple of friends dropped some by and I was able to finish them up.  I am really happy with how they turned out.

So, I was on a roll.  The next pair is a Dale of Norway pattern, using Dale Tiur, which create a beautiful halo over the patterning.  Looks like a good child size fit.

Feeling that I had this sizing thing down,  I found these child mittens on a Ravelry search, and free to boot.  I fell in love with the cuteness of this pattern, and the fact that the mittens did not really match.  After casting on with Baby Ull, I quickly realized that they were going to be adult sized – 64 sts in a round, I should have known better.  In fact they fit my adult hand sized (which is large), so I opted to make them for myself.  I combined the bottom of both mittens first one on each side, and then added the top of the single snowman mitten and snowflakes repeated both sides.  I chose to put the thumb at the same side, so the result is that there is no right or left hand mitten, and each would have a slightly different appearance when worn.

These are big, I wish that I had done a simpler rib, I opted for a 1×1 twisted rib, but on every color change row, I knit the purl stitches to not have the overlap of color showing, which had the effect of not pulling in very much at the cuff.  And, I added a few more rows before the pattern which I should have probably left out.  The thumb could have been a couple of stitches wider and perhaps a bit longer.  In spit of all this, I do believe that they will keep me warm.  Now they desperately need a washing to ease the stitches, and the embroidery so that the snowmen will look like something.

And they do fit my big mitts.

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!

My Prize

A  couple of years ago I entered a few items in the knitting contest at YarnCon, Chicago’s Indy Yarn fair that has been going on for several years now.  My Polar Bear Sweater was the winner of the best knitted sweater, and won the Best in Show also.

I was so excited, and received several nice prizes.

This sweater was knit during the 2008 Ravelympics.  I knit most of it while sitting at the beach at Lake Michigan, and then knit like a fiend when I got home to the neglect of everything else to finish during the summer Olympics – 2 weeks.  I was really proud of the results, and so happy to win something for my knitting efforts.

One of the prizes that I was to win, and receive later was the knitting book Great Northern Knits.

I must admit, I don’t even know what Twin Peaks is, but was happy to win a new book.  Then I mostly forgot about it.  I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when a package came in the mail, and I knew that I had not ordered anything.  So to my surprise, this book was inside.  They hadn’t forgot about me after all this time!

There are some fun patterns in the book, and I will have to delve into it further at some point:

 

But, what caught my attention was this  sweater, knit at a very fine gauge.  Just my type of project.  This is on the to-do list.

Thanks Great Northern Knits!

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…

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)

 

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.

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.

Tiny Hands

Tiny Hands get cold too.  This pattern for thumbless mittens was made a few years ago for baby Ria.  I knew that a certain Colorado Baby-to-be would need these also.

Pattern: Nordic Baby Mitts
Pattern Source: Free from Knituition
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull, teal blue and mint green
Needles: US 2
Date Started: 11/?/17
Date Finished: 11/20/17
Finished Dimensions: baby 6-9 months

Next, I decided to try my hand at designing a pair of mittens, ones that the parents would love.  Had to be dog themed of course.  I had a lot of fun with this, and would love to publish the finished pattern.  For years, I have been on the search for a good knitting pattern template that I could use.  If there are any suggestions out there, it would be much appreciated.

The first mitten took a bit of trial and error, both in getting checkerboard pattern that worked and minimized dealing with long floats.  I am really happy with how they turned out, these are a bit bigger than the first, and I also opted for inserting a string to tie them on with.

After looking at the photos, I feel that they both would do with a nick soaking and drying flat to even out the stitches.  So excited to gift these.