Bringing Baby Home

Good morning 🙂

I’ve finished my latest crochet portrait…created from a photograph from 20 years ago, of me holding my eldest daughter on the day we came home from the hospital…

The original photo…

A bit closer up….

Perspective makes a huge difference with these fibre creations! Up close, they look so much like nothing but when you step back a few feet, the picture is so clear.

I’ve also finished the first pair of crocheted and felted baby boots. It’s a pattern of my own which I’m working on, off and on, here and there. They are fastened with velcro at the sides/backs of the booties.

I attached the velcro with the same wool (fishermens), sewn on by hand. The velcro is sewn along the back of the ankle section and the edges of the front flaps. I’m unsure, at this point, if I chose correctly when I put the ‘hook’ section on the fronts and the other section on the back.

These have been given to my husband’s friend for his new baby boy. He’s going to be my first test wearer 🙂 On a side note, his little daughter has a pair of my felted slippers (the pattern I made late last year and am still working on) and she LOVES them…they are the only slippers she’s ever worn!! 🙂 She calls them her ‘ballerina shoes’ and was QUITE impressed with them! I single stranded my ladies medium size and felted them down for her little feet.

I also made the grandchild to be a couple things…

Some braided balls to play with;

I found the pattern, free on ravelry. It’s called the gevlochten bal.

And, a little improvised sweater, in sock yarn, on 3.25 mm needles;

I have a few ends to weave in and some blocking to do before it’s completely finished.

The Snowdrift Sweater!

Check it out 🙂

I had this idea in my head for a while and finally felt like spending the time to make it. It’s seamless (my favorite) and bottom up. I didn’t use any exact ‘method’ to shape the sleeve caps — unless ‘guess-as-you-go’ is a method, lol. A little bit of raglan shaping, a little bit of set in sleeve shaping and a few short rows to make it all work. Not bad, if I do say so myself. It’s my very first sweater design 🙂

The slippers were driving me nuts!! You can really only knit about 18 pairs before you want to run screaming down the street. You may have guessed, I’ll be putting off the rest of my slipper-test-knitting until after Christmas (…if then, the way I feel right now). The slipper pattern itself seems to be excellent but I’m trying to test knit every size in different wools for a true pattern test. I’d hate to say that something works if I haven’t tested it myself.

Happy knitting! 🙂

Yeah, So Here’s The Thing…

I can’t seem to finish anything that isn’t handspun anymore!

I’ve frogged the silky yosemite sweater I was working on…it’s coming out too big and it’s boring me! I’ve also recently started and frogged the jeannie wrap..beautiful but….

Right now I’m working on my son’s sweater, which IS keeping me interested and is turning out really nice. I have to figure out the armhole decreases/shaping and the sleeve shaping yet. I’m usually too lazy to do the math, lol, but this time I shall since I’ve improvised the pattern completely so far. I won’t be able to easily ‘plug it into’ an existing pattern like I usually can, to shape it.

Here we are, so far…

My oldest came for a visit the other day and I caught her on film…

I learned something surprising on Tuesday this week…I took my son’s karate class with him and WOW…it’s been more than a year since I did any ‘exercise’ on purpose and I can tell! I think I’m pretty fit and yet my thighs are so tight now I’m feeling it with every step and my upper arms and shoulders are protesting too. I had promised to participate tonight (the class is twice a week) but I’m not sure at the moment if I’ll be able to do it. I want to play my ‘old lady’ card, LOL. Those kids make it look so easy 🙂