so here we are on the other side of a long weekend, designed to celebrate ‘australia day’. i have nothing good to say about that particular celebration, so i’m just going to move along. the good thing about a 3 day weekend is that the baby shower we had planned for the monday meant i had two days to finish off some crafty things i was making for said baby.
the baby is rosered’s second, so of course, i felt obliged to knit him something, as i did for his older brother. 4 years later and i am a slightly better knitter, but not necessarily a smarter one. given he is due in february, i chose cotton (debbie bliss ecobaby) and then proceeded to chose a pattern with long sleeves, for thinner yarn, and not quite the right size. seriously. i dont know what’s happened to my brain lately. oh who am i kidding, i never did have any common sense.
anyway, the pattern involved a striped yoke, and i chose a green and blue combo that i would not normally knit with it, but took my fancy in the shop. its all in one piece too, so it was just knit the yoke, put the sleeves on waste yarn, knit the body, come back and pick up the sleeves
knit the sleeves (not too long in sleeveland for baby knits!) then sew in ends (lots of ends!)
and then knit on the button band. this is where i ran into a bit of trouble. i did exactly as directed, picking up three stitches for every four rows, and i ended up with exactly how many stitches the pattern said, but still the buttonhole part of the band was too long and crinkly
i gave it a good steam block but cotton doesnt block, really, so i thought maybe i could force it into shape with the buttons and i sewed on all eight (none of which match, thank you zena for that design element)
and immediately proceeded to cut off the bottom ones and just leave the top four. its not perfect, but it sits ok now
and it is a lovely colour combo and beautiful soft cotton and will fit young Humphrey (not his real name) for some time to come i suspect.
considerably less stressful, although equally as adventurous, was The Other Thing i was involved in making. the whole group of knitters always comes up with some knitted blanket project for impending babies but we had already made one for baby number one, and rosered was crocheting one of her own, so there was some talk of making her a quilt. however, not enough of the knitters wanted to try their hand with the needle and thread, so the group project was Knitted Bunting, which i will leave for someone else to blog. i contributed to that of course, but also proceeded with a secret squirrel quilting project with zena and fiona.
rosered had indicated she liked this pattern for a blanket, so zena cleverly adapted it for a quilt design. zena made the blue and white squares for the front before she went to the UK for five weeks, then a couple of weeks ago fiona and i put the squares together into strips (fiona sewed, i ironed!) then it went back to zena when she stepped off the plane to add the back and quilt it, then i ran up to sydney on saturday to pick it up from zena, and i hand finished the binding
and added the label, which zena had embroidered. phew! before it was gifted, i hung it on my clothes line to try and get photos. this is the front
it includes three red feature squares, which are pieces of liberty fabric,one each from zena
from fiona
and from myself
and this is the back (with shadows from my clothes line!),
using a gorgeous grey spotted backing with the very clever feature strip including elephants
and flowers and another piece of liberty and of course we managed to Put a Bird On It!
i had so much fun being part of this – i got a lot of inspiration from seeing the two quliting masters at work, and thoroughly enjoyed the slow mindfulness of invisible stitching the entire binding by hand. i am full of ideas for my own now, and feel like its something i can actually manage.
the best part of this quilt though is the beautiful label
and the love with which it was gifted. arrive soon and safe humphrey, i cant wait to meet you!
kxx
