New baby sweater

Before Ethan was born, I started knitting a baby sweater for him. I selected the Cascade pattern and Nashua Handknits Natural Focus Ecologie Cotton. It turned out so beautifully! Like the hats, I didn't bother to do a gauge swatch. I followed the instructions for the 6 month sweater, figuring that even if it turned out small it would at some point fit my baby.

I think my gauge was off or the sweater turned out small for some other reason. It's fitting Ethan just perfectly now, when he is nearing three months and just over 12lbs. I'll try to squeeze him into it a few more times before he grows out of it.



I like this sweater in a washable cotton, but I think it would block better and the leaves would lay flatter with a wool yarn. Next time I'll do a gauge swatch and use wool yarn.

Duff beer

Now I can make any beer a Duff beer!



This has been in the works for at least a year. I tried to do this in the round with three-stranded fair isle, but that just turned into a very large knot of yarn in a hurry. I finally settled on intarsia to make the Duff logo. It was quite fiddly, there was a seam to sew and many ends to weave in. I love how it looks now that it's blocked, though! I used Dale of Norway baby yarn for this project. It used approximately 2% of 4 skeins of yarn, so I could (and I may) make a whole set of these.

I put the pattern on Ravelry here. Cheers!

Published! Economy block place mats + trivets

The Christmas edition of Fat Quarterly just came out, and it includes a pattern by me! I'm thrilled to have contributed to a publication. I designed a set of place mats and trivets based on the (very popular right now) economy block. I used fat eighths from the Retro Bake fabric line and assorted Kona cottons. I think alternating prints and solids makes these cute prints really pop.

 



I did free motion quilting on some sections of the place mats. I'm just starting to use free motion quilting in projects (after lots and lots of practice), so it was really nice working on a small-scale project like this. I machine-stitched the binding with the help of half a bottle of Elmers school glue and I'm very pleased with the result. Glue basting is the way to go (for me)!



For quilting the trivets I stitched-in-the-ditch - there were too many layers of batting for me to do free motion quilting successfully. These are really fluffy and insulating.



A big thanks to my husband for staging and editing these photographs! I could not have done it so well.

A hat-shaped gauge swatch

Last week I knit two Polpo hats for Isaac.





Really, I knit a hat-shaped gauge swatch and then I knit a hat for Isaac. I had intended for the hat on the left to fit Isaac. I knit the 19" size using US7mm needles and Malabrigo Rios yarn, but it is a tiny bit tight and about an inch too short. I figured why do a gauge swatch - I have plenty of yarn, I have two different-sized kids so the hat will (eventually) fit one or both of them, and with the other hats in the book my gauge has been spot-on. This time my gauge was off, probably because I used a worsted yarn instead of an aran yarn.

Isaac tried on the first hat and demanded a new one immediately after I declared it too small. I knit the pattern for a 21" hat with an extra inch in length and it fits well. He wore it to the bus stop all last week, when we had leaves instead of snow on the ground. He really likes the fluffy bit on top, and so do I - it is much cuter than a pom-pom.

Another simple shirt

The fall Kids Clothes Week was a two weeks ago. I had intended to finish a bunch of garments for both kiddos but I managed to finish only one simple shirt, another Simplicity 2907.




This one is size 4T with an extra inch of length. I used snaps instead of buttons this time. It took me 4x longer to find the snaps and snapsetter than it did to install the snaps - I love snaps!