My summer vacation is nearly half way over. I am surprised, since I spent the first week of it in my new classroom trying to get things unpacked. I just haven’t noticed where the time has gone.
There has been some knitting. I made some lovely booties for a fellow art teacher, but now am unable to get in touch with her to give them to her before they outgrow the child. I’m not sure what to do with them if that happens, since they took a good amount of time to make in between work and night school. Anyway, they continue to sit in an adorable polka dot bag waiting for someone. The pattern is Converse Booties by hillsmel, with some minor variations so there were less ends to sew in. You can Ravel it here Converse Booties.
Converse All Star Baby Booties, also called Chuck Taylors.
The best part is definately the hand stitching around the star.
A coworker is having her baby in July and her baby shower was last weekend. Naturally, I was absolutely excited to make her something and with vacation, time was on my side. Somehow it still ended up being a struggle to finish the sweater before the shower, blocking it that morning and putting it on the dashboard with the heater on to dry it as I drove. I hadn’t made a yoked sweater before, so I learned something new, and did stranded color work and intarsia in it (for the sheep), which makes 2 new skills learned in the making of this sweater. The sweater is called Sheep Yoke Baby Cardigan and is by Jennifer Little of Looking Glass Knits. You can also find it on Ravelry under Sheep Yoke Baby Cardigan (Ravelry link).
Sheep Yoke Cardigan
The real problem with knitting Jennifer’s baby clothes is that they do not want to know the gender of the baby until it is born. So, all knitting had to be gender neutral, which is really hard to do when you actually start doing it. I’ve decided it’s a boy and at the baby shower you could see who had decided if it was a boy, a girl, or weren’t sure, by the gifts they gave her.
The first knit gift I gave her was a pair of baby booties (Mary Jane Booties) knit with some Debbie Bliss Yarn my sister sent up. It was the first gift she had gotten since becoming pregnant and heck if she didn’t cry out there at morning line-up, while the students were listening to morning announcements. It was so sweet, she took a picture and sent it to her husband right away.
Mary Jane Booties
Now, I wanted to use the same yarn for the sweater to give to her but I only had one ball of this yarn and wasn’t about to go out and buy more yarn, having already bought some baby yarn at the WEBS convention that I decided wasn’t gender neutral enough to use. So the Sheep Yoke Sweater was made using left over yarn and a cone of lightweight grey yarn I had bought at a thrift store held double. If I had more time I would have made her matching booties and a hat to go with the sweater, but there wasn’t any time left, so I tossed in a sweater I had made while vacationing in Mexico the previous year.
Jennifer gets another sweater.
That sweater was made using Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Percentage system, a very easy thing to do if you have the instructions, and can be made in any size. Now, this sweater is 100% wool, so I had to warn her. Obviously, despite my only living in Washington for 5 months, I have a great affection for wool.
It is still summer, really, only the 3rd day of summer, so I have a month still to knit myself something lovely will all the yarn I purchased at WEBS this year. I purchased some bright pink yarn, some dark blue yarn, and my sister sent me a ton of a dusty heathered blue, thick and soft, with which to make myself something fabulous, so I have much to do!
autumnblossomknits 