Lilly Hat #6

I was asked to knit another wee Lilly Hat for a custom order for a baby who will be born soon. I love this wee pattern, and I used some leftover Debbie Bliss yarn I had in my stash (which also helps with some of my Ravelry Shop the Stash challenges!). It turned out pretty cute and I made a crocheted flower to pretty it up a bit. Please excuse the non human model as the baby it is for hasn't been born yet!

This is one of my custom order hats, so if you're interested contact me for more information.

Baby Cable Yoke Jacket and Booties

This is a really cute hooded cardigan that I was asked to knit for a workmate to give to her niece who has just had a baby. It's a 6 - 12 month size knitted in Debbie Bliss Casmerino Aran, which is lovely to knit with. It challenged me a little as it included a few techniques I'd not tried before, so that was interesting, and although I really like the finished product, I would definitely do things differently next time as I think some things could be done more simply. Although it's completely seamless, the amount of picking up stitches that is required overrides the benefit of it being seamless in my opinion.

I also knitted some little Mary-Jane booties to go with the jacket:

It's definitely a cute wee set, and I really hope my friend's niece loves it as much as I do!

Leafy Shrug

As mentioned in a previous post, I am participating in a few challenges for 2010 on Ravelry. One of those challenges is a month by month Knit Along, with a different designer offering up one of their patterns as the challenge of the month. January's KAL was the Leafy Shrug by designer StitchyMama (Katherine) and this is what I created:

It's really cute and is a perfect accompaniment to the Kaia Babydoll I've made as a custom order for a friend's niece. I had originally intended it for Tessa but will give it to my friend as the two items go together too well! I think I may need to knit another Kaia and Shrug for Tessa as she keeps wanting to put them on.

I've also knitted a really cute cabled hoodie cardigan for another friend for her great niece and I'll post pics later when I've attached the buttons and finished the booties that are going with it.

Izzy's 8th birthday

It is Izzy's 8th birthday today and she had a sleepover party last Sunday evening with two of her best friends. I can't quite believe my big girl is 8 - she's growing up so fast!

She lost one of her front teeth the day before this photo and the other one is very wiggly - she thinks she looks like Nanny McPhee!

Holidays

I haven't been on here in a while - in fact January has been a complete write-off! Our lovely summer holiday (all one week of it) in Ohope which followed Christmas, DS 2's 10th birthday and in the midst of the school holidays, left little time for blogging. Well, school's back and so am I! I will post a couple of pics of our holiday away, where we got to see many sightings of Moko the dolphin as he camped out in the sea right in front of our beach house.

The kids all had a ball and it was very relaxing. We had been dreading the drive up and back as last year (when we stayed in the same place) Tess had screamed most of the car journey home and quite a bit on the way up - very stressful. But this year she was wonderful - very chatty and happy, despite not actually sleeping in the car, except for the journey back when she fell asleep 4 minutes from home!!

I am now officially on a yarn buying ban and have joined a shop the stash group on Ravelry. My yarn collection is rather large (see below) and it really needs to be used up before I go buying anymore wool.

(that's a king size bed, by the way)

I think the picture says it all, don't you?!

I have also joined a few other Ravelry challenges this year, namely 10 in 2010 - which is basically knitting 10 of many different things (there are different categories), which should keep me busy and motivated, and will hopefully help with the shopping the stash challenge too :)  I'll take an updated picture of the stash later in the year to help me track my progress.

I have been knitting during my January break from here, but there's not a lot to show for it yet. I'll display the things I've knitted as I go through them. Right, it's pretty late right now so I'll be finishing now and back in the next few days with some items I've knitted recently.