How about a crane for his Cheerios?

Well, another week, another cold. And this time, no one was spared! All 4 of us were sniffling, sneezing, coughing, whining and complaining all weekend long! Not. Fun. Luckily, we should all be breathing easier in a day or two and I an get back to the important task of figuring out the wings for my knitting tattoo (BTW, I will put up the pattern for you when it's all done, hopefully by next week)!


In the meantime, I thought I'd show you some pics of Julian modeling the Rowan Yorskshire Tweed Chunky yoked sweater (it's the copycat sweater from Ann Budd's 'Handy book of sweater patterns') I knit for him in the fall. I had put up the photos on Flickr but don't think I got to blogging them. So here goes...

I think it's my favourite sweater of all the special knits I made for my boys. I just love everything about it, including how it makes my Jujube look even more irresitable. Even when his goofy gene (inherited from his father, see proof here) is in full effect as it was during that photoshoot. Oh, how I love my boys. They always find a way to crack me up ;0)



Like the other day...Julian and I were talking about how Lolo's first birthday is coming up and how fun it would be for us to make something special for his birthday. I was thinking of something along the lines of maracas or a noisemaker that I could make and Julian could decorate. We've been going to The Music Class on Saturday mornings and Lolo sure loves those egg shakers so it seemed like a great idea to me. Though Julian had some other ideas...

After thinking it over for a minute at lunch on Saturday, it suddenly hit him! The perfect gift to make for his little brother: what about a crane for his Cheerios?

Well, Steve and I just about fell off our chairs laughing at that one. He also did the crane motion picking some Cheerios from Lolo's high chair as he said it. Of course, what better gift for a 1 year old! How can we have missed it ;0)

Any ideas on how we can make either?

PS - did you see how I snuck in those mittens? I made them for my sister this Christmas using the leftover yarn. Actually, I ran out of yarn for the second mitten so had to frog back the first and get creative with the stripes. Sooo something my grandma would have done and my sis loved them! It's really too bad that Rowan disocntinued that yarn...

A yarn about a yarn...

Several weeks back, I came across some delightful Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Chunky in the Pecan colourway and it was love at first sight ;0) I had no idea what I would make with it but it was a deal and even though I dug deep and found the discipline to navigate away from it's page more than once, I kept coming back to admire it. Then one sleepless night, I couldn't resist it anymore and had to have it!


It was as gorgeous in person as I had hoped and I was really eager to knit it up, but what does one knit with 10 balls of chunky tweed anyway? I had it sitting on the top shelf of the yarn closet and my heart fluttered every time I went in there, but I just didn't know what to knit from it. A few weeks went by and I received an order of knitting design books and as I perused them for inspiration for a future annypurls original, I came across the most delightful Norwegian seamless yoked sweater in Ann Budd's The Knitters Handy Book of Sweaters.


Well I just had to knit the copycat version for Julian and couldn't believe my luck when I got to the requirements section and found that it required Rowan Yorkshire Chunky Tweed in the Pecan colourway! That's my yarn!!! That's my yarn ;0)

I needed a few more colours for the fair isle pattern though and really felt some kind of cosmic knitting intervention when I found "flaming" available as a single ball from Jannette's and both "olive oil" and "stout" available from Urban Yarns. And all happened to be on sale - 50% off! Can you say meant to be?

Julian eating corn pops off the sweater.
He poured them there while I was tending to Lolo.
Definately naughty. No eating off the handknits!

I cast on for it at once and was delighted by how quickly it was working up. The gauge was a whopping 3 stitches to the inch! I had the front and back done to the armpits in an evening! The next day it had a sleeve. And before I knew it...


It was all done! Now as soon as I can unknit the neckband, get rid of some decreases and reknit it large enough to fit over my toddlers huge noggin I'll give you a closer look.

Yay knitting karma!!!

PS - Since this whole sweater sized for a 2 year old only used up 3 balls in the main colour and not much of the fair isle colours, I have enough leftover to divvy up as one or two 'kits' if anyone out there is interested in getting the yarn for this sweater... e-mail me at annypurls {at} hotmail {dot} com if you are interested - ALL GONE!

PPS - About my Noro striped scarf from the last post. Debbie and Leslie asked about the yarn I used. It is Noro Kureyon in colours 172, 195 and 213 (2 balls). Jared used Silk Garden in his but I couldn't find any manly-man colours I liked in the Silk Garden (my hubby wouldn't wear anything with purple in it and they all seem to have some purple in them!) so went for the Kureyon instead. In retrospect, I should have looked harder for Silk Garden colours because the Kureyon is a little scratchy.