A L'illo for Lolo...

I think I cast on for L'illo the very day it was released on knitty.  It was one of those projects that just was meant to be.  I had just the yarn in the exact right quantity and just the boy to wear it too!  And so it was, a little L'illo...

...for my little Lolo ;0)

The sweater is super cute in a modern vintage kind of way:  the woven stitch and construction makes it feel vintage, but the assymetric ribbed placket and collar is cool modern.  Love it!  

Though I have to admit that the actual knitting on this one was less than pleasant.  I knit it from RYC Cashcotton which is deliciously soft and shows great crisp stitch definition but it's utter lack of give makes it really hard on the hands and wrists.  

So much so that knitting this sweater gave me my very first taste of carpel tunnel pain - loss of grip and strength in my right hand, sharp shooting pains to the elbow, cold hands and numbness in my thumb, ring finger and pinky.  Scary!

Thankfully, now that it's done, the pain is gone.  It's one of the many things I was thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend.  Of course I was also thankful for my family, grandma's turkey, a delightful walk in the woods (above), my sister's ham and fiber...naturally!  

Happy Thansgiving to you and yours!  Oh, and if you're Canadian, don't forget to vote on Tuesday, eh?

A is for Apples...

...and for Abigail!  I had such fun knitting for Ceilli last week that I just couldn't resist knitting for the daughter of another one of Stephen's office buddies, Abigail, this week.  And that's how these cute little piggies charmed their way onto my needles ;0)

The pattern is Spilly Jane's Piggy mittens and the yarn is Knit Picks Shine Worsted.  I was worried about running out of yarn (I only had one ball of each shade) so knit the rolled cuffs in a lighter shade of pink which turned out to be a good thing because by the time I finished the second snout, there were just a few yards of the darker yarn left!  I used it to knit a striped I-cord to make sure these little piglets don't loose each other and by the time I was done, there was no yarn left, just cute little mittens.  Oh how I would have loved these when I was a wee one.  I hope Abby loves them too and that they keep her little hands nice and toasty in the cooler days ahead...

The days sure are getting shorter and cooler around these parts.  The tempertatures are a-dropping, the leaves are a-falling and the apples are ripe for the a-picking!  So we made the most of the season by taking the boys to a local orchard last weekend for an afternoon of ladder-climbing, crisp-apple eating, tractor-riding, farm-animal-petting and of course, just plain running amuck in an orchard.  And what fun it was.  

And then to top it all off, there was homemade apple and sugar pie!  A perfect end to a perfect weekend.  

Martha would have been proud ;0)

Knitting for Ceilli

I love having two boys.  Love! Of course I would love to be putting bows in curly locks too, but when I see the beautiful relationship that is developing between my little guys and how much they enjoy playing together, I'm pretty happy it turned out the way it did ;0)

But every once in a while, I get an urge for cute girly knitting...you know, with lace and ruffles and flowers and eyelets and picot edges!  Ah, the stuff of dreams!  Luckily, there seems to be a little girly baby boom around us and a sweet little girl was born to friend of Stephen's a few weeks ago and I was more than happy to get knitting on a little frilly knitterly gift ;0)

It's the upside-down daisy hat from Susan B. Anderson's Itty Bitty Hats and the flower pacifier clip from Itty Bitty Nursery (though you can get the flower clip pattern for free here just like I did).  The yarn is stash Knit Picks Shine Worsted and both were knit with US 7 bamboo needles.

Both were quick to knit but long to seam.  I don't mind that because I actually really enjoy seaming and finishing.  I'm strange that way.  I ended up making a few mods to the pattern, some intentional, others quite by accident.  For the hat, I sewed on five of the petals instead of six.  I knit the newborn size and found that there was too much overlap with six petals...so much so that it looked like a circle up on top rather than a daisy.

For the flower clip, I found the instructions for the petals confusing and figured there had to be errata there.  I thought I fixed it by knitting one, moving the yarn to the front, slipping one, passing the yarn to the back and continuing this way across the row.  I continued this way and ended up with what I think is double knitting!  Quite by {happy} accident! 

I thought this is what the pattern meant but then the pattern says to turn it right side out with the purl bumps on the inside when finishing and mine didn't have any purl bumps, just nice stockinette that laid flat on both sides.  Tres cool!

For the pacifier clip, I sewed two pieces of velcro on the end instead of dismantling an actual store bought pacifier holder to harvest the hardware.  It just seemed wasteful to me.  I used the clip from an old name tag holder I got at some convention in another life when I had business functions!  Seems like ages ago.  It felt very fitting to be dismantling office supplies to turn them into pacifier holders ;0)

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out and hope that baby Ceilli will enjoy them for a while before outgrowing them.  I guess that's the nice thing about the binky holder, it will fit for a long while!

Now off to knit something blue...

More soup!

I nestled myself on the sofa with a nice cup of green tea and the most decadent and buttery yarn I've ever felt last weekend to cast on for another Duck Soup, this one in the largest size for my {not so little anymore} Jubilee Bubilee.

The yarn is Frog Tree 100% merino wool and even though it is technically worsted weight, I got the required gauge of 4 sts per inch with it on US 9s. It's nice and drapey, but not holey. This stuff is surely the closest thing to butta I've ever knit with and I can't tell you how many times I had to put down the knitting to check the label because I was in total disbelief that 100% wool could feel this soft and cooshy. And it has great yardage too boot - I used just over 6 balls to knit the 4/5 year size (that's how much Classic Elite Countess I used for Lolo's 18 month size)!

I really like the sagey gray-green too, but couldn't think of any colours that would work well for the frog closures. I didn't want it to be too babyish but didn't want it to be too grown up or serious either. It suddenly came to me just as I was finishing the sleeves: Behr's Color Smart tool!  

It's this really nifty tool that generates colour ideas. I started by searching for a colour that most closely matched the yarn ('celery ice') and then asked the tool to find coordinating colours and it generated 8 different palettes. I ended up going for the 'cool details 1' combo (the last one in the screen shot above) because it happened to be most compatible with my stash and ended up with this...

Not bad, eh? I think I'm going to use that tool a lot more from now on. It completely took the guesswork out of the equation and gave me ideas I wouldn't have even thought of on my own. This one's definitely going into my knitting bookmark folder ;0) 

I ended up knitting the frog closures from stash worsted weight yarns and it worked out really well though I did have to knit the i-cords for the buttons a little longer to be able to knot and fold them with the thicker yarn and still end up with a 2-inch button frog. I ended up knitting 4 inch i-cords for the loops and 7.5 inch i-cord for the buttons.  

I'm thrilled with how it turned out in the end and would love to wrap myself up in it myself. Julian wouldn't have a problem with that, because even though he looks perfectly happy with it on in the photos (he was bribed with a chocolate race car ;0), he decided he can't wear it because it's "not his favourite colour"! Well thats a new one. Hopefully he'll change his mind again soon and make green his favourite colour just in time for cooler weather.  

Fingers crossed...

ps - I ended up making a few edits to the pattern after knitting this one to give the sleeves a bit more ease in the larger sizes (the baby sizes are not affected). I issued revised pattern to all buyers on September 22nd (it says 'v.3' on the cover). If you didn't get it or if you suspect it might have been deleted by your spam filter, send me a note at annypurls{at}hotmail{dot}com and I'll send it along.