The "M" Word

Three years ago, as you may remember, I knit a christening set for my brother and his wife, for the christening of their son, Max.  This spring, they are getting ready to welcome another little one into the family, so I borrowed the set back so I can get it ready to christen Max's soon to be born baby brother.  Granted, the christening won't be held until some time next fall, but I'll need time for washing, blocking, and all that stuff before then.  And its possible that I may have wanted to put the set on display in the store for a little while too...

Anyway, we had a family dinner at my parents' house last night, and we used the opportunity to make the switch - the knit and crochet toys that I had made for Max in the past, but borrowed back for my Holiday window, in exchange for the christening set.  Gavin brought the set in the special storage box I had given them along with the set.  A stiff cardboard box, made from acid-free card, and reinforced with metal on the corners.  Inside, the set was lovingly wrapped in the acid-free, stain-free tissue paper.  I peeled it back carefully, and lifted up the gown...  and right in the middle was a little brown moth carcass!  All that concern for staining and decay, and darned if it didn't even occur to me to think about moths!  Further inspection revealed a few more of the little decayed cocoon thingies, so I definitely wasn't seeing things the first time. Ugh. Just the thought of what those little beasties can do to yarn makes me feel ill!

Paranoid as I am, I left the giant (and now potentially infested) box with my folks, and brought the christening set home in a plastic bag.  I'll have to deal with the box later - no way was that box getting anywhere near to my yarn stash!  I just finished inspecting the set - gown, shawl, bonnet, and booties - very carefully, and have stashed it all in my freezer after first putting it into some spare store bags I had kicking around.  In a week I shall take it all out again, let it "thaw" for a few days, and then repeat the 'freeze-thaw' cycle a few more times.  I couldn't see anymore moth remains in the set, but I'm not taking any chances!

The mark of a true knitter - knitwear (or yarn) in the freezer, tucked in next to the (apparently expired!) pie crusts and frozen berries!

So far, it looks like we've been lucky - I couldn't find any signs of holes or chewed up fibres.  Perhaps this particular species of moth wasn't overly impressed by this wool/silk blend.  When I wash the set in a few weeks' time, I will inspect it all again.  Fingers crossed that there isn't any damage - what leftover yarn I had has long since been dyed a striking blue-green color (both the laceweight and the DK), so finding extra yarn for darning could prove a challenge!

That reminds me... I really should put that beautifully dyed yarn to good use! ;)

Max's Christening

My nephew Max was christened today, which means I finally get to show you some finished objects from last fall!

 They christened him Maximilian Constantine Alexander McDonald.   I think my Brother and Sister in Law expect great things from this little guy! :)

The happy family, post-ceremony

So you've probably guessed that the finished objects I wanted to share were the various parts of this christening set - the gown, bonnet, booties, and matching shawl.

Here are a few close-ups, so you can see it in more detail:

For the dress and bonnet, I used a pattern from the GarnStudio site, but I had to recalculate the numbers a bit to match the DK weight yarn I was using.  I aimed for the 6-9 month size, which worked out well given that Max is now 6 months old.

Initially, my plan was to make only this christening shawl, assuming that Dominika would have a family gown that she wanted to use.  But then when she asked me to make the dress as well, I made sure to use match yarns to make it a complete set.  (The shawl is made from JaegerSpun's Wool-Silk Zephyr lace weight, and the gown is their Zephyr DK weight).

 These are the booties, which you can't actually see in any of the photos.

To round out the gift, I found an acid-free textile storage box, with acid-free tissue paper, so the whole set can be stored safely for future use.  It was a bit of an extravagant extra, but I figured it was worth it for 5 months of work!  :)

Christmas(es)

Last night we got back from a quick Christmas visit to Ottawa. We only went for a few days, just enough time to catch up with family, eat lots of turkey, and (for me at least!) be reminded of how much I appreciate the fact that Vancouver winters do not bring wind-chills of -25 degrees! :)

Here we are on Christmas Eve - the calm before the storm! ;)

Santa came!

And here are Mike and Felix on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas, for my US friends!), waiting ever so patiently for the leftover turkey dinner to be prepared!

Felix is such a cutie!

Since this year was our year to go to Ottawa for Christmas, we held a mini-Christmas with my family the weekend before the real thing.

Here's my dad, the proud grandfather, helping little Max open one of his gifts.

And this is my brother Gavin, modelling the Dr. Who scarf I made for him...

...at almost 12 feet long and 1 foot wide, its not quite as long as the original, but I think its close enough! :)

Other Christmas knitting was limited to a few dishcloths I made for Mike's mom, and this super fun pair of stripy socks that I made for Mike, using wool I bought on Salt Spring Island back in October.

Now, if I want to make it safely to the New Year, I have to get back to work on Mike's Olympic sweater which has yet to acquire any sleeves! :)

More FOs! :)

Wow, its feels like ages since my last post! I'm participating in an Implicit Career Search program these month, which takes up most of my days. Add that to the general business of life, and I just can't seem to keep up with it all! :)

Anyway, when I made the two cardigans from the last post for my friend, she also asked that I make an extra cardigan and hat set, to give to her friend as a gift. The recommendation for colours was something green or yellow, since the little girl in question has dark eyes and hair.

This is the cardigan I came up with - I loved the combination of the green and brown, and I thought the row of flowers around the middle made it feminine without being too girly.

For a matching hat, I went with a basic toque, with some added ear flaps to keep her little ears warm all winter.

These were knit Spud & Chloe Sweater yarn - its half wool, half cotton, and so squishy!! Great yardage too - the whole set took less than 2 skeins of green, and less than one of the brown.

That's all for the knitting updates at the moment - with December approaching, my knitting projects are mostly all gifts - so you'll have to wait till January to see them! :)

Knitting!

Bet you thought I had forgotten that this was supposed to be a knitting blog! :) I have actually been knitting like mad all fall, but most of my projects have to remain hidden until the projects are finished, and have arrived safely with their new owners. But today, there are some projects that need revealing!

Over the summer, a friend of mine commissioned some kiddie sweaters and hats from me, for her darling little girl (she's about 15 months, for reference)... Some colour suggestions were made, but otherwise it was all up to me to design them. And here are the final results:

This set started as a suggestion that teal would look lovely on the wee one, and that maybe a little pink could be thrown in to make it more girly.

A basic raglan design, plus a daisy stitch band in the middle, teal ribbons to give some structure to the button bands, and voila, one cute little sweater! The hat is a basic toque, with earflaps added to keep wee one's head warm.

The second sweater is really more of a coat - my thought was a sort of matinee length coat, that could be worn over a little dress, or over trousers and a tunic top. Then I found some fun clasps in the sewing store, and my idea was ready:

This photo is a little dark, so here's a close up of the upper body:

(On second thought, that one's not a great deal better either - its been really wet and grey here recently,

which makes photography a little difficult!)

The hem, cuffs, and stand up collar are all picot-edged, so I carried that theme into the bonnet as well.

I'm hoping it will keep the little one's head warm, without looking like too much of a helmet! :)

Details are all on Ravelry, if your interested.

Revenge of the number tags...

When the movers were packing up our things, they assigned each item a number before loading it on to their truck. That way, when they later moved our things into the warehouse, on to a second truck, and, finally, into our new flat, it was a simple matter of checking off all the numbers to make sure that everything arrived safely.

(There was a brief moment at the end of the 'moving box bingo' game when both a mirror and one of my boxes of yarn was unaccounted for... I didn't care about the mirror, but there would've been trouble if that yarn had disappeared!) :)

Overall, there were only 174 pieces in our shipment. But, somehow, now that we're in the final stages of unpacking, the numbers just won't go away!

Everywhere we turn, there's another number sticker staring you in the face...

I'm beginning to think that they might be reattaching themselves at night, when no one else is watching! ;)

On the plus side, we finished painting all the main rooms on Wednesday, which meant that we were finally able to set up our furniture. Our living room now looks like a living room!

We still need to find a side table to house the microwave and toaster oven (it will go against the wall opposite the stove, and thereby give us back our counter-space!), but here's the before and after of the kitchen that I promised you earlier.

This is how the kitchen looked when we first moved in:

And this is how it looks now:

Would you believe its the same apartment? :)

ps: most of that nice "wood" trim in the first picture wasn't actually nice wood... it was just cheap plywood or plastic crown moulding that had been painted to look like wood, using this really awful faux finish. And don't even get me started on that "baseboard"... who installs a baseboard that's flush with (and sometimes even inset from) the bottom edge of the drywall?! I know this is an old building, but seriously! But this is what happens when you rent, I guess... :)

More FOs! :)

Two more recent FOs to show you today, both of them gifts for little ones or soon-to-be little ones.

First up we have this fun little cotton sun hat, made for little Roma. Another fun crochet project, which took almost no time to make. The ribbon makes it look very dressy, but you can easily take it out to dress it down a little. :) Details on Ravelry, for those who are interested.

The other FO was a gift for my brother and his wife, who are expecting a little boy in July (my nephew-only streak continues!). When we were kids, my brother was a huge lego junky... so what is more appropriate for his son than his own baby-safe lego man?! :)

His name is Jørgen; he stayed in New York just long enough for a photo shoot, but then had to be taken out to Vancouver to my brother's place - Jørgen and Frobisher just did not get along!

It started all nice and friendly-like, but then Frobisher decided it would be funny to see what Jørgen looked like all in pieces...

At this stage, I had to separate the two, and send Frobisher off to bed without any cookies for dinner. Needless to say, he didn't make the trip out to Vancouver this past week! :)

Jørgen's Ravelry details are available here.

directionally challenged crochet (an FO)

Crochet is my new favourite way to use up my insanely large yarn stash. Especially those teeny little bits of yarn that I insist on keeping, despite the fact that some people (Jo, this means you!) make fun of me for keeping them. :)

My most recent creation is this little guy, Curtis the Caterpillar, a pattern from the Lion Brand collection.

Only problem is, I think I'm crocheting backwards...

So my question for all you experienced crocheters is this: when you are crocheting around in a circle, are you supposed to be turning the work in a counter-clockwise direction, or a clockwise direction? I turn it counter-clockwise, and as a result, I'm pretty sure this guy is technically inside-out! :)

But then I guess this shouldn't be that much of a surprise - when I knit in the round, I usually do that inside out as well! :)

FO: Squidgy Squares with Frills

Mike's cousin Rick and his wife Kathy (would that make them my cousins-in-law?) had a little baby boy in March. As usual, a new baby in the family means a new blanket on my needles!

The design for this one came about rather randomly... To start with, I had 9 colours of this cotton-ease yarn, in varying amounts. I wanted something portable, so I could easily take it to the Olympics, and work on it during the bus trips to Whistler and Cypress Mountains.

Individual squares were the perfect solution - so I took the colour of which I had the least amount, and knit until I ran out of yarn... one false start later, and I had the perfect size - 46 stitches, by 46 garter ridges. Repeat this 8 more times, stitch 'em all together (with alternating ridge directions, just for kicks), and voilà! A baby blanket in need of a border...

That too was a little random. I couldn't find anything good online, so I went to Knitty City here in NYC (love that store!) and started flipping through their collection of edging books until I found the one I wanted... turns out its the same frill used on the Mrs. Beeton handwarmers, but worked in the opposite direction.* Doesn't it just make the perfect blanket edging! :)

The backing fabric was sewn on by hand, which makes for a neater transition from backing to frill. I also fudged a bit of "quilting" around the edges of the orange (centre) square, just to hold it all together... if you've been paying attention the last few years, you'll recognize the fabric from the blanket I made for Felix several years ago. I think its good for 2nd cousins to have things in common, don't you? :)

Add one baby Joshua, and you have a perfect blanket!

*more details available on Ravelry

FOs! :)

I finally have some finished objects to share with you! :)

I actually completed these last week, but they were intended as gifts, and therefore had to be kept under wraps just a little bit longer...

This first one is a simple tea cozy... although I made it for 'our' teapot, I actually had Mike in mind when I was knitting it, since he works from home and is the one who uses the teapot most often...

and when he does, he tends to wrap the tea towel around the pot to keep it warm - so then when I go to use that tea towel in the evening, I can never manage to find it!

This is a great stash-busting project. I had a little more than one skein of Noro Kureyon (the rest was used in a scarf last fall), so I made this coaster to go along with the cozy. I tried to hand felt it, but it didn't work so well - I'll have to remember to toss it into the wash pile next time we go to the laundromat - if those heavy duty washing machines can't felt it, nothing will! :) (details on ravelry)

The other project I can show you was a little gift for my friend Elizabeth, who's birthday was yesterday.

Everyone likes a chocolate cupcake on their birthday! :)

Here's a view of the top, showing all the 'sprinkles'. This was a great little pattern - its so quick that you could make a several of them in an evening - although adding the picot edging (which isn't in the pattern) and sewing on the beads did make it take a little longer... but so much cuter, too, I think! :) (details on ravelry)

And finally, because its such a lovely spring day outside, let me end with a few photos of the flowers that are blooming in the park I walk through on the way to work.

Can you see the daffodils, hiding in the middle of all that dead vegetation? :)

These crocuses are right next to the path, in an area that gets a little more sun. There are lots of little patches of crocus (and other flowers') leaves along the path, but so far these are the only ones (I've seen) that are blooming. Don't you just love spring?! :)