Gifts...

It's 10pm. The house is quiet. Everyone else is asleep. So after finishing up some other things, I decided to catch up on the blog. It's been a month almost, but this time I have valid excuses. Many of these items are for other people, so I couldn't blog about them before giving them... well, one of them I will, but as it's for my nephew and he won't see if unless my sister shows him I think we can all survive.


First up was a baby shower gift. I finished these with plenty of time (more than 26 if I remember correctly) to spare. I took photos and even took the time to place them in a nice gift bag.





As you can see, I normally try to match my teddy bear outfit (if they have one) to another part of the gift (if there is one), unfortunately, in an effort to make the blanket as big as possible, I only had enough yarn left for a rascally little hat.


I made the vest out of other yarn in my stash.


Hopefully the little boy won't be as much of a scamp as his bear is.


...speaking of rascally little boys (like that segue?) I finished a sweater for my nephew. He's about a year older than my little guy, so I thought it'd be funny to put the sweater on him.


He didn't agree...

So here's a bad picture of the sweater...


...hopefully after I mail it out I can get a good picture of him wearing it.


I hope it fits him well, after all the measuring he endured for it (custom fit, except it should be baggy). I want a picture especially if it doesn't fit well - he just can't have the same expression in it as my guy!


I also finished the swap sweater. In the end it took 50 hours (dk weight, lots of little cables and lace... fun, but long). Isn't it a pretty color and stitch though?



I'm hoping that she won't have to block it all out every time it's washed, but I wanted to in order to make sure the fit was larger than needed.


I saw it on her on Sunday (without ribbon still - hopefully a pic of that when it's in too!?) It was loose and hanging just right and very pretty.

If it won't just dry flat and work then I will show her a quicker way of blocking than with all of these pins! I'm glad she likes it and it fits well, I hope she still likes it so much after many hours of sewing for me!


...and last for now, but certainly not least, is the sweater I finished for Curly. This is the reason my nephew got the above sweater. I needed/wanted to knit one from pattern before I tried to adapt for handspun yarn.



This is fiber she chose back in May at the MA sheep and wool (Fantom Farms). It was fun to work with when I spun it in July during the Tour de Fleece. I wanted something a little bulkier than what I normally knit with, but not as bulky as when you buy 'bulky' yarn in stores. I knit a swatch to see what size needle would work best, and then figured out how long around the sweater needed to be, and then cast on for the size that would give me that many stitches around her body. (It ended up being the 2T size, so I followed that around, and just made sure to knit to the right lengths for her). Having made the sweater once already really helped me know where I could adapt and where I should follow.



I think it worked out great - unfortunately, I was about 12 rows short in the hood (and only had about 10 inches wasted yarn - in 4 pieces), so she got a couple stripes of Cascade (violet) and then to tie that in I put the flowers on the pouch. If I had known it was going to be that close I would have spread it out and put random stripes throughout the whole thing, but I'm not about to rip out the whole thing to change that when this works fine. She loves it, and has even worn it out a couple of these chilly mornings.

I am working on a couple of knits for my nephew's family, but I've also started swatching for a couple of projects for me - and then I still have a sock started for my husband, and various spinning things - both started and planned. We started homeschooling again this past week - so I'm purposefully giving my projects a backseat for another week or so (still working on them when I can, I still need to knit/weave/spin a bit, right?) to give us time to adjust back to school schedule instead of summer schedule, but then I'm hoping to find more time again and finish a couple!