Baby knitting

A couple more baby items finished. These were made with wool found at charity shops, so fullfill my thrifty and crafty urges, brilliant. Especially as quality wool is so darn expensive. The tank top came out way wider than other people's on ravelry, so I think it's more like a 3month size. Not sure if it's going to be a bit short too. The seamless wrap cardigan is brilliant, I think I've already said how much I love seamless knitting. No annoying seaming afterwards, and it's fun to watch the whole garment take shape at once.

Teeny booties

While still searching for the right wool to knit useful baby things like nappy covers I couldn't resist knitting a pair of these little booties. So quick and cute. I'm hoping the double straps will stop them falling off all the time and make them slightly useful. They might start multiplying as they're great for using leftover wool. The original pattern is here but I used an adapted seamless pattern as I really dig seamless knitting. Hard to believe that something so small will be with us soon...

First Curly Purly

There's a reason why there's not been much activity on this blog so far in 2009. Growing a baby is hard work! At least in the first 3 months anyway. I seem to have my creativity back now, so have seized the knitting needles and started knitting for the baby. We'll be using cloth nappies, so need wool nappy covers. Here's the first two done already, newborn and small knitted in Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds Blue Faced Leicester. I used the Curly Purly Soaker pattern which is free and awesome, found on Ravelry. They knit up really quickly, which is great as I'll need at least another 5 of each size. I'm looking for some more Blue Faced Leicester aran wool to knit the rest of them in. This Purelife is more like bulky/12 ply. After much searching it seems that the only flock of organic Blue Faced Leicester has been disbanded. So I'm looking for the next best thing, good animal husbandry with little spraying of the sheep, followed by no chemical use and biodegradable cleansing agents used to clean the wool. The search continues...

Homemade Christmas Crackers

We spent a lovely long weekend at Luke's parent's. The hampers went down very well, the biscuits were munched on all weekend, and we got a foodie Christmas present in return, a meal out at a nearby gastro pub The Crooked Billet, which was yummy. Luke made us all watch the BBC sports personality of the year, and what a great year it was for cycling, which made him very happy. I only watched with half an eye as I was knitting up 16 wooly bracelets from a tutorial over at the lovely resurection fern. These are for our friend's Christmas meal party at the weekend. Usually I'd have been cooking a dish for it, but when everyone made it clear they couldn't have a Christmas meal without crackers I volunteered to make them to avoid the eco-abomination of bought crackers. Hats made from last year's Cristmas wrapping paper, jokes found on the internet, and cracker snaps purchased from eBay, were the easy part. Then I got really stuck trying to think of what else to put in the crackers that wasn't plastic tat, and didn't cost anything, so we could spend more money on bubbly! Hmmm... many ideas were rejected as I worried my friends would think they were too lame. Then I spotted a list of handmade present tutorials, by one of my favourite bloggers, which included these sweet wooly bracelets. I nervously fished them out of the washing machine to find they'd felted perfectly and shrunk by just the right amount, whew! Thankfully I had lots of wool so they didn't cost a penny, so I could spend some of the budget on fairtrade Divine chocolate money instead.
Luke volunteered to go get the food shopping for the party by bike trailer, and to cook the meat. That way we can get the veggies from our lovely local greengrocer and organic meat from Mansergh, I can't wait!

Fruity

Finished knitting a teacosy. This one's for Rebecca as I'm going to visit her and her not so new baby in a couple of weeks, just before her birthday. Luckily they use a teapot, and are lacking in knitted goods to keep their tea warm with. I just love this cute pattern but it's a bit too wide especially for my teapot. I think I'll have to adapt a pattern to fit my teapot, but I might wait till I get a bit more knitting practise before I attempt that.