Baby shower stuff OR How I made a sweater, and did intarsia all in one week!

My friends Brooke and Pat recently had a baby boy! The baby shower is today so when I got the invite last Tuesday I thought I’d take the opportunity to knit something small and baby-y!

I know when I had my son, Caleb, 8 years ago, that I quickly got sick of all the pastel blue and cutesy-wootsy Winnie-the-Pooh coated baby items I received. Brooke and Pat are a really cool couple, so I want to make something cool for their little one, so I went on the search for patterns.

I found two hat patterns that I thought were pretty neat-o, and I really wanted to try them both, so I decided on two hats, two pairs of matching booties and a hoodie! I made the two hats using the hoodie colour as the contrast colour, so everything is matchy-match and the hats and booties can switch up the look of the hoodie. I chose to knit everything in acrylics, because they’re easier to care for. I remember when my son was a baby, if I couldn’t throw it in the washer, I didn’t want it, plus, lil' baby won't be allergic to acrylics, and they won't make him itchy.

The hoodie pattern can be found at this site: http://fibredaze.blogspot.com/2008/03/baby-hoodie.html

Its the first sweater that I’ve ever completed, so I’m pretty happy with it!

I found a few things in the pattern a little weird, so I changed it ever so slightly to better suit what I wanted, such as adding ribbing to the edges of the hood so that it didn’t roll. I also left out the pocket, cause babies don’t need pockets, holding stuff is what a momma is for!

I didn’t like all the hand-sewing and end-weaving-in that I had to do. In the future I’ll be knitting sweaters in the round, thank-you very much.

By the looks of the finished product I’d say it’s a size 3-6 months, which should be a good size, cause it’s currently COLD here in Newfoundland, and will be until at least June.

Here it is being modeled by Caleb's Cabbage Patch kid.

I used this pattern for the baby booties: http://ooobabyknits.typepad.com/ooo_baby_knits/2005/02/mi...

I highly recommend it! They knit up super fast, and even a beginner shouldn’t have any problem with them.

I used this pattern for the skull and cross-bones hat: http://pippi-ob.livejournal.com/6735.html
It was my first time doing intarsia, and I’m pretty psyched about how it turned out!!!

This is the second hat from this site: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/skater-baby-brim-hat

I loooooooved knitting this hat! It turned out so well! I’m actually thinking of modifying the design a little to make a bigger version for Caleb, cause it is seriously so cool!

More Arts by Me!!!

So I had these little square canvases that I bought at Wal Mart like 2 years ago and never used. I'm a big fan of squares. Don't know why...

Anyway, they're like 10x10, 8x8 and 6x6 I think? I had 2 of each, except for the biggest one, and I was trying to figure out something to paint for my living room. My living room is a pretty boring cream colour, except for the lower half of the walls under the ledge, which is a vibrant light green. I love bright colours! So going with my love of bright colours, I picked out the brightest ones I had to paint backgrounds on the little canvases. Green, orange, pink, yellow and purple. Then i painted swirly things with white and matching colours, to give the backgrounds some depth. At this point I still had NO idea what i would be painting.

I decided to go with some nature stuff. I like outdoorsy things, I have tree branches hung on the walls in my room, just 'cause I really like trees, so I decided the biggest square would be a tree. Then I go tthe idea, what about silhouettes of stuff? so i thought up some stuff and got to painting. You wouldn't think these would have taken much time, but they actually did, especially the tree, that took me about 2 or 3 hours to complete. The others didn't take too long. I finished them all in about 6 hours.

Here they are, closer up:

Creepy tree...

Crows (I love crows, yeah I'm weird like that...)

Dandelion parachutes! (When I was a little kid, I used to pretend dandelion seeds were my pets. Dandelions are one of my favorite flowers. What'd I tell you? I'm weird.)
More Trees! (this reminds me of the title sequence of "North of 60" haha...)
Cattails (mew!)

I painted them intending on putting them in my living room, but I was trying to figure out a way to arrange them and they ended up in my bedroom. And I sorta like them where they are. They make my room seem more complete... Oh well, guess I'll have to paint something else for my living room.

Haille's Magic Unicorn Hat!!!

Last Saturday my friend Angie and I decided to take our kiddo's out in the snow to go sliding. We went to the park and had a blast sliding down the hill on tubes and plastic slides. There were a bunch of people there with their kids, and what a great hill! kids were flying down there taking spills into snowbanks!

While we were there, Haille, Angie's 5 year old daughter was admiring Caleb's Mohawk hat. When she found out that I had knit it myself, she asked if I could make her a hat too. I asked her what kind of hat she would like, and leave it to a 5 year old to give you a challenge, she replied "A unicorn hat!!!"

Well that was right up my alley because I've been looking for something fun and experimental to knit. I looked online for patterns, searched through my knitting books, but I couldn't find anything like what I was thinking of, so I set to improvising a pattern.

I'm a big fan of earflap hats. They're just so darn cute, so the basis of the hat was an earflap hat, knit in the round on size 9 circs. I used worsted weight Bernat Wool Blends Natural Blends yarn in Rich Violet. It's 80% acrylic and 20% wool, so I figure it won't be itchy, will only felt very slightly, yet still be nice and warm.

for the ears I picked up and knit18 stitches on each side of the hat making the proper increases and decreases. The horn was knit separately out of Briggs and Little Heritage Bleached White wool on size 3 DPN's. I then stuffed it with poly-fibre fill and sewed it on.

The mane and tassle's on the ties is the Bernat yarn and Briggs and Little Wool, with some Paton's Classic Merino in That's Pink.

I'm still undecided on whether or not I'm going to lightly felt the hat, but I think I may, just to shrink it a little, because it needs to fit the head of a 5 year old.

This was a super fun hat to make, and I had a chance to use up some of my yarn stash. I'm in the process of writing up the pattern and will post it when I'm done.

PS: This hat got featured on Craftster on the knitting boards! :D <3