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.