Sunday, April 26, 2009

Blankets over, time for dresses

Whew! That was a long time without an update. A combination of (1) having to borrow a digital camera (2) long time of no nice days for pictures and (3) work taking all my mental energy.

The Rylee and Sofia blankets were both done on time, given at the birthday parties, and greatly appreciated by the moms. They were not, however, done far enough ahead of time to get finished pictures taken of them. I've asked the moms to send me pictures but they, oh you know, have small children. So no holding of breath on that one. I'll get pictures of them up here eventually.

After making two big baby blankets between Christmas and Easter, it was then time to make little outfits for this spring's two new nieces. I decided on the Cotton Candy Dress designed by Celeste Pinheiro, which is in the book Knitting for Babies and Kids, edited by Jeanne Stauffer. This is the cutest book I ever did see. Since these two nieces are also cousins to each other, I'm going to make two matching dresses in different colors. Monday, April 13, I bought the yarn for one of them, started it on Thursday the 16th, and by Friday the 24th I had this:

Baby clothes in worsted weight yarn may be my new favorite thing. I'm making the twelve-month size because it's a little hard to crawl in a dress and this one would look so cute on a baby starting to toddle.

My first mini-foray into lace went well. Well, the pattern calls this "triangle lace" but it's more material than holes, so I don't know about that. Either way, it's an adorable little border.

This picture of the bodice and armhole might actually capture the color the best. I usually don't make things quite this pink, but that seems to be the direction my sisters are going with the baby things, so I'm happy to contribute. I think the next one will be an equally intense purple. I still have the neckline stitching and the sewing up to do, but this will use less than 4 skeins of Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Cotton (100% mercerized cotton) at 93 yards a skein.

I've also been working on some charity knitting and my clapotis again, those updates coming soon.