Pretty & Pink

Today we have another update on the topic of knitting for nieces and nephews.

This time the knitting was not for a new nephew, but a niece who has been around long enough to start making more specific requests. Niece S turned three last month and requested pink and pretty things for her birthday. I had just acquired some bright pink Sidar Snuggly Baby Bamboo from a sale rack, and thought it would be perfect. So I searched through my One-Skein Wonders book and found the Jamaica Pouch designed by Sandra Clockedile.

I modified the pattern just a bit to make the purse smaller. I just stopped each section (base and sides) when I thought it looked big enough rather than knitting to the dimensions in the pattern. I love the pattern made by the increases on the base of the purse.

I think it worked out really well. It was very fast and lots of fun to knit this pattern, and I hope I find an excuse to do it again fairly soon. If I make the full-size version, I'm going to need either much longer double pointed needles, or to use 2 circulars or magic loop. Even though it goes really quickly, there are a lot of stitches to a round.

It was a hit with the birthday girl. She packed all of her new doll clothes in it to carry them from the family room to her bedroom.

Cotton Candy Wrap-Up

Today I met my two new nieces and gave them their cotton candy dresses. Here are all three of these dresses before they got the finishing touches.

It's hard to get accurate color on all of the dresses at once -- the purple is a deep plum and the pink is bright Barbie-pink, and its hard to get the camera to capture both of those colors together.

These dresses were really fun to make. The smaller ones I did in about a week each, although those were weeks with an unusually high amount of knitting time. The larger one is for a three year-old (Niece C), and since the largest size given for the pattern is 24 months, I had to do a bit of math to size it up, and it took longer. This one still doesn't have a button; I couldn't find anything just right in my small stash, so I'll probably take the dress to Knit Night tomorrow and go on a little hunt.
Here is little Niece H's pink Cotton Candy Dress:

When last we saw this dress, I had knitted sleeves for it (link also has details on pattern). While I think I followed the instructions correctly, the size of the sleeves didn't seem to have any relationship to the size of the armholes. I contemplated re-knitting the sleeves, but I think it is quite cute as a sleeveless dress, too, so I just edged the armholes the same way as the neck and left it.
Step-mom Lou, these babies' grandma, provided these two buttons from her generous crafting stash.

Niece V received the purple dress:

This one took about one yard less than two skeins of the Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Cotton. These are in the 12-month size.

The nieces are just too sweet. I got each of them to sleep on me a bit today, and got to take Nephew V (two years) for a run around the yard, so that was a great "baby fix."

I've just finished a paying knitting job, and tomorrow I'll take it back to the LYS and post about it. Meanwhile, this week my focus needs to be on a secret cross stitch project, so I'm off to work on that.

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.