games

I finished the chessboard (which is actually a checkerboard according to the pattern). It was a fun, easy knit, which should have taken a lot less time than it did. I'm just slow. As I mentioned before the pattern is from Weekend Knitting and it really did seem like good weekend knitting to me. The title of the book refers to knitting that's nice to do on the weekend, not necessarily patterns that can be completed in a weekend. This pattern was both (though I only did the board part of it, not the drawstring bag that goes along with it).

I almost hit a snag after finishing the bulk of it. I used Shelridge Farms 100% Wool DK in Natural White and Storm. I got a skein in Cornflower for the border, but it actually doesn't go well with the Storm. Storm has a hint of green in it. So I had to find something else to use. I thought I would have to buy something because I wanted 100% wool again, plus have the same approximate weight, but I had a look in my stash, and realized I have a lot of yarn! And a bunch of it I had forgotten about was actually 100% wool DK. So I had several choices of colour for the border. I ended up using some of the Ashford Tekapo 100% wool in a grey that I got super cheap on my New Zealand yarn shopping spree. I think it goes well.

Now I have to make the chess pieces. I have a great idea for what to do, but I don't have patterns for it, so that'll be tricky. No big rush though, as this is for a Christmas present.

newbie knitter

As I previously mentioned I've been doing a night course on multimedia web development. For a final project we had to do a site that incorporated images, audio, video and animation. I, of course, immediately decided to do a knitting site. In the interest of getting all the required pieces in there I made it a knitting tutorial site for complete novices. It's in no way complete enough to actually teach knitting on its own, and in no way did I intend for this to supplant any of the many wonderful existing knitting tutorial sites (none of which I actually looked at after deciding on my topic, as I didn't want to subconsciously plagiarize). Check it out: Newbie Knitter

last minute knitting (and crocheting)

Big Sister had a friend's 4th birthday party to go to this morning, and of course I remembered yesterday that we still hadn't gotten a present yet. And I didn't have a chance to go out to buy one. So was does a knitter do? That's a rhetorical question, of course.

Luckily the friend is a girly girl like my daughter, who loves to dress up. So I went to the stash of yarn my MIL gave me and decided to knit a little something out of this novelty yarn. What is it, eyelash? Feathers? I'm not sure what you call it. The yarn label just says "Knitting Yarn". That's helpful, eh? But it's from Sullivans International which is an Australian company, and it seems to have been discontinued. It's not on their site. It's 100% polyester, and it's quite soft, and the colors are cute and fun - turquoise, blue, green and purple.

First I knit a quick garter stitch headband as a tester (cast on 4 stitches, knit all rows until it's long enough to fit around Big Sister's head, cast off, and sew the ends together). It was cute, but I didn't think it would be quite enough on it's own. So I decided to crochet a scrunchie as well. Using this pattern with a size G crochet hook and a turquoise hair elastic I had lying around, I quickly made up this scrunchie that Big Sister is modeling so well. Not bad for a second ever crochet project. It was pretty fun, too.

Then I realized that a scrunchie and a headband would compete for hair space, and probably not be used at the same time, hence negating the matching aspect of them, so for the gift, instead of knitting another headband (since my daughter was keeping the tester), I just knit a bit longer, didn't sew it into a circle, and kept it a little decorative scarf.

Nothing extravagant, but it was done last night, so there were no last minute rushes to the toy store. Plus, I'm a firm believer in small or no presents. Big Sister herself is turning 4 next week, and though we're having 2 parties for her (one for her school friends, and one for our friends who have kids) I hope she isn't inundated with gifts. I was going to put "no presents please" on the invites, but I was told it would be bordering on rude not to let people give gifts. So instead I've just spread the word that we really don't need or want much at all. Except yarn. Anyone who wants to give her gifts of yarn is more than welcome. ;)

Anyways, the gift seemed to be well received by the birthday girl (as well as any of the other gifts, which means she opened it, said a quick "Thanks!" and moved onto the next one). The party was lots of fun. Here's Big Sister enjoying the moon bounce (which she now wants at her party, but, uh... No way!).

pile o' pink

For a few months now, due to budget constrains, I've been on a self-imposed yarn embargo. But just before I started my stash-building hiatus, I placed one last order for a whole heck of a lot of yarn. Today it finally arrived, and it (along with the generous gift mentioned in the previous post) has made my yarn ban slightly more manageable.



As you can see, it's pink. Very pink. The reason for so much pink is that I have somehow managed to become the mother of a very girly girl. Every time I've knit Big Sister something, she's just a little bit disappointed that it's not pink. So I finally decided to knit her a lovely pink sweater, and thought I'd make a matching one for Baby while I was at it. And that leads to an order of 16 skeins of pink Blue Faced Leicester DK wool from The Natural Dye Studio. It's super soft, and the colour is gorgeous (despite the hot pink hue). Now I just need to find the time to knit it.

reasons I'm not knitting much

First off, I'm taking a night class on web development (which I already know to some extent, but thought the class would be a fun way to get 4 credits towards my degree). The final project for the class is to make a web page, so rather than knitting every night, I've been working on a web site about knitting (other than this one)! Once it's done, I'll post it for all to see. :)

Another reason for less knitting is the end of the regular TV season. I'm a TV knitter. Almost 100% of my knitting occurs between the hours of 8:00 and 11:00 pm, which is after the girls go to bed, and before I go to bed. And I kinda have to do it in front of the TV. And with not much new TV to watch, I'm finding myself doing other things. Things that don't lend themselves to knitting.

Oh, and the one summer show I am watching, So You Think You Can Dance, definitely does not lend itself to knitting. I mean, when I'm watching American Idol I barely glance at the screen every now and then. But SYTYCD is entirely visual, and I can't take my eyes off of it. So I sit there with my knitting in my hands, and I don't knit. Lame, I know.

What little knitting I have done recently has been on this checker board from Weekend Knitting. But I'm actually making it as a chess board. I have intentions of knitting up a complete set of chess pieces as well, but as I don't have any patterns for them, we'll see how that goes. This is my first ever double knitting experience, and it's going quite well. I did have a bit of a mess up when I switched over to the second row of squares. One of the squares I made one stitch too wide, and the one next to it one stitch too narrow. I didn't notice till I had knit 2 or 3 more rows. At that point, I took some time to analyze the pros and cons of frogging back to fix the mistake, thinking perhaps it wouldn't be too noticeable if I left it the way it was. In the end, I frogged. And I'm glad I did. This project is going so slow anyways, re-knitting a few rows won't make much of a difference in the long run.



Check out this yarn my dear friend Indu gave me for pretty much no reason at all. It's gorgeous. Knit Picks Gossamer 100% merino lace weight. It's so sweet of her. I'll have to find something really cool to knit with it. She claims that she can't knit lace so has no use for the yarn, but she's just being a chicken. I know she can do it.










One last thing, totally off topic. I got armband tattoos I had been planning for a long time! I got the same exact thing on both arms, to commemorate the birth of my second daughter, who just turned 18 months old last week. To make it just a little bit on topic, I found out while under the needle that the tattoo artist's wife is totally into knitting and spinning, and has a blog. Her knitting totally puts mine to shame, plus she's totally hardcore what with spinning and all. But it's not a competition, right? We're all in this together! :)

Unfinished Poncho

I got Knit & Crochet: Ponchos, Wraps, Capes & Shrugs! out at the library, and decided to knit the Rainbow Poncho. I came the closest I've ever done in using the actual yarn specified in the pattern. It calls for Noro Kureyon, and I had a bunch of Noro Big Kureyon (the same yarn just in bulky weight). I had bought it specifically for a poncho, though at the time of purchase I didn't have a pattern yet. So I was excited when I saw this pattern.

This yarn is really, really cool. 100% wool, with long color blocks which create the striping in the finished project. The colors of this colorway (#7)are gorgeous and subtle and go so well together. I used the same yarn in two Calorimetries I knit earlier this year.

I obviously had to make a few changes based on the yarn weight difference. Rather than 80 stitches on size 10 needles, I cast on 60 on size 15 needles. Then I knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, for what felt like forever. Finally I finished the main body. The only part left to be done was the collar. Here's the almost finished product (the red at the top being the waste yarn for the provisional cast on):


When I got to this point, I actually started wearing it without finishing it. The weather turned cool (then hot, then cool again). And I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with the collar. I thought it looked pretty good with the open neck, and tossed around the idea of just picking up the provisional cast on and then just binding off again. But then I was convinced to do up the collar as the pattern called for, since this is a warm snuggly piece of clothing, and the collar would make it more so. I've done the collar up now and binded off and everything, but I still think it's unfinished. First off, because I haven't sewed buttons on yet, but more so because I don't really like the way the collar turned out. I didn't go for long enough, due to the regular/bulky difference issue. I finished it several rows early, thinking it was long enough, but it wasn't. The collar is supposed to fold over, and it's not long enough to. Plus, I used size 13 needles for the collar, and it just seems too loose. So I think I'll take it all out and redo with size 11, and make sure I make it long enough this time to fold over. Of course, until I do, I'll probably keep wearing it. We'll see if I ever get around to it.

diggin' the crochet thing

Since I previously taught myself to crochet I took the opportunity of Mother's Day to hook (is the the correct usage? I'm new to crochet lingo as well) a quick kerchief and scarf for my dear mum. She models them below. The kerchief pattern is from Cozy Crochet and it took me something like 20 tries to finally figure out how to start it. All due to my inexperience, nothing wrong with the actual pattern. Though it would have been nice for the book, which is aimed at beginners, to be more explicit with the directions. Once I got the first few rows down, though, it was smooth sailing and quite easy.

The scarf I actually started the morning of Mother's Day, so I needed something really light and quick. I selected just the corkscrew part of Cool Warmth and it was totally easy. Since I obviously did a few other things that day, I finished just as Mom was going to bed.

The yarn was almost all that I had left of 100purewool 100% merino worsted in Sienna Marble. Probably just under a skein. My mom wanted the kerchief quite big. I kept asking her if it was big enough, and she kept saying, "No, bigger." Till I finally decided on my own that she couldn't possibly want it any bigger, and finished it up. And of course she told me that it wasn't big enough when I gave it to her. Oh, well.

Oh, and something I learned was that the length of a chain decreases significantly when you slip stitch all the way back along it. I only chained half as many chains for the ties as the pattern called for because they seemed really really long, until I slip stitched back and realized why they called for so many. But, because the kerchief was so big, the ties are still long enough. :)

argyle on the baby

Remember the argyle hoodie I knit for my not yet born nephew? Well, he's been born, and now he's an adorable, chunky 4 month old. Here he is modeling the sweater while his adoring knitting aunt (me) holds him. Looks like he's outgrowing it just in time for Spring. Just as I planned. :)

can I crochet?

A lot of the time when I'm looking for a pattern for a project I have in mind, I end up finding totally cute crochet patterns. I don't know how to crochet. I've never crocheted before in my life (except the occasional chain for a provisional cast-on). So I thought I'd give it a try.

I got Cozy Crochet out from the library and when Sara came over for a visit, we took the plunge. It worked out pretty well. We did just the beginning of the first pattern, a dish cloth, which involves just making a chain, and then single crocheting (or is it double? more on that later) row after row after row. I was using some waste yarn, so I only got 3 rows into it before I ran out, but by then I felt pretty comfortable with it anyways. Oh, and bored, too, so we tried out another stitch, I think the half double crochet is what it was called. What I find really annoying is that there are apparently English crocheting terms and American ones, and they're really confusing. Because an American single crochet is a British double crochet. And an American double crochet is a British triple crochet. After crocheting some I must admit the British terms make much more sense to me. But this is from someone who insists on calling it "stocking stitch" rather than "stockinette". I hate the term "stockinette". So I guess it's just really important each time to make sure you know if your crochet pattern is Old or New World.

See Baby checking out my progress making my initial chain. More practice will be needed to establish the correct tension for the chain. I think I make it too tight, because the foundation row was very difficult and time consuming.

warm baby legs

On my supposed knitting hiatus I also made these adorable little leg warmers. Big Sister just started dance classes, so I made them for her, but she prefers her pink leggings to dance in. Baby gets to wear the hand knit goodies instead. I made the pattern up myself.

JaggerSpun Zephyr DK 50% merino wool / 50% silk, color Elderberry
Size US 8 long circular needle (knit in the round using magic loop method)

Loosely cast on 32 stitches.
Join and knit 8 rounds of k2 p2 ribbing.
Switch to stocking stitch and knit 40 rounds.
k2 p2 ribbing for 8 rounds.
Cast off loosely.
Weave in tails.

Final measurements - 7.5 inches long, 6 inches around unstretched
Fits up to an 8 inch calf.

They fit both my almost 4-year-old and my 17-month-old, both of whom are quite slender and petitie.

And that's it. Pretty complicated, eh?

back on the horse (or rabbit)

My back pain seems to have disappeared, not because I stopped knitting. Because I actually didn't. Couldn't do it. Must knit. So it must have been something else.

Whatever. I finished my first ever knitted toy! It's supposed to be a rabbit, but I think it looks more like a rat. Big Sister thought it was a pig. Oh well. It's still kinda cute I guess.

ouchies

So I have to take a break from knitting for a bit. Hopefully just a few days. My neck and upper back have been killing me recently, and I think my nightly knitting might be the culprit. It must be the new project I started or something. I'm working on this bunny for Narie as a prize for winning our Easter Egg Hunt. I first started knitting it on size 5 needles, but with the Fleece Artist Kasula I used, it was too loose and stuffing would have shown through. So I ripped it out and knit again on size 3. Just stocking stitch, so I'm not sure why it would tense me up so much and cause so much pain. Maybe it's not the knitting... But knitting certainly isn't helping.

I don't know what I'll do with myself. My nightly ritual, after getting the girls to bed, is to sit in front of the TV and knit, for 2-3 hours. I can't JUST watch TV. That would be being unproductive. Maybe I'll exercise. HA.

easter bolero

Finished just in time! My mother bought me a dress for Easter last week, and seeing as it's a sleeveless dress, and having it still be absolutely FREEZING here despite the supposed arrival of spring, I decided I needed a little shrug type thing to wear with it to keep my shoulders warm. At the store the dress was shown on a hanger with a cute little white capped sleeve shrug type thing, so I searched online for something similar. The closest I could find was the Cloud Bolero. Looked cute enough, so I wound by hand a skein of Gaia, undyed organic 100% merino wool. This is the first time I've knit with it, and it is so so so soft. I love it. I took a big risk, especially considering my recent knitting issues, and started right in without knitting a gauge swatch. The pattern calls for chunky weight, I guessed the Gaia was worsted. I used size 11 needles. Luck was on my side, I knit a size small exactly to specifications, and it fits perfectly. I finished it last night. I was planning on wet blocking it, but didn't think it would dry in time, so this is it, fresh off the needles.

knitting out of my slump

In an effort to get out of this knitting slump I've been in I started and completed some easy projects, putting aside the problem Angel Top. First I decided to knit a spiral scarf. I've never made one before, but it sounded easy enough. Just cast on a lot of stitches (however long you want the scarf, since it's knit lengthwise), double the stitch count every other row, and cast off. I cast on 110 stitches with my Fleece Artist Country Mohair (100% mohair, heavy worsted weight, colourway Jester) on size 10.5 needles. As I said before it seemed too dense, so after the second time I increased (with 440 stitches on the needles) I switched to size 13 needles. Not sure if it was necessary. As I knit along, it seemed like this project would be another victim of my knitting slump. But I soldiered on, figuring it would all come together on cast off. And that seems to be what happened. After casting off 880 stitches it looks pretty cute.


Next I knit an old standby, something I knew I couldn't mess up, another curly purly soaker. Size medium, knit with 100purewool 100% merino worsted. Very soft yarn, great for soakers, longies, and most likely felting (though I haven't felted with it yet). Knit on size 8 needles for the main portion (sizes 3 and 5 for the waistband, 5 for the leg hole ribbing). This one is for a friend, but I just realized I need to knit a new one for Baby, as she's just about outgrown the one I knit for her, whoa! A year ago! She's a wee little thing for her age, but it's still surprising that she fits a soaker at 16 months old that she wore at 4 months old.

totally bummed

I'm have a bad knitting week. First of all, I'm having more problems with the Angel Top pattern than I've ever had with any pattern ever. Partly because it's a poorly written pattern, partly because I don't have enough lace experience, and partly because I'm just not paying enough attention.

Like I've said before, it's a 4 row pattern, with wrong sides purled, and the 2 right side rows are exactly the same, just one stitch off from each other. And since I don't keep track of rows while I knit, I kept forgetting whether to do row 1 or row 3 of the pattern. I thought I could tell by just looking at my last right side row, but apparently one time I couldn't, and so the pattern got off by half a repeat. In the photo above it's about an inch down from the top. You can't see it, can you? Didn't think so. Thank you. I'm just going to pretend like I meant to do that.

But then I got to the decreasing for the raglan sleeves. First I had to cast off 2 stitches at the beginning of the next two rows. No problem. Then I needed to decrease one stitch at the beginning and end of row 3, and then every 4th row after that. I messed up wrapping my head around decreasing while in the lace pattern (which itself has decreases and increases). Plus, I got mixed up and thought I needed to decrease 2 stitches at the beginning and end of row 3, rather than just one stitch. Needless to say, I totally screwed up the armhole shaping. Hopefully it won't be noticeable once I sew the sleeves in. If I ever get that far.

Something totally bummed me out even more than my lace errors, though. I put the cute purple hoodie on Baby the other day. The one I was so proud of and totally love as one of my favourite finished objects. It was fine (though a little dirty, never having been washed) when I put it on her. Then a few hours later I noticed a hole cut right in the middle of the front. Wah! She must have gotten it caught on something. But it's a very clean cut, so totally strange. And now I'll have to figure out someway to stop it from all unraveling. And then I guess I'll sew a pocket over it or something. :(



After all that, I needed a bit of mindless knitting. I wanted to use one of the skeins of Fleece Artist Country Mohair I got recently. So I decided to make a spiral scarf, aka curly whirly. Of course, with the knitting funk I've been in, I managed to even screw that up. I started with needles much too small (size 10.5) and it's just so dense. I've switched to size 13, hopefully that'll help.

angel top in progress

This is the pattern of the lace angel top I'm knitting for Baby. The bottom one. The term 'angel top' is not common here in the US, but it seems fairly well-used in New Zealand. It could be a British thing. As far as I can tell, angel tops have the shape of an a-line dress, but they're just to the waist, like a sweater. Like I mentioned in a previous post, New Zealand (and most likely Australia and the UK and maybe other countries) have a type of yarn called 'baby wool' and I'm using a lovely lavender baby wool for this project.

It's been awhile since I knit lace, and I'm really enjoying it, though my hands are starting to cramp up and get sore from the fine detail. The lace pattern is easy, but I still managed to mess it up at one point. I accidentally added a few stitches as the end of a right side row, and didn't realize until I had purled a row, and then knit another whole right side lace row. I don't know how I managed to screw it up so bad. Normally when I make mistakes I un-knit to get back to the problem area. I don't knit with any kind of life line. And even when I'm knitting just stocking stitch I won't ever pull out the needle, rip out the knitting to past the mistake and put the stitches back on the needles. I always un-knit. Meaning I go backwards through each stitch individually to take it off and put the lower stitch back on the left needle. A waste of time I'm sure, but it stems from the days when I was a novice knitter and didn't trust that I'd be able to figure out how the stitches went back on the needle.

My method of going back to mistakes causes a big problem when I've knit past the mistake so far. Especially on lace, with 103 stitches per row. I debated for several minutes whether or not to go back. I've read several places that if you catch a mistake, always go back to fix it, or else you'll always wish you had, and that every time you look at the finished piece you'll regret not fixing it when you had the chance. What would you do?

Well, I decided not to go back and fix it. I k2tog a few times to get the stitch count right, and I just kept on going. And actually, as I look back at the mistake area, I'm really really happy I didn't go back to fix it. First off, since it's right at the edge, it will most likely disappear once I seam the finished pieces together. Secondly, I could easily have made MORE mistakes, more glaring errors, had I tried to take out two whole rows. And then of course there's the theory that every hand knit piece NEEDS a mistake or two, to make it unique. Otherwise you might as well buy the sweater from the store.

So here it is so far, in all its imperfect glory. Knit on a long circular, so very difficult to straighten out for a photo, even with the help of my 3 year old.

new layout

I thought I'd try out some of the new features available with the new Blogger, so I updated my layout a bit. New photos across the top with close ups of various finished projects. Links on the right side now. I kinda like it.

I went back and added labels to some of the more recent posts. Took awhile deciding if the plural of 'scarf' is 'scarfs' or 'scarves'. I looked it up, and both are right. In the meantime, I said both so many times that both sound wrong.

the pictures are here

The problem apparently is with using Safari on Blogger. Not fixed yet, but Firefox works fine.

Here's the jacket. I didn't buy a ribbon specifically for it, I just searched around in my mother's sewing table. I found three options - a cream silk, a pistachio silk, and this cream gauzy one. I liked this one because it's airier feeling - kind of light and fluffy. Plus, it's got the little wires in the edges, that make it keep it's shape. That might cause problems in the long run, but I can always sew a different ribbon on later. Below is a photo of my older daughter trying to tie the bow.

what's the point?

I've been trying to post and update with my finished project, but blogger doesn't seem to want to let me upload any photos. :( And what's the point of a knitting blog entry with no pictures of knitting?

Oh well, I'll just tell you about it then. I finished the ribbon tie jacket. It's cute, but not quite as cute as I was expecting. Probably because it just barely fits Big Sister, and she tried it on over a long sleeve dress, which bunched up the sleeves unattractively. If it still fits her in spring (just one week away!) she could wear it over a tank top shirt or dress, and it will probably look a lot better. And then of course Baby will fit it in a year or so.

So now I'm back to working the little lavender lace angel top for Baby. I was crazy, and had stopped working on it in the middle of a row! What was I thinking? I had to count 3 or 4 times to make sure I still had the 103 stitches that I started with. Not the easiest thing with baby weight yarn, and babies running around making all sorts of distracting noises. Again, this should be a nice spring sweater, so I hope it doesn't take too long. The lace pattern is and easy to remember 4 rows (yf, k2, sl1, k1, psso, k2tog, k2, yf, k1 - purl wrong sides, and right sides are 1 stitch off of each other). It has a cute little scalloped bottom edge, which I would show you if I could upload pictures.

Napier yarn tour

Last week I returned home from a 3 week vacation in New Zealand. I basically spent the whole time in Napier, where a bunch of my husband's family live, but we went to Wellington for a long weekend as well. I was planning on hitting all the yarn stores in both areas, but ran out of time in Wellington, so was only able to make a tour of the yarn shops in Napier. No worries, I still managed to pick up enough yarn to fill a whole suitcase. :)

My mother-in-law led the unofficial tour, and we started in Hastings at Knit World. Since it was our first stop, I only browsed, wanting to get a better feel of the offerings before purchasing. Next we went to the Design Spun factory shop in Onekawa. They're commercial spinners, and have a large, fairly unorganized room of seconds, discontinued lines and some premium yarn. The prices were great, so I bought 10 balls of a standard DK 100% wool in a dark dark purple, 10 balls of a magenta DK angora/wool blend, and the last 7 balls of a merino/silk blend in a rusty color. All this for about US$30. Amazing.

Then we went to JJ's Crafts, where Jan Gilray handpaints her own line called JJ's Specialty Yarn. Lovely stuff. I got 2 skeins of the Mystique mohair and 1 of the Kaleidoscope 100% wool. Funny thing, I had never heard of this yarn before, but when I returned home last week and looked through the lastest issue of Interweave Knits that was here waiting for me, I saw that the Merry Maiden's Dress pattern calls for JJ's Specialty Yarn. Small knitting world.



My mother-in-law has been knitting for a very very long time, so she has accumulated a lot of patterns. I went through many of them, and she let me take a bunch that interested me. She had an old Women's Weekly magazine with a pattern for a Fireman Sam doll that looked fun and different, as I've never knit any toys or dolls before. She also had another old issue with a Pingu doll pattern. So at our last stop on the tour, Wool 'n' Things in Onekawa, Napier, I picked up a bunch of really cheap acrylic yarn for making these toys. I've never knit with acrylic before, preferring natural fibers, but decided for my first toy efforts it would pay to be a bit economical. I also got some lovely looking multicolored Ashford Tekapo 100% wool. And then I got some lilac 100% superwash wool in a light weight, called "baby wool" down under. This is specifically for another borrowed mother-in-law pattern, a cute little lace baby angel top. I actually bought 4 balls, one isn't pictured because I've already started that project. Lastly here I bought a Patons book of toddler patterns which are really cute and utilize an eyelash type polyester yarn called Feathers. These patterns will help me with ideas to use the 9 balls of similar yarn that my mother-in-law gave me.

Then I decided to go back to the first shop to make a last few purchases. First off was another Patons book of adorable kids patterns. It features their Zhivago yarn which is 50% tencel, 50% acrylic, and I figured I'd actually get the called for yarn, which I virtually never do. So I got 7 balls of this nice shimmery denim color (only 4 shown since I've already started this project as well). And they had some more of the Ashford Tekapo in their discount bin (discontinuted colors) so I got 3 more balls. They're 100g balls, so I should be able to get a baby sweater, or a few soakers at least, out of them.

And that's it! Now to knit it all. Like I said, I've already started the lacey purple sweater for baby, but that took too much concentration to work on while catching up on all my missed TV shows, so I started this jacket from the Zhivago book. My first time knitting with synthetic yarn. It's very soft. I've only got the trim left, so I'll be updating soon with the finished project. Originally it was meant to be for Big Sister, but I might have picked a size too small, in which case it will be for Baby. :)