Joyce Makes Art

More Baby Surprise

Our teacher Tami shows Pat how EZ does her increases. I love Pat's yarn! It's Noro Silk Garden Light.

Baby Surprise Class

I'm at my local yarn shop. I've just finished row one of the baby surprise jacket. The yarn is my Elliebelly Juliet sock yarn in the Rebecca's Kitchen colorway.

Longies: Finished at the Ballet

I just finished knitting a pair of small longies ( a wool cover designed to go over cloth baby diapers) -- while waiting for the ballet (Cinderella) to begin. Ollie graciously displayed them for me. These longies are knit with Elliebelly Blue Faced Leicester that I dyed in the "Sunshine" colorway. I was too impatient to wait on a pattern, so I swatched for gauge and measured. I ended up having to decrease a few stitches near the tops of the legs to get the fit right. And, although my original intention was to play around with the number of stitches to have the patterning on the waist match the legs, after watching the waist knit up and looking at the gauge swatch that was knit on the same number of stitches as the legs, I decided to let them go with the natural patterning, which seemed like rays of sunshine to me.

Baby Friendly Wool

Despite wool's reputation for being somewhat scratchy, all four of my children have worn it over their (cloth) diapers with great success.  My youngest still refuses to give his up and wears has last toddler sized pair of long pants as capris.  Wool is stretchy and fits for a looooong time like that.

Although I haven't knit baby wool for a long time, I've got a newly pregnant friend who is considering using cloth diapers, so I decided to encourage her along by knitting some "longies" to go over diapers for autumn baby.

This is the top -- you can see the ribbing at the waist, where I put in an eyelet row for a ribbon tie although the ribbing alone will be stretchy enough to hold the pants on.  I've just finished putting in a gusset for the crotch and am about to split for the legs and knit them on down.

This is some of my own yarn, called "Sunshine."  Sadly, it's one of those playing-in-the-studio-without-taking-notes colors, which I did for fun in this Blue Faced Leicester and in some Seacell/Merino blend  Sea Wool as well.

I couldn't resist pulling one skein out to knit these longies with and I think I'm going to have to spend some time trying to figure out just how I did this one.

Yarn: Interior Decoration or Cat Toy?

I have this metal "tree" -- it came from Smith and Hawken and it is for hanging holiday ornaments on.  I like it a lot and didn't want to put it up when the holidays came to a close.

So, I made little balls of yarn from scrap and hung the yarn in place of ornaments.  And left it out.  On the yarn storage unit sideboard in my dining room.  I really liked it.  It was unusual....distinctively mine.

But Harry liked it too.  So much for interior design.  It is now a very elegant cat toy.

He has a very decadent life style, as you can see.

So much for my decorating.

[For those of you with good eyes, you can see yarn bits of Geranium, Marble Angel, and my first, unnamed Paintbrush colorway]

Do you remember losing your first tooth?

Did it make you this happy?

Thursday is Always New Yarn Day

Thursday is always yarn day!  The new yarns are available at 12 noon central, and I'm trying to offer a lot of choices these days, as they tend to go pretty quickly.  You can see them  HERE.

And please take a moment to fill out my survey.  It's less than 20 questions and it will really help me dye the yarn you want!

Some of this week's yarn

 

Ellie's Victorian Gauntlets

All finished!  Complete with vintage mother-of-pearl buttons and hand-dyed ribbon.

Ellie described how these gauntlets were supposed to look, and after lots of procrastination, I was surprised by how easily they came together.  Having never written a real pattern before, I was worried that my notes from the first glove wouldn't create a second one to match, but fortunately, they were easy to follow, and such a quick knit!

They were an especially big hit with Dragon, our tailless cat.

I'm so glad she is happy with them!  A ten year old's whims can be so ephemeral.

Days We Love

There are days we love in our house but, speaking as a knitter, perhaps none more than Superbowl Sunday.  The Judge usually (this year was an exception) spends the weekend making gumbo and then hangs out with his running buddies for the game. 

This leaves me free to make lots of silly food for the kids (we had stuffed cabbage rolls and rice pudding for dinner), watch the game in relative peace, and K-N-I-T.  Without interruption.  It's always incredible.

One frou-frou gauntlet: finished!

I'm particularly pleased with the contrast reverse stockinette rows that sort of "pouf" out and the tiny vintage mother of purl buttons I've sewn on as an accent there.

The ribbon is temporary -- I want to dye some just for the gauntlets next weekend.  If you look closely, you will see that I also did an earlier eyelet row, but I think one is enough, so I will either do some clever coverage (I only did two eyelets in that row, thinking it would be a sort of mini-bow thang) or frog it back down and reknit.

I was a bit worried about the gauntlet staying on at the top, so after the eyelet row, I ribbed for a few rows before going into the ruffle, and it really did the trick!  It fits Ellie perfectly.

Hopefully my notes are as clear as I thought they were while I wrote down what I was doing, because I really want a pair for myself.  Ollie wants a pair too -- his request is in for lime green and black, with skulls.

Ellie Gets Her Gauntlets!

Ellie has been begging for gauntlets forever.  Knitted ones.  Purple.

She has a definite vision, this child, in all things.  The gauntlets are supposed to be elbow length and full of frou-frou details like eyelets with hand-dyed silk ribbon drawn through them.

After worrying that I wasn't up to the challenge, both pattern writing and detail-wise, I finally decided to start in last night.  I've been collecting yarn for just this purpose for some time now.

The yarn is Plymouth's Royal Llama, a yarn spun from 60% fine llama and 40% silk.  I have a pale lilac Malabrigo Silk/Merino blend to use for most of the arm and am still toying with the idea of dyeing a varigated yarn to use along with it.

I cast on on the "hand end," using a simple 2x2 rib to insure it is stretchy enough to stay tight on her little hands.  The thumb-hole is a 3 stitch cast off, which is cast on again in the following row.  It's a tiny bit tight on me, so I think it should be just right on her.  I'm looking forward to creating these as I knit, since I'm generally fairly rigid about working off of a pattern.