So, I’ve finished the world’s most beautiful baby kimono for the world’s most beautiful niece-to-be. See the baby kimono in a less symmetrical state here. Like Brooke’s kimono, I finished this one with a single crochet edging–this time in heather Suss Love (a kind of light gray-green). This yarn is amazingly soft, perfect for baby clothes.
Sorry for the murky photo. Here’s a close-up of the crochet edging:
Here’s a slightly more detailed close-up of the button closure:
The pearlized plastic buttons are just flowery enough to suggest femininity without being too girly. They also go really well with the neutral colors. I think my brother and SIL will love it.
What’s next, Auntie Kate?
Update 01/25/11: Sadly, Suss Love yarn has now been discontinued.
When I saw this free pattern (if the link doesn’t work, see the second “update” below) on Knitting Daily, I liked it instantly and I knew I just had to make it for the niece-to-be. Here’s my version of “Cabled Raglan Baby Sweater” by Rebecca L. Daniels:
My version is worked with heather Suss Love (I’ve sung the praises of this yarn before) on size 5 needles. I made the sleeves a bit longer than the pattern called for and used seed stitch for the edging instead of garter stitch. Seed stitch is probably my favorite simple edging. This change caused some minor glitches at the neckline, but I’m hoping those will be covered up by the button. I’m thinking a shell button would look rather elegant.
Bonus: the raglan, top-down shaping means no seaming! Sweet.
Update 01/25/11: Sadly, Suss Love yarn has now been discontinued.
Update 07/05/15: I’ve been informed that the link to the free pattern for the “Cabled Raglan Baby Sweater” doesn’t work anymore and I’ve searched all over Ravelry and the Interweave Knits sites and couldn’t find a copy. Click here for a pdf copy of “7 Free Baby Knitting Patterns from Interweave Knits” that includes this pattern.
I’ve just returned to Chez Kate after a lovely, albeit overcast, weekend at the Tickle Pink Inn in the Carmel Highlands, one of my favorite places on earth. Check out the photo gallery on the website and you’ll see why. On my way, reluctantly, out of town, I snapped this photo of my SIL, Karen, wearing the sweater I made for her as a Christmas gift:
Sister-in-law (and little niece on the way) in Cable Panel Pullover
It’s a good thing I made this sweater a little big to make room for my little niece on the way. And Karen was such a good sport for agreeing to have her picture taken outside with wet hair!
Ever since I found out this past February that I’m going to be an aunt, all I can think about is what I’m going to make for the little tyke. OK, yeah, yeah, I hope the baby’s healthy and all that… And, yeah, I hope my sister-in-law has a healthy and relatively uneventful pregnancy… But the real questions are: what to knit? what to stitch?
I’m particularly excited since this is my first outing as an aunt, and, since I’m the family spinster and I have only one sibling (brother Bill), I’m not likely to have a lot of children in my life to shower with painstakingly crafted handmade gifts. We found out recently that the baby’s going to be a little girl due at the end of September/early October. My SIL put it perfectly: “I can’t wait to meet her!”
To the left, we have the latest WIP: “Baby Kimono” by Kristin Spurkland from the Summer 2005 Interweave Knits “Baby Gifts” section (the pattern is also available for free from Knitting Daily). Although I don’t usually like to repeat patterns, you can see another version I made for my cousin’s baby here.
The yarn I used is ivory Suss Love, an incredibly soft 100% tactel nylon yarn that feels like cashmere (I swear!) but is washable. The pattern is worked all in one piece and I only have two halves of the two sleeves left to work. The pink stitch holder is holding the stitches for the right sleeve and my circular needles (Size 4, if you’re curious, and Size 4 if you’re not) are holding the stitches for the left. Since the entire piece is worked in garter stitch, the safety pin is marking the “wrong side” (the inside of the garment).
Update 01/25/11: Sadly, Suss Love has now been discontinued.
While there are many colorful and—yes—unexpected cross stitch patterns collected here, perhaps the most revolutionary thing about Heather Holland-Daly’s Stitch Graffiti: Unexpected Cross Stitch is that it has been published at all, and by the well-known craft publisher, Interweave Press, long the bastion of primarily high quality knitting titles. However, considering the recent reinvention of knitting as a hip, urban pastime, it’s not surprising that Interweave would take this project under their wing.
This is a book with a mission statement I can get behind, and it’s worth quoting at some length:
Cross-stitch designs are still printed on gridded charts, but they have moved beyond the teddy bears and country look of the 1980s and the traditional samplers of alphabets and verses that have been passed down through the centuries. Although those patterns still have a place, it’s time to add new ideas. My goal is to bring a new generation of stitchers to the craft and to inspire stitchers of old to pick up a needle and stitch again! I intend to whet your stitching appetite and excite you to share it with a friend, who in turn will share it with another friend, and so on….
Not only are the designs unique and reminiscent of the colorful creations we’ve come to expect from Heather Holland-Daly’s design company, Monsterbubbles, the finishing techniques and display suggestions are unusual as well. Along with traditional types of framing where the stitched piece is centered in a square or rectangular frame with or without a matte, Holland-Daly offers cross stitch that is framed in sandwich frames, or on the diagonal, or extremely off-center.
She also suggests looking for inspiration at your local craft store, hardware store, or swap meet for beads, buttons, paint, and rubber stamps to embellish your projects. You can even find unexpected inspiration around your own home: one of her patterns is stitched into the mesh of a store-bought make-up bag and another on the grid of a fly-swatter.
The book opens with the seemingly obligatory section of basic cross stitch instruction, including a helpful mini-tutorial on using variegated floss, which many of the designs in the book call for. The book also offers many suggestions (displayed as faux Post-It notes) of songs to stitch by, many of which I have in my own music collection (make of that what you will). True to the mission statement of the book, these are contemporary songs, even songs from this century, although the selections, in my opinion, don’t push the envelope of style as far as Holland-Daly’s designs push the envelope of possibility for cross stitch design.
If this sounds appealing to you, check out the Interweave Press site for the book and click on “See a preview online.” You’ll be able to view an extensive selection of patterns from the book so you can see if it’s your cup of tea. You can also purchase the book from that site or from Amazon (tell ‘em Kate sent you!).
Back Cover of Stitch Graffiti: Unexpected Cross-Stitch
I’m so happy to have finished this project. This is one of those kits I bought on an impulse just because I liked the colors and the hearts and the lace and the black checkerboard design and the… well, you get the idea. You’ll have to take my word for it that I’m not much of a “hearts and flowers” gal, but something about this design’s simplicity and “folkiness” spoke to me. After all, there’s no explaining love.
Unfortunately, the kit sat in a bin in my “office” for several years waiting to see the light of day. And then, one day, I needed a simple project to get back into the swing of cross stitch and there it was. After I started stitching, of course, it was completed in no time flat.
By the way, please pardon the hoop marks!
If memory serves, this is the third Shepherd’s Bush needleroll I’ve completed. The other two were Christmas themed and were given as gifts. I can’t decide what to do with this one. I don’t feel like making it into a needleroll because I’m afraid it will just sit around collecting dust, but I can’t think of what else to do with it except perhaps get it framed. With some minor modifications, it would make a lovely birth sampler for a little girl. Any finishing ideas, gentle readers?
And, from my crazy and creative roommate, I present the World’s Best Way to Use Up Your Yarn StashTM:
These were so fun and easy to make–and the assorted novelty yarns and yarn mixes hid a multitude of flaws “design elements.” A couple of the balls are just gauge swatches I had lying around that have been sewn up and gathered at both ends. So this is a great way to use up those old gauge swatches too.
You are doing gauge swatches, aren’t you? OK, OK… Christmas is no time for nagging, especially not when you’ve got multicolored yarn-covered Christmas ball ornaments to wrap. To the left is my absolute favorite, a gold ornament wearing a chullo hat–with a fair isle design no less! Chullos are originally from the Andes Mountain region of South America, especially Peru and Bolivia, but they’re starting to become very fashionable here in the United States as well. If you’re interested in styles from this region, I highly recommend you start with Marcia Lewandowski’s Andean Folk Knits: Great Designs from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador & Bolivia.
In celebration of All Hallow’s Eve this Friday, I’ve made this pumpkin hat for Ronan, the son of my high school BFF. If you’re interested, the story of the last gift I made for Ronan starts here. This is Ronan’s first Halloween and I thought he needed a suitable “costume.”
I have a thing for pumpkin patterns. And I love the idea of babies wearing hats shaped like fruits and vegetables — the result of some early childhood trauma, no doubt. Knitty has an adorable berry tart baby hat pattern here that I can’t wait to do.
The pattern is slightly adapted from “Kürbis” from the Sonnentaler blog (“kürbis”–with an umlaut of course–is the German word for “pumpkin”). The yarn I chose (a double strand of Berroco Comfort DK color 2731) had a different gauge so I redid the math for a 15″/38 cm head circumference. I also chose to do a seed stitch border rather than garter stitch to avoid the “rolled brim” look. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
The stem is knitted from the leftover scraps of some Noro Kureyon (color unknown) and the leaf is made from some scraps of Suss Ull in “nervous green.” To me, the slightly scratchy texture of the Kureyon suggests a pumpkin vine stem. The leaf pattern is just something I pulled out of my hat. Get it? I pulled it out of my hat… nudge nudge…
You know what Samuel Johnson said: “He who would make a pun would pick a pocket.” Enough said.
Anyway… Happy First Halloween, Ronan! Love, Auntie Kate
I went to a family wedding in northern Wisconsin this past weekend and had an amazing time in a beautiful location. Since this isn’t a blog about my family, I’ll spare you all the details, but I did want to share this photo with you. This is the flower girl, my cousin Hudson, in her adorable dress, hand-knit by my Aunt Kathy, a woman who’s been at this knitting game for longer than I’ve been alive. I don’t know what pattern she used, but when I find out, I’ll let you know. What a great gift for the couple!
How adorable is this child?
Congratulations, Jeff and Ellen! Many happy years!
Here’s my latest work in progress, “Celtic Band Sampler” by Homespun Samplar. I’ve had this pattern in my stash now for at least a couple years and it’s long been at the back of my mind to start working on it. I was looking through my pattern notebooks awhile back (all eleven of them!) and decided the time was now. The fabric is from R & R Reproductions. It’s 32-count but for the life of me, I can’t recall the name at the moment.
I have a love/hate relationship with the colors. I love the green and dark rose, but I’m not so crazy about the two shades of mustard/caramel (DMC 831 and 832) or the gray of the lettering. What do y’all think?
So, I’ve finished the world’s most beautiful baby kimono for the world’s most beautiful niece-to-be. See the baby kimono in a less symmetrical state here. Like Brooke’s kimono, I finished this one with a single crochet edging–this time in heather Suss Love (a kind of light gray-green). This yarn is amazingly soft, perfect for baby clothes.
Here’s a slightly more detailed close-up of the button closure:
The pearlized plastic buttons are just flowery enough to suggest femininity without being too girly. They also go really well with the neutral colors. I think my brother and SIL will love it.
The Lyf So Short 