My dad is a tricky one to buy gifts for. He never says he wants anything besides spending time together. That’s all good and well but it’s hard to wrap up time. This past Christmas, to meet both the criteria of having something to open and gift an activity to do together, I gave him a Fandango gift card.
To give the presentation some flair (since gift cards are pretty boring), I decided to make a 3D pop-up card to represent going to a 3D movie.
In October, my niece celebrated her first birthday. That same month, I found out that my CEO and his wife were also expecting a baby girl. So I decided sweaters were in order.
The pattern I settled on was Summer Chills Cardigan by Danielle Reiner. It’s adorable, the pattern was adaptable to varying ages and it seemed like the perfect little baby sweater for cool San Francisco summers for these two little girls.
I started with the sweater for my CEO’s soon-to-be baby girl, Evie. I used a worsted acrylic blend in white – soft enough for a baby and machine washable enough to actually let it be worn. I did slightly modify the pattern, but only in so far as…I do not know how to crochet. So I didn’t crochet the edges. I just left them bound off. Because I didn’t add the crochet edging, I also didn’t make a button hole. In the case of Evie’s sweater, I simply added two pieces of pink ribbon to tie the sweater together across her chest. I realize now that I think I shorted Baby Evie’s sweater by one lace repeat but oh well. Hopefully she’ll be a short baby!
Before I had finished completed the second sleeve on the sweater, I took it over to size on my niece. I was making the 6-month pattern for Evie but it seemed awfully large for a 6-month old. I tried it on my niece at age 13-months and it was just about the right size. She isn’t a tiny girl either, so I’m not entirely sure why my sizing was so different from the pattern but it didn’t really matter as long as it would fit little niece-y pants.
For my niece, I opted to use some FibraNatura Sensational worsted weight in red superwash merino. I had a few extra skeins left over from another project and I thought she’d look smashing in the color.
A little over a year ago, I made an ornament for Boy’s sister using ribbons from her wedding and her wedding program. This year, though I sadly couldn’t attend the wedding, I have the pleasure of making a similarly styled ornament for my lovely cousin and her lovely now-husband.
For a rough cut on how I made this (though you can probably figure it out from the photo), check out this post for the K & A wedding ornament.
Baby booties are a fantastic knitting project. They are adorable, they are small (so they don’t take too much time), and they make great gifts. The only problems is they fit the baby for about two seconds. I don’t know if my niece got to wear this pair I made her more than twice (once when she was 2 months old but they were on the big side…
…and once when she was 4 months old)…
But you can whip them up quite quickly. You can find the pattern for Saartje’s Bootees at Ravelry. I used some 4 ply teal wool yarn I had lying around and a couple of random buttons and they came out wonderfully!
In May 2012, I decided I wanted to learn how to knit. The driving force was because I wanted to make this particular cable knit bunting bag for my yet-to-be-born niece. At the time, it was about 6 months before her due date and I knew I would have to ramp up to that project. I took a basic knitting class at Workshop SF and started experimenting with scarves.
I quickly moved on to hooded blankets (kind of like a big scarf and the hood got me closer to the hooded bunting bag) and hooded scarves. Finally, I decided to take the bunting bag plunge – but not quite all the way. I wanted to understand the construction first before I took on cabling. So I decided to make a slightly easier bunting bag, also by DROPS. I chose a washable alpaca, milk fiber and microfiber blend. I ended up finishing it about 3 weeks before my niece was born and then had to wait patiently until she was big enough to wear it. But finally the big day came. And it was worth it.
Pattern: BabyDROPS 18-2 Knitted Bunting Bag by Drops Design
Yarn: Ella Rae Latte (12 ply) in Rust
For my niece’s first Christmas, I decided to give her The Velveteen Rabbit
Pattern: Vintage Rabbit by Sarah Elizabeth Kellner (Ravelry)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Goshen (10 ply) in Fawn and Natural
In the pattern, Sarah aptly notes that no two bunnies will look the same. Depending on how you attach the arms and ears, what kind of stuffing you use, the stretch in your yarn, the nose, eyes and tail you give your bunny…all that will determine it’s character. For that reason, I highly recommend this pattern because each rabbit you make will have a different spark and is truly one of a kind – just like the little one (or big one) who gets to play with it.
Back in October, my niece was born. She is the apple of my eye and I’ve been knitting for her since well before she was out in the world. When she was three weeks old, I posted some initial photos to a hooded blanket I made for her. At the time, she was too small to actually be wrapped up in the blanket.
But now, at five months, she can be kept warm in the olive alpaca. So because it’s way more fun to look at a baby wrapped up in a blanket than a teddy bear (no disrespect, A.G. Bear), here are some photos.
As a note for anyone who knits this project, it’s also a great way to entertain a baby. In the last three photos above, you’ll see my brother bent over as he (gently) spun his little girl on the floor, swaddled in the blanket. The hood kept her safely tucked in and she squealed with delight as she swished around on the floor. Maybe don’t go with alpaca if you’re going to use it as a toy….but definitely get ready for lots of baby laughter.
My little cousin just had his first birthday. Since he lives in a city that is sometimes foggy and cool, I decided to whip up a quick square hat for him.
My sister lives in sweatshirts because she loves the hood, but of course, she has way more clothes that don’t have hoods. She needed a way to hood-ify any outfit. Enter hooded scarf.
This is a super easy pattern and a fairly quick knit. In fact, I knit it almost in entirety while my family waited at the hospital for my niece to be born (only took her about 6 hours to decide she was ready to make her entrance). I used the DROPS hooded scarf in garter pattern with Studio Tricot Cedrone yarn in Taupe. I highly recommend it. And I think she would too since she wears it almost every day.
My niece was born on October 3rd. She is officially 3 weeks old.
And she is in fact the entire reason I decided to learn to knit. There are just so many cute knit things out there for little ones, I could resist trying my hand at them.
One of her first gifts is a hooded baby blanket made from Misti Alpaca chunky yarn. I found a pattern on Stitch Me Softly which wasn’t only pretty, it looked like a reasonable project for someone who had just barely learned to knit.
Becoming Crafty 