Kid Stuff

These adorable children belong to my niece and nephew, Jeanie & Jesse. Jesse is JennyK's brother and she is in love with these kids.  While she was visiting for Christmas she helped me with ideas of what the kid's might like and I came up with a purse for Kiki, a hat for Dilly and a scarf for Chanze. Please note the cute little orange scarf that Jenny made for Dylan to match his hat (she learned how to purl!).  The purse and scarf were made up as I went but the cute little earflap hat is my version of an Nicky Epstein pattern that I found in my Family Circle easy Baby Knits book.  I found all the yarn for these projects in my stash and it was a great way the spend the week we were all snowed in for Christmas.  

More Socks!

A girl can never have too many pairs of handknitted socks.  My beautiful striped socks are made from a gift of yarn that one of my girlfriends brought to me when we had a dinner party here at Woodinvilla.  I'm sorry but I can't find the yarn wrapper to give you the details :( I just went with my standard sock pattern.  I LOVE plain socks because they are so comfortable to wear and so relaxing to knit.  Jenny's tweedy house socks are Cascade 220 Superwash.  They are a little tight on her but she loves them and says they're toasty.   I knitted them for her while she was here visiting for Christmas.

I LOVE Blocking!

I had so much fun with this project :)  This lovely scarf is a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law, Mel.  I still haven't given it to her because the snow storms in December eliminated our family holiday get together.  That's the bad news...  the good news is I get to fondly gaze upon it a little longer.

The pattern is Lace Ribbon Scarf which you can get for free on knitty.com by following the link. It is not a difficult lace pattern and is easily memorized after you get through a few repeats of the pattern.  I did find it slow going on the size 3 needles.  Overall I have to say I did enjoy the knitting of it.  The really fun part was using my new blocking wires!  The transformation from clump to lovely scarf was as good as I've read about on many blogs.  When I finished the scarf and looked at the rumply blob after casting off I had to call upon my faith in the process.  I got online immediately and ordered my blocking wires from Angelika's (it's called Fiber Fantasy's Blocker's Kit). As usual her service was impeccable and I had them at my doorstep within a couple of days.  I gave the blob a good soak in some Eucalan and went to work with the wires.  I was nervous until I saw it pinned out on the guest bed and then I just kept coming upstairs to look at it.  It was really hard waiting the requisite  24 hours to unpin.  But it was worth the wait!  I held it up, folded it, tried it on, folded it again and again.  A blocked lace piece is just so irresistible.  

The model is our delightful, delicious, well-fed  JennyK.  She just left for home in Portland this weekend after a two week visit.  We miss her already even if she did eat us out of house and home ;)