Still waiting, still knitting...

Life is almost on pause at the moment waiting for the little one to arrive.  I will officially be 40 weeks tomorrow, so hoping he/she won't be much longer.  Not much to report as a result.  I am working away on my various knitting projects, but the downside to knitting is that things take so much longer to produce, consequently I have no photos of beautiful finished articles to post yet!

I am loving the Honey Cowl pattern.  It knits up beautifully and is simple enough to be a 'take anywhere' kind of project.  I even think it will make the cut and join the contents of my hospital bag when the time comes!

So, keep checking back.  Normal service will resume shortly!

Hooks and needles!

Wow - the urge to create has really gotten a hold of me at the moment - I can only put it down to the impulse of all those creative hormones flooding around my body at the moment, combined with the need to conserve energy by mooching around the house.  

I now have no less than 4 active projects on hooks and needles, and I stress the word 'active' as opposed to my usual trick of starting something, getting a bit bored and abandoning it to the excitement of starting something new!

I picked up this yarn yesterday and cast on to make the Honey Cowl I have been seeing on so many blogs lately.  The pattern is really simple, knit in the round on circular needles, and hopefully won't take too long to knit up.  Great for cold February days!

I can't quite describe the  colour of this yarn.  It's a Sirdar Click wool and acrylic mix - nothing too fancy for my first attempt, but it's nice and soft and hopefully won't be too itchy.  It was also on offer for £2 a ball!  The colour could be grey, but has accents of blue, green, and red or pink, or possibly brown, so the overall effect changes with the light.  It's a bit like oil on a puddle, or the North Sea under a British sky!  It will be my mirage cowl! 

I have replenished my yarn supplies to continue working on my ripple blanket, although the perfectionist in me is tempting me to frog it and start again now that I know I made such a significant error interpreting the instructions!  I shall have to see which wins out - my OCD leanings or my or my reluctance to start over!

I've made some progress with the dress for Baby Bjorn.  I've customised it a fair bit as the bodice was a little too tight to slide on over the dolls legs.  I added in a few rows of double crochet (English!) whilst joining the sides - of course I had run out of pink yarn by then so had to go with stripes!  For the same reason I decided not to join the straps on to the back of the bodice (it made the neck hole too narrow to pull on over the legs) and instead lengthened them slightly and added buttonholes.  I also wanted to add some scallops to the straps to make them look a little more finished and to cover up Baby Bjorn's rather chunky shoulders!  Unfortunately I wasn't concentrating and managed to complete both sets of scallops beautifully before realising I had the dress inside out!  Doh!  So I shall have to unpick them and do it again.

And finally....

I have cast on to make another February Lady Sweater - an awesome cardigan pattern with a terrible name!  This is another free pattern made available through Ravelry.  It's the only large item of clothing I have ever attempted knitting for myself, and it was really successful (shock!).  I wear it all the time, so much so that it's already starting to go bobbly.

I tried to take some photos of the detail, but my lighting wasn't great and it was really hard to reproduce the colour - it definitely looks best in the sunshine above!  The yoke is knit in garter stitch, then the arms and body continue in a gull lace pattern.  It's lovely and goes with everything!

Admittedly, this make might take me a while.  I blush to admit that this first one took me a year and five months to complete (eek!).  Not that I was working on it constantly.  A sudden fear gripped me three-quarters of the way through that it wouldn't fit, and I completely stalled, putting it away for months.  Thankfully I did finally dig it out and make the final push to get it done.  Then came the moment of truth, and - VICTORY, Hoorah!

So, I now have several projects on the go with enough variety to keep my hands and brain busy as I sit and wait for the baby to arrive.  39 weeks today - won't be long now!

Can you guess what it is yet?

Poor neglected sewing machine! It has been sat on this chair in a forlorn manner for nearly a month now, with nothing but a shepherd (painted by a 3yr old) for company.  I feel very sorry for it, but am resigned to the fact that I'm unlikely to use it now until after the baby's born.  

I have been resorting to more crochet instead!  My ripple blanket is coming along - although I realised I had made a HUGE error whilst using my Ravelry pattern!  I had forgotten that many Ravelry users are from across the pond, and consequently use American crochet terms, which look the same as English crochet terms BUT ARE DIFFERENT!!!  You say tom-ay-to, I say tom-ar-to?  In this case a dc or double crochet in American terms does not mean an English double crochet, but a treble crochet.  Doh!  I should have had a better look at the picture first and I might have noticed that something didn't quite add up!!  As it is my blanket still looks lovely, but it is probably a lot more dense and less soft than it would have been if I'd followed the instructions correctly!  It may just end up being a 'rolling around on the floor' type blanket instead of a 'wrap me up so I'm nice and cosy' type blanket.  Nevermind - I'll know for next time, and because I've started I'm going to blinking well persevere!! 

For those who may be at risk of making the same mistake I did, here is a chart comparing American and English crochet terms that I lifted from About.com:

British vs American English Crochet Patterns
British English	USA - American English
double crochet (dc)	single crochet (sc)
half treble (htr)	half double crochet (hdc)
treble (tr)	double crochet (dc)
double treble (dtr)	treble (tr)
triple treble (trtr)	double treble (dtr)
miss	skip
tension	gauge
yarn over hook (yoh)	yarn over (yo)

Hope it helps!

Anyway, the ripple blanket is currently on hold as I ran out of yarn yesterday - double doh! - and need to take a trip to Hobbycraft to get some more.  I've been trying to go with more neutral colours for this one as we don't know whether we're having a girl or a boy (and my granny square blanket did have a distinctly girly feel to it!!) so I went with purple, green and cream.  That meant I was still left with my remaining pink and yellow yarn (also from the granny square blanket), so I decided to make use of this on a smaller project until I can get to the shop for more supplies.  

Can you guess what it is yet?

Despite looking alarmingly like a toilet roll cover, this is in fact going to be a baby doll dress for Emily's new Baby Bjorn.  It's another Ravelry pattern (Delightfully Pink Baby Doll Dress by Anna Ness) and yes, I did work out that it uses American crochet terms - yay!  I'm loving the fact that crochet projects come along so quickly (soooo satisfying!) and also that they are so portable.  I've been taking my crochet everywhere with me lately, and it's such a conversation starter!  What with that and being nearly 9 months pregnant I've been talking to all manner of folk recently!  All good fun.