Socksssss

Going back in time a little bit here, because I never posted the BEST SOCKS EVAR (capslock totally necessary).  Knitted toe-up, two at a time with Trailing Clouds Nimbus Self Striping Sock, in colourway "Mind the Gap".  Ravelry project page here.

There is nothing better than socks in the colour of the London Tube lines.  This yarn is the BEST.

Slowly knitting custard pullover

I finally finished the cabled top I was making for Toddler Button!  Hooray!

The pattern is called Poseidon and it was my first effort at cabling and provisional cast-on.  I'm a huge fan of the construction method; it's completely seamless thanks to the provisional cast-on and circular knitting needles.  I don't think I ever want to seam knitting again!

Behold: I can cable, apparently!

The yarn is soft and bouncy and such a fun colour.  It was a custom dye-job from my friend Mrs Fleece Cottage Yarns.  She managed to create the just colour I was describing to her and it's called "Slowly Eating Custard Pudding".  I still have 1 1/2 skeins left for more custardy knitting.  I have just cast on for an adorable baby cardigan with the remainder.

No photo of the top on TButton as it's still too big for him (phew), so you'll have to make do with the "before" shot:

In other news:  Mrs Button Ship in sudden quilting enthusiasm shocker!!!  I've just got out my quilt from hibernation in a bid to finish free-motion quilting the last 112 squares.  I should note that this is motivated by us starting to decorate our bedroom, where the quilt will live.  Pleasingly, I appear to have improved in my quilting skills since I last attempted it 18 months - 2 years ago, despite no practice during that time.  No photos of that, either, as I don't have the space yet to unfurl the beast in all its enormous glory.

Slowly eating custard pudding.

I'm so excited!

I'm just casting on for a new top for Baby Button (hereafter, "Toddler Button").  It's the Poseidon tank top by Amber Bertram.  Toddler B already has one that my friend made and it's so useful and excellent that I used the excuse to make another one.  What is exciting is my new yarn:

Isn't that just the scrummiest?  Yellow is Toddler's favourite colour (he only colours with yellow crayon, builds yellow blocks and only sorts yellow shapes etc.), and it's so sunny and happy.  Also, it goes with blue jeans, and all boys clothes from the shops are blue, grey or brown.  Boooo-ring.

The yarn is a custom order from my friend Mrs Fleece Cottage Yarns.  It's a 100% merino superwash DK yarn in colourway "Slowing eating custard pudding".  (see here).  It's delightfully squishy and looks like it should make my stitches appear super neat.  We'll see how that goes...

Did I mention I was excited to cast on?

Baby's posh threads and other news

It's been rather quiet out here in this blog on the post front.  This is because the Button Shipyard has been super busy!  One set of baby's grandparents visited for a week, and now I have 10 days to swab the decks, cook and complete village-based activities before the other set of grandparents come for another week.  Fortunately, baby is delighted with all grandparents and has a wonderful time.  Mummy is so boring, apparently.

I'm going to break my self-imposed ban on people-pictures and post a picture of the wedding outfit for your delight.  The Blooper Shirt, Moonraker Waistcoat and Gennaker Trousers look much better with a small person in them:

Ta da!

Apologies for the bright blue rug and mismatching socks.  I totally ran out of time to make tiny black shoes, and didn't have the presence of mind to sit him on grass and expose the tiny baby toes instead.

We all had a super time, and huge congratulations to the bride and groom who looked stunning and very happy.

I keep saying I'll make the shirt and trouser pattern available, but I need to fix things with the shirt first.  In the progress of that, I got distracted by this forum, which is a UK-based sewing forum.  It's amazing and has very talented and generous people on it, who recommended me to get some new pattern drafting textbooks.  I'm super excited for them to arrive and I'll tell you all about them!

In other wooly news:

My Stegosaurus got featured as pattern of the day at Quartered Heart Crochet!  It's a lovely pretty website, take a look!  A big thank you to Amy and her three-year-old who has excellent taste.  ;-)  I hope she'll like her dinosaur.

Chameleon is doing my nut.  I think I said that about Stegosaurus too at this stage.  I'm on my 5th pattern, and 5th crochet attempt.  I'm working from the tail up and I've reached about row 120; I think I'm almost done with the tail... ARGH!  I think I need a less complicated idea for the pattern after this one.

The third bit of wooly news is that I got IDed to buy knitting needles yesterday.  Seriously, you have to look over 25 to buy a 3mm set of circular needles in Dunhelm Mill.  HA HA HA HA HA.  I wonder what you must do to convince them if you happened to be under 25 but legitimately wanting to knit?!

Finally, I save the best wooly news until last:
My super-talented knitty friend has a new blog!  You can read about her adventures with hand-dying yarn and pick up some serious fibre knowledge while you're at it.  Hooray!  I can't wait to see the results.

I'm on the Christmas sewing and knitting from next week.  The great thing about this is that I'm starting in reasonable time, but the downside is that I can't post any of the resulting images or free patterns until after December 25th!  Bah!

Knitty rainbow fun!

I've been neglecting my chameleon crochet and trouser making recently, because the chameleon is on its 5th pattern iteration, and the trousers had stupid errors in (see earlier mumblings).  I didn't feel too inspired.

I did feel inspired to finally finish the rainbow jumper for baby B with the amazing Adriafil Knitcol.  I chose quite a plain pattern (child's placket neck pullover by Joelle Hoverson), to show off the epic wool.

Pretty jumper front

The jumper pattern is fun to knit, but it's done top-up rather than bottom-down, which I find a bit peculiar.  It was my first time to use double-pointed needles (something I swore I'd never do), and my first attempt at magical Kitchener stitch.  I would totally make this pattern again, perhaps in plain wool for fun.  I read on Ravelry that this pattern can come up small, so I made size 2-4 years, and hopefully it will fit giant-baby at 1 year this winter.  Otherwise we must wait even longer to see the jumper on the model.

Jumper back

The knitcol is very fun to knit with.  I confess I stole the idea from my lovely friends who have also made knitcol baby jumpers/cardies.  I'm a bit late on the knitcol bandwagon, really.  I think the wool works best for children's clothes: they're small enough that the colour lengths go almost all the way across the body.  The result is a fun stripy effect, rather than the more mottled look you'd get on a bigger garment.  I was a bit fussy with the sleeves: I started a new ball for the second sleeve just so I could have the stripes exactly matching, rather than the almost-matching effect I was going to have if I didn't.  Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered, as the stitch direction reverses when you get to the placket, so the shoulders will never match each other anyway!

Mmmmm.... knitcol

I need to save some pennies to buy more epic knitcol.

A wooly week

Whoops, I've not posted in over a week!  That's not good.

What's on my sewing table is nothing, because I spent the week knitting.  I got scared because baby outgrew his last hand-knitted hoodie, so I rapidly had to finish the next size up, which only had half a sleeve left to go.  Just as well, because there isn't much growing room left in it!

After the hoodie, I got excited to knit with some Adriafil knitcol, so I bought some with my birthday pennies and started a jumper.

Finally, I finished adjustments on my Blooper shirt pattern.  I really need to draft a waistcoat and trouser pattern now; we have a wedding to go to in August!  I bought the fabric for the shirt and trousers today.

I really need to get on with patterns and stop being distracted with wool...