sooooo cute!

Pattern: Peapod Baby Set by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: Premiere All Natural DK cotton; 4 skeins
Needles: 4mm Addi turbo circs for cardigan and 3.75mm dpns for hat
Notes: The directions aren't very clear in a coupla places. I wouldn't recommend this pattern for a newbie knitter.

This is the cutest baby sweater! I loved making it despite the ambiguous bits. It's going to the first grandbaby of a fellow quilter. I still need to put buttons on it. I have 2 sets of Beatrix Potter buttons but I think I'll ask the grandmother-to-be to pick the ones she likes most. I still have to make a pair of booties to go with the Peapod Set. I've picked Saartje's bootees but they're made with fingering yarn and the sweater yarn is DK. There might be some fancy math in my future...

I've been assigned my Longing for Spring spoilee. I've snooped around her blog, etc. I have some ideas for her swap package but I haven't started shopping yet. Swaps are sooo much fun!

lin-tea

I was sewing away today - making the project bag for one of our winners and a few bags for my niece. I took a sip of my tea and it tasted a little fuzzy. I looked inside and there was a thin layer of lint floating on top. Ewww! I should use my lidded travel mug if I'm going to be sewing and drinking.

This morning, I finished off the Peadpod sweater. Sewing the sleeves in wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Picking up the sts for the neck band was a pain. It took me 3 tries before I got it right.


I'm going to wash and block it before I put the buttons on because the button band is all warped.

Can you believe it's snowing again? The old snow hasn't even melted yet. I may wimp out and skip knit nite. We'll see what hubby says when he gets home from work.

Phoebe has the right idea:

"zzzzzz gonna sleep right through it zzzzzz" - Phoebe

can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em

(warning - rant ahead)
Hubby can be such a PITA. Yesterday morning, I was woken up by the opening and closing of several doors. Fine, roll over and go back to sleep. And just as I was falling asleep, I hear his noisy bicycle pump - yay, he's riding his bike to work and I'll get another hour of shut-eye before I have to feed the cats. Roll over some more and pull the blankets up. More doors opening/closing and some muffled noises directly under our bedroom - he's leaving, double yay. And then I hear this strange noise like lots of running water and it doesn't seem to stop. Ugh! I squint at the clock and it says 6:20am. Phoebe is crawling all over me and Ricky's meowing for breakfast in his loudest Siamese voice. Hubby's up and making a lot of noise. He hasn't left so the cats expect me to be up. I dragged myself out of bed and stomp downstairs. Hubby set up his bicycle trainer in the room under our bedroom and he's happily riding away. I let him know (using not nice words) that I'm extremely grumpy and will be that way all day and he'd better not wake me up ever again. And if he doesn't come home with a peace offering, he's dead meat. He brought me a box of cherry cordial chocolates from Purdys :)

And to further perk me up, a little package arrived from Gabrielle.


Thanks, Gabrielle! The card is just hilarious and I can't wait to use the hand cream. It's hard to tell from the picture but the legs on the sheep buttons move when you wiggle them.

There was a lot of knitting while I grumped around. The Peapod cardi is almost finished.


I have to be careful where I leave it. After the last photo shoot, I caught Ricky lying on the cardi and using the ball of yarn as a pillow while I was uploading the pictures onto the laptop. Don't worry, I wash all my gift knits before they're handed over.

I cast on a Valentine's present for hubby and I did some work on one of my WIPs - the second sock for Pauline. And my co-blogger just reminded me that there's a baby due soon and I need to make something for him. Yikes! So I should stop blogging and get back to knitting :)

recycling yarn

I was at a thrift store last week hunting for the usual treasures - linen tea towels, old quilts, etc. when I ran my hands across a sweater. OMG - it was so soft. I looked at the tag and it said 100% cashmere, made in Scotland. It is a mens XL and in fabulous shape. The sweater is a green heather colour - a colour I can't wear but I know a few people who would look fabulous in it so it came home with me. I've recycled sweaters (for yarn) before and I was a little worried that I would accidentally cut into the sweater while picking apart the seams. But this sweater was sewn together with sewing thread so ripping it was really easy. I had it apart in no time. I started by winding the yarn on the ball winder but the strands aren't spun very tightly and the yarn kept snapping. I ended up winding it by hand.

I've got about half of the back undone. I'm trying to gauge how much yarn I'll have. Colourmart claims 2300 yds of 2:28NM cashmere per 150g. The sweater weighed around 425g before frogging. I think the sweater yarn is slightly heavier than the Colourmart cashmere so I estimate that I have at least 2300 yds. I'll be skeining up the yarn and washing it to get out the kinks so there'll be an opportunity to calculate yardage.

I'm keeping an eye on all those stole suggestions because I'll be looking for a pattern for this yarn. My current favourite is the Woodland shawl. Mmmm, mossy green leaves...

The Peapod baby sweater didn't get much attention this weekend. I did reach the bottom of the armholes. I've got 3 counters going - one for the leaf chart repeats, a count of the button hole rows, and row count (from the beg of the armhole opening) so that I can match the fronts to the backs. I need more kacha counters!


This is the cutest thing I've ever knit!