Welcome, Baby X!

I would like to introduce you all to the latest edition to the LavenderSheep team!


Our sweet Baby X! We are all home now, healthy, happy, and exhausted!

Question

I had a comment posted to the website from a Daniela, but no return email address, so I will answer it here. She was asking about feltable roving for a fundraiser art project for her kids school.

My answer is the Merino Roving would probably work best for the project. Everything I have is available on the website here. It is feltable and would work well for needle felting as well as wet felting.

Hopefully that is the right answer. I really hope I can get the message back to her!

Kitty Pants!

I finally got some pictures of the finished Pusekatt Pants! Also known as the Kitty Pants, as the mood strikes me.


I really love these pants. They actually went really fast because I just couldn't wait to see what would happen next. Even knitting the second leg wasn't a problem. They are just too much fun! We'll start with modifications. The pattern is so well written there isn't much of anything I changed. The two minor changes I made were I didn't fold and sew the cuff to the pants. As you can see there is a ribbed cuff. I figure for my baby I'll just fold it up and as he grows I'll fold it down to get extra use out of the pants. The only other change I made was the original used light and dark purple and I decided to use light and dark brown to make them a bit more boyish. I also changed a couple of the other colors to ones I had on hand, which doesn't make a huge difference. I really love how they turned out!

Here is a closer look at one of my favorite parts of the pants. I really love the olive green kitties. They are so fun! Then my favorite colorwork combination is peas and carrots, or those little blocks of colors that change as you go upwards. It's so fun to see the little blocks change every couple of rows.


Here are the other kitties, the dark blue ones with 2-tone background. The pattern is Nr 5 Pusekatt from the Dalegarn Baby Kolleksjon NR 114. I knit all of it from Dale of Norway Baby Ull, which I totally recommend. If you want a list of all of the colors I used check out my Ravelry project page.

Happy March!

March is baby month!


My due date is fast approaching! So there are a couple of things I need to mention about my maternity leave, as it were. The shop is going to remain open the whole time! I have been carefully training my husband to send out orders, so even if I can't do it, he most certainly will be able to. So, orders should go out just as quickly as they always have. The exception being the week of March 14th - 20th, when our little baby X should arrive. I'll also make sure to post here when he does, so you guys will know all about it.

The other thing is I'm not going to do any custom orders from now through the month of June. Hopefully I will get back to the dye studio before then, but I just want to make sure I have plenty of time with our new addition. I have been dyeing up some new colorways and I'm hoping to get a couple more days in the studio before the big arrival. So hopefully that means I'll have some new yarn to show off in the next few weeks. I'm also hoping it means that I'll have lots of yarn to take to Black Sheep Gathering in June! It'll be our first show with our new baby, so I'm sure it will be an adventure!

Returning Knitting

One of the really cool things about knitting for other people and their babies is that occasionally the knitting comes back home for a visit. Here is what I mean:


I first knit this gorgeous ladybug sweater for my friend Destiny (rav link) when she had her little boy. Well as soon as she found out that I was going to have a little boy she told me that I could borrow the sweater back! I am sure my little guy will just love this sweater as much as her little boy did! It is 0-3 month, so I am sure he will only get to wear it a couple of times before it will be too small. Still I will try to get as much use out of it as I can and keep it in the awesome condition it already is in. That's what makes a good family heirloom!


The 2nd sweater to return home is this Debbie Bliss Baby Hoody in Blue (rav link). I knit this up several years ago for Knot Another Hat as a shop sample. I think it was the first time I knit this pattern and one of the first shop samples I knit for the shop. Sarah was doing some cleaning out of old samples and thought I would like to see this one back. I love it, especially since I just finished the same pattern in red. It's such an easy throw over the top baby hoody, I am sure I will get lots of use out of it!

I am getting pretty excited! I am down to less than 3 weeks! I think we have pretty much everything, just need to assemble things like the crib and get everything washed and ready!

New! Shawl Pins

Plover Designs has come out with 2 brand new metals for their shawl pins.

The first is the long awaited copper! I have been waiting for this to come out and it finally is here! I love the pretty copper orange. It's available in the Swirl, Sword, and Pie styles.


The second metal is Aluminum. I was a little worried at first that this wouldn't be sturdy enough, but it definitely is! It feels just as strong as the silver. The difference is it is much lighter weight, which means it is perfect for those light weight cobweb type shawls that can't handle the weight of silver or copper shawl pins. It is available in Swirl, Sword, and Pie as well.

Check out all of Plover Designs shawl pins here.

Sunday Drive

Blair and I went out for a nice Sunday Drive along the old scenic highway. This is one of my favorite drives. So I thought I would share a few photos we took along the way:


It was a foggy, slightly rainy kind of day. I like getting obscure photos of mossy trees and rocks. There just is something about it that makes me feel at peace and happy. Though you can't see it in the photos the greens of the moss really stood out against the greyness of the rocks. I just couldn't quite capture it. I have been feeling the need for lime green in my life lately, which may be reflected in some yarn in the near future. I think it is my love of spring and the little baby leaves which are starting to appear.


Here is a picture of the Gorge. Crown Point is there on the right. I really think I live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. What I love most about this picture is I know I could go there tomorrow and it would look completely different. I could probably take a picture every single day of the year and never get 2 that looked exactly alike. I think that is why I am constantly inspired by the world around me here.


Lastly I will leave you with a gratuitous baby belly shot. Only 1 month left to go!

Playing Catch-up

or, my goodness, I haven't blogged in how long? Life has been a bit crazy lately. Mainly it's go, go, go getting things ready for the baby to come. So I have been doing everything from doctors appointments to taking the car in for its regular service. Not a whole lot of fun, but does create some really good knitting time. I managed to finish off a couple of things:

First up, the Debbie Bliss Baby Hoody (rav link). It is from her book Special Knits. As I said a couple of posts ago, I have knit several of these over the years. It is a fast knit and I think it will be great as a light jacket as the weather warms up. I'm also planning on knitting a bigger size because I think it is such a quick versatile sweater. I used Cascade Cash Vero in color Ruby. No mods to the pattern.



I also finished up this little pair of baby socks (rav link). The yarn is my Superwash Sock in color Day at the Fair. I love using up bits of sock yarn to make itty bitty socks. I also love that they are super portable. I carry around all my supplies in one project bag, then I don't have to carry my whole huge knitting bag to my doctor's appointment. I already have another pair cast on, which I'll share with you later.

I have lots to share, so hopefully I will be able to find a few more quiet moments to post them up here over the next few days!

Ripping Yarns

I though it was really funny or one of those strange coincidences when I read Knitting Daily this morning and they had a post on exactly what I wanted to talk about!


My first sweater never quite fit right across the bust or shoulders. It was a little tight and boy was this sweater warm! I knit it out of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, a yarn I simply love. I just have been looking at the sweater lately and I realized that I don't think I'm ever going to wear it again, because it just doesn't fit right. Then I started thinking about all those balls of Baby Cashmerino and how I could use them up in baby projects. So the sweater has now been frogged!


Here is the yarn all wound neatly into skeins. Don't think that this was a super easy task, either. The yarn, while machine washable, did felt a tiny bit to itself, making pulling it apart an extra difficult task. Also it shed little fluffs of blue and red yarn everywhere! I think I am going to find those little fluffs for the next 6 months! However, once the yarn had been washed and rewound it is super soft and useable once again. So far I have washed and hung to dry the blue yarn. I have 250 grams of it to play with! I am thinking diaper covers and baby shorts. I think I'll start with the baby shorts, because they are just so cute. There is a bit less of the red yarn. I have washed it, I'm just waiting for it to dry and then I will wind it too and figure out how much there is. Even though it was a big pain to frog the sweater I am very happy with the end result. I like the idea of finding a new purpose for a yarn that wouldn't otherwise be used. I just haven't determined whether this is considered nesting or not!

Shop News: February sale is now up! Superwash Sport yarn is $20 a skein for the month of February!

Crochet All Day: New Patterns!

Crochet All Day has out a bunch of new patterns! This includes some brand new knit versions of her popular crochet animal bags.


Up first are the crochet bags! The most requested animal bag is an Alligator bag. So now, due to popular demand, there is The Gator Bag! The new crochet and felted bags include The Cat & Dog Bags, The Duck & Lamb Bags, and the really awesome Owl Bag! Make sure to check them all out!


Now there are knit versions of the animal bags. I just love this sheep! Look at the awesome ears on this fellow. Now I can technically crochet, so I could take on one of Sharon's awesome patterns, but crochet is always a little intimidating to me. I am much more comfortable with knitting! I am so happy that she is now designing knit versions. So far there is a Sheep, a Chicken, and a Frog available in knit versions!