10 Stitch Baby Blanket

Now that the baby has arrived and been welcomed with a new blanket, I can post it  for all to see. It's a 10 Stitch Blanket made in Loops and Threads Soft and Shiny yarn. The mostly red colourway is Fiesta and the other is Aqua.

I had been aiming for a blanket that was 36" across. I wanted it a decent size so they could use it for more than a month. I finished a round and thought that it looked pretty close to that size. At this point it was taking me about a week to do one round. I laid it on the floor to measure and found that it was  32" across. I was waffling about doing another round and decided to have lunch and then look at it again. After lunch I checked my email and there was an announcement. Baby had arrived! At which point I called the blanket done , bound it off, wove in the ends, washed it and sent it off.



When I laid it out on the floor to measure, the cat (of course) decided to check it out. The cat is about 9lbs, so I would say she's a decent stand in for a baby, right?

Kitty Nip

I knitted a thing! A Fortune Cookie filled with catnip, to be precise. Its from the Feline Dim Sum patterns
Ripley was trying to pry it out of my hands as I sewed it up. Once done, it was thoroughly enjoyed.

Flowers!

Last year I bought a couple of bearded iris bulbs. They survived the winter and flowered! Well, one bulb has. The other has buds, but no flower yet.

No Sew, 3 Minute Yoga Pant Cover Up

I bought new yoga leggings. They are snug all the way down as opposed to the boot cut leggings I had before. The boot cut kept getting stuck under my foot etc. However I am now a tad self conscious about running about in the leggings. So I decided to make myself a yoga skirt.

You need:

A t-shirt:



and scissors.

Cut the shirt:

and try it on. mine was a little wide at the waist:


So I cut a slit down the side at the top and tied a knot:


And I have myself a skirt-like cover up for my yoga leggings!

Yoga Strap

I have started doing yoga regularly, so I bought myself a mat. It came with a carry strap that was basically a long shoestring with a loop on either end. This left a dent in the mat and wasn't very pretty either. Functional, but not pretty.

I embarked on an adventure. First I tried to knit a lacy strap that was k2tog yo but it twisted in a corkscrew fashion. So I went to the stitch dictionary and found a different stitch pattern called woven stitch, which is as follows:

Cast on multiple of 4.
Row 1 & 3: purl
Row 2: k2 PT
Row 4:PT k2

Where PT is purl twist. This means that you purl 2 together, leave on the left needle, insert right needle between the stitches from the back and purl the first stitch again.

Knit for 64 inches or so. To make the smaller loops at either end of the strap, when you reach 4” or so, fold the strap up and pick up the cast on stitches on a 3rd needle, purl together on a purl row. This should give you a loop about as wide as the strap itself is. Continue knitting. When your strap is long enough, fold the end up so that you have a similar sized loop, pick up stitches on a 3rd needle and do a 3 needle bind off.

Now comes the origami portion of our adventure.  To made the big loops for the mat to rest in, you pass one end through the small loop on the other end. Then you pass the end that has been looped through the small loop on the other end. I found the method on this blog.

For my strap I cast on 14 stitches, I added a purl stitch to either side of my 12 stitch repeat. I also slipped the first stitch of each row with the yarn in front.

Flower Slippers!

A friend has a birthday coming up, and she always has cold feet, so I thought a nice pair of felted slippers would go over well. French Press Knits Slippers are adorable. I had enough wool to make them, so I we are off to the races. Once knit up and felted, however, I really didn't like the tab for the front. I suspect it was because the slippers was so small. (friend has size 6 feet, thus smallest size knitted) Therefore, I did what any good knitter would do and improvised. I no longer had any blue yarn, having used it up on the sole and the now defunct tabs. Dark grey looked good, though, so I made 2 flowers for the front. I REALLY was flying by the seat of my pants and completely ad-libbed a pattern for the flower. I cast on 30 stitches, knit one row, knit front and back on the net row, knit 2 more rows and bound off. Then I wound the fabric up into a flower shape and sewed it on the front. I am rather pleased with the result.

A Hat For Me!

At my casual job, names are drawn for a Secret Santa gift swap.  I knit my giftee a Rikke hat and a matching cowl. I did not get a picture of it, mores the pity, but I liked the hat so much, I wanted one for myself. Stash diving ensued and 2 balls of Jo Sharpe Georgette were excavated from the mountain of yarn.







While knitting, I was unsure if I liked the colour. A common problem when I knit something in the pink/lilac tones. Now that it is done, I am quite pleased. It is a little longer than I expected, but I like the droopy effect, so it's all good!

Pattern: Rikke Hat
Yarn: Jo Sharpe Alpaca Silk Georgette