I am sure you will all be shocked and surprised to hear I haven’t knit a stitch since Grace was born. It does, after all require two hands. I have been enjoying dressing her in her knits though!

Grace Charlotte born today at 4:45pm. More at littlefeet

I am still here, waiting. In the meantime I have been remarkably productive on the blog maintenance front. I have upgraded my blog software and made a bunch of changes in a effort to further limit the time I spend combatting spam. As well as continuing to run Akismet I have (I think) completely disabled trackbacks on all posts and made it so that comments on old posts will close automatically after 30 days. If you notice anything odd happening as a result of this twiddling, do let me know.

Pattern: based on Wendy’s toe up sock pattern, with a picot trim
Yarn: Jo Sharp Alpaca Kid Lustre, shade 855
Needles: two pairs 4mm Addi Turbos

This really is the end of my pregnancy knitting. I think. I guess I may knit more, but this is the last thing that needs to be finished before the baby comes. Which is just as well as I am 38 weeks and not looking likely to get to 40 (though anything could happen, and usually does).

I have to say that this is yet another finished object I like so much that I am reluctant to give them away. I really have lucked out on the FO happiness front this pregnancy - everything has basically just worked, often far better than I expected. These socks are soft and delicious to touch and being a heavier weight than I have used for socks in the past they flew off the needles. It made for happy knitting, finished in time. I just hope they fit.

The biggest issue I had making them was sewing down the picot trim. Once I had finished the second sock I realised I had sewn down the first sock one row shorter. The second sock was far nicer and they didn’t match so it had to be fixed, not the funnest job, but even that went fast with only 42 stitches to the row.

I had quite a few thoughts I would once have blogged about along the way as I knit these socks, but my iphoto is still out of action, which makes getting photos off the camera painful. And, well, I am drifting along in a late pregnancy haze these days. I kept thinking I would blog about them soon and then they were done. I am so busy thinking about my belly that everything else seems to sneak up and take me by surprise. Still my apologies that this has become more of a FO blog than a knitting blog.

Pattern: based on the Knitty French Market Bag
Yarn: Lincraft “Cosy Wool”
Needles: 7mm Addi Turbos (60cm)

All done - and SERIOUSLY smaller now! If only I could get Isabelle to pose with it to give you a sense of scale. I am so thrilled with how this bag came out that is going to be hard to part with!

One more gift to go before this baby comes, I have had a cold and I have been procrastinating terribly, but it suddenly stuck me that the baby might not come until it’s done! And if she does come before the gift is done it may never be finished - either way, Yikes! Time to get moving. I think I am going to make some socks from one of the new Jo Sharp yarns.

Belinda has taken me by surprise, sending this parcel for the impending arrival. And she has taken my breathe away with the cuteness of it’s contents:

I had every intention of waiting until the baby came to open it, but pregnancy brain being what it is I didn’t actually think to hide it from Isabelle in the meantime. As you can imagine, once the parcel was noticed there was no letting up until it was open. How sweet is this bonnet?

I can’t wait to see it on the baby. And as for Isabelle, she is absolutely smitten with Clara here.

It’s almost enough to inspire me to start making softies. Almost. But I don’t think I am brave enough with such high standards to live up to! Thankyou so much Belinda, we could not be more delighted.

It’s 18 months since I first stashed this yarn to make a Market Squares bag for a dear friend. She was with us when Isabelle was born and we are hoping she will be able to make it (from interstate!) when this little one arrives. So this yarn was the first thing I pulled out once I finished the baby knitting. I did look at the Market Squares pattern, for a couple of days in fact. I even cast on. Three or four times. But in the end it was more than my pregnant brain could cope with and so I returned to the old faithful French Market Bag, with my favourite mods.

No Market Bag production experience is complete without the knitted bag being thoroughly tested by Isabelle. She’s grown a little in the last 18 months!

All it needs now is felting, which requires time with the washer, something that is in short supply at the moment. I feel like I have been washing 4-5 loads of washing a day for weeks. I probably haven’t been doing quite that much washing, but I tell you, it’s close.

No, not our little one, who needs to cook another couple of weeks, but the new owner of this set:

Pattern: Dumb Baby Sweater from “Knitting in Plain English”
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton in “Elf”
Needles: Addi Turbos 3.25mm

Welcome to the world baby Jasper.

Pattern: Yvonne’s Double Flower Cloth with some significant mods to make it a newborn baby sized hat
Yarn: Rowan Calmer in “Drift” with trim in “Powder Puff”
Needles: Addi Natura 3.25mm DPNs and circ

This was the last hat! It’s been done for quite a while now, even photographed for quite some time. Jesse is in the middle of undertaking a major overhaul of our photo management software & processes, leaving me somewhat disabled when it comes to getting stuff off the camera. It took figuring out a temporary work around to get the quilt photos off the camera for me to realise that I didn’t have to stop blogging just because I have no iphoto at the moment.

Anyway, back to this being the last hat. It’s quite hard to believe that all my planned baby craft projects are done, harder still to believe that I am 33 weeks pregnant. A few of the babies that all this knitting is for have already been born, so little parcels have been making their way out into the world. But this is what my baby knitting drawer looked like the day I finished this hat.

The only things missing from that drawer then were the first Baby Shedir, which had already been gifted and the Dolly Blanket, which is in hiding.

I had planned to reward myself with yarn for a baby blanket of some description once I got all of this done. But of course as soon as I cast off the hat I realised I had more gifts to make, for my midwife, OB and other carers… So now I am knitting another French Market Bag. Or not knitting it as the case may be. I went to bed before Isabelle last night and got up after her this morning. And I think I need a nap.

In the mean time Isabelle has been doing some amazing craft of her own.