That would be my enormous belly protruding into the bottom of the frame of the fourth photo. Standing on a chair to take today’s photos was hard enough that I am not going to do it again any time soon, instead we will have to make do with the belly interference.

The green cardi is ready to block! Though I am a little worried about the shape it has come out, specifically the shape of the neck and upper shoulders, I am thrilled with the speed, simplicity and minimal finishing involved in this top down business. I mean really, it rocks. It was also a great for my momentum not starting and finishing 5 individual pieces, anything that invites a pause in production is a bad thing at the moment. Progress photos of it’s speedy growth below (the colour of the photos with a black background is most accurate, the brown background photos were taken inside at night).

The buttons will have to wait until the baby is born and reveals it’s gender… In the mean time any votes for a matching hat? Another baby Shedir or the old favourite simple hat with moss stitch trim?

I have been meaning to try knitting something top down, all in one piece for a while. Well here it is, roughly based on the “Dumb Baby Sweater” pattern from Knitting in Plain English. So far so good. I am quite enjoying the Rowan Wool Cotton and I love the colour.

The time I have left to knit/quilt baby gifts and the gifts remaining to be finished are not shrinking at a proportional rate. It’s a worry. But hopefully I will get there. Still to do:

Finish this green cardi (and matching hat if yarn allows)
Finish the flower hat and and a baby sized version
Layer, quilt and bind two cot sized quilts
Start and finish some as yet undetermined genderless baby gift (probably a simple red hat a the rate I am going).

I have between 8 and 13 weeks to go, and frankly I am hoping it is more like 8. I need to get moving!

So it seems that Yvonne’s Double Flower Cloth makes a pretty good hat. There are some problems though. Not least of which is the size of the thing, or the fact that I ran out of yarn well before managing to make it long enough to stay on the head that it is evidently going to fit best.

The question now is whether to rip it and make a baby size hat with the yarn I have or order another ball so I can finish this one and then make a baby sized hat. I guess there is also the small issue of how exactly to get it to fit a baby sized head. I may need to cut back to one flower on the crown.

You may notice that the above photo lacks something in the focus department. That was because the damn model would not stand still in the dim early morning light. Admittedly upping the ISO might have helped but I wasn’t properly awake yet. These were the photos Isabelle really wanted me to take.

Serious bed hair, snow mittens, sunnies and her breakfast smoothy.

I have been looking at hat patterns all night and am yet to see anything that is quite what I am after. Along the way I started thinking about Yvonne’s Double Flower Cloth. I am wondering if (and how) I could modify it to make a hat. It would be top down, something different, something girly. All these things are good. I was thinking I would basically knit it as written until I have about 96 stitches (the stitch count of the Baby Shedirs) and then modify the pattern to hold the stitch count steady from that point. Am I mad (or missing the point of hat design)? It seems a little too simple…

I am also unsure about the moss stitch part, mostly because I am worried about whether I will have enough yarn. I might change the moss stitch to stocking stitch or single rib.

Pattern: Shedir - Knitty Fall 2004 Surprise, modified to fit a baby.
Yarn: Rowan Calmer in Powder Puff
Needles: 3.25 Addi Bamboo DPNs

I have been working on this for a while now, but with the amount I have been sleeping progress has been slow. Who would have thought a grow adult might win a “who needs more sleep” competition with a 4yr old? But last night a friend had some exciting news and despite trying to go to bed before Isabelle I was thinking too fast to sleep.

The question now is what to do with the not quite half a ball I have left. According to my scales I have 24g left from the 52g ball, clearly my scales lack a certain accuracy as I am sure Rowan don’t make a habit of giving away yarn. But still I think it is safe to assume that I have just less than 50% of a ball remaining. Given that more babies need hats, do I try to drop a few more rows from the pattern so that I have enough yarn to make another Shedir? Or should I try something different? A top down hat would gaurantee I don’t run out of yarn, a slightly smaller hat would probably not be a bad idea (from both newborn head and yarn perspectives) and a change would be nice. But I haven’t seen any patterns that grab me… I don’t want it to be too plain, but something a little simpler might not be a bad idea given the sleeping issue mentioned above. I seem to be running out of time.

So I have been sitting here wondering why so few people have commented on the blog redesign. Um, would that be because upgrading Wordpress moved my feeds and Bloglines can’t find them anymore? Ooops.

I am in the process of getting my two old Bloglines feeds moved to the one new feed location. Hopefully it will work sometime soon. Ho hum.

This weekend I deleted something like 10,000 comment spams which were waiting in my moderation queue. I also found 10 or so real messages in there from long ago, so if I ever failed to reply to your comment that may have been why! As I was wading through all of that spam it occurred to me that the time it would take to upgrade my blog software (Wordpress) would no doubt pay for itself fairly shortly in time saved dealing with spam. That thought alone was enough to finally get me to upgrade. And here you have it.

There have been two major upgrades of the software since the version I was running (plus some minor upgrades to each of those new versions), which meant my old templates would not have worked with the new software even remotely. What do you think of the new look? I am worried it is a bit excessively… PINK! But it is nice to have something new to look at.

Here’s hoping that the software upgrade does indeed improve the spam situation!

Pattern: Tiny Birds Soaker. Heart from Bikini pattern in Stitch’N'Bitch.
Yarn: Lincraft Cosy Wool 8 ply.
Needles: 4mm Addi turbos and the only metal crochet hook I own (no idea what size it is).

Adding the trim to this thing was a complete pain in the proverbial. The pattern said to add the leg edging after “partial” felting. My soaker has come out the exact size I expected but it seems quite a bit more than partially felted to me and the only way to get a crochet hook through it was by drilling holes with a needle first. I also thought it looked cuter without the ties but have stuck with them as they will probably be necessary… I don’t think I will be making any more of these until this one has been tested, but if it works out I will definitely make a bunch more - if I have time.

I am trying to blog. I have a post ready to go. I just can’t seem to upload photos and the system administrator (that would be my husband) is unable to sort it out right now as he is busy with other things… So, um. Hope you are all doing well!

It was only after I started knitting this cover that I started hearing that knitted nappy covers aren’t really the best idea until after the breastfed poo stage has ended. In Isabelle’s case that was about 14-16 months. Which would make this just a little small, given the birth to 3 month sizing and the rather large children we seem to produce. On the other hand it’s super cute, it was pretty quick and it was stash yarn. Certainly a nice proof of concept. All it needs now is leg trim and ties at the waist and legs. No doubt more pictures to come.