FOs!

Yes, I have Finished Objects! While Baby Girl's red vest is still on Mom's blocking board, I've got others to show.

Here's Baby Girl's Loop-d-Loop Ballet T-Shirt, knit in Farmhouse Yarns' I Am Allergic to Wool:



It should be just about warm enough for her to wear it, once her two-year molars come in. She's been working on them for about a month (what a trooper!) and is quite drooly, so I'd like to give the knits a break!

One of this month's Socktopia themes is "April Showers." Since I've been under the gun to finish baby gifts for a girlfriend who is due at the end of May (but is likely to deliver early), I decided to knit booties: fast, easy, and we could kind of make it a "shower" gift, even though it's baby no. 2 and there is no shower. Then, SheepsPyjamas beat me to it. Oh well--I'm still jumping on that bandwagon! I have two pairs of booties.

First, here are the fabulousyarn.com Artyarns Regal Silk baby booties in Dawn :




First, they're not really lopsided, I just didn't have enough time to fiddle with the tissue paper stuffing (with children leaning on the screen door calling, "Mommy! Mommy! What are you doing, Mommy?"). The fabulousyarn.com site shows the booties with a ribbon tie, but I skipped the eyelet row for the tie; I wasn't in the mood. The booties are pretty, but I don't really like the color. I love the sheen of the silk, but didn't like working with it. It doesn't have enough give; in fact, it doesn't have any give. I also made the booties out of Artyarns Supermerino in Sea Greens, with the eyelet row. I haven't made the I-cord ties because I tried to make the hat and ran out of yarn. I'll post a picture when they're done. The Supermerino was a lot of fun to work with, and the booties look great. The color is even better in person, too! I'm not under pressure to finish, though, because my girlfriend is having a girl, and Sea Greens is a boy color (not that I wouldn't put it on Baby Girl).

The other set of booties are the Lorna's Laces I-Cord Boogie booties, in Shepherd Sport Tickled Pink:




Again, lopsided due to tissue paper stuffing under pressure. These were a lot of fun to make, and I think I like this pattern better. Tickled Pink turned out to be a fabulous color, too! I didn't make the I-cord to keep the booties from getting lost--I just couldn't see taking the trouble to thread it through a baby's pants, have the baby lie on it, or even worse, have a diaper accident!

The final baby gift (so far, we'll see if I finish the One Skein baby bolero) is the Tilli Tomas Flurries baby hat:



It's really cute, although the decreases did not give me the number of post-decrease stitches called for in the pattern and I had to do some creative sewing to close the opening the size of a quarter at the top of the hat. Plus, I had to push all those beads to the front! But it's beautiful, and my friend is a practical person who would never buy anything like this for a baby (it's dry clean only!), and she deserves something like this. The silk booties are dry clean only, too, but the Lorna's Laces are superwash.

Ok, the One Skein Baby Bolero. I'm hitting a few snags. First, I may not have enough yarn to do the ribbed border. In order to conserve yarn, I'm unraveling my gauge swatch to use to seam the shoulders and sleeves. Instead of sewing the shoulders, I used the three-needle bind-off. Always looks good, and is always easy--thanks to my sister for the tip! My challenge is seaming--never a favorite job. Here, the bolero body is knit in one piece, and the sleeves are knit separately. Then you sew (or three-needle bind off) the shoulders. Then you sew in the sleeves. So I had to sew flat sleeves into a round opening. I used backstitch and that worked pretty well. I'm having trouble sewing the shoulders closed; not only is there a hole at the base of the sleeve, where the sleeve meets the body, that I have to creatively and invisibly close, my sleeve seaming is not pretty. Which is ok, because no one ever sees it, mostly, but I think it's ugly enough to not be right. So, I have to wait for Mom, seamer extraordinaire, to come back from vacation to help.

Oh, and last but not least, I shipped my Knitters Treat Exchange package to my treatee, who can be found at The adventures of SanFaerieAnne. It should be arriving any day now--hope she enjoys it! I certainly had a good time putting it together. So much so, I've joined the Knitting Gnome Swap. I know Norm (or any of his friends) will have a great week with us this summer!