My sister’s Christmas knitting

I am fortunate to be part of a family of knitters. We have just returned from our quick Christmas trip to Australia (sun, beach, stone fruits, delightful), and while I was there I took these shots of some lace knitting completed by my extremely talented big sister. She has long been my chief knitting enabler, with a keen eye for on-line sock yarn purchases, and is always available as my technical expert. The baby blanket is knitted using the Estonian Lullaby baby blanket from Fiber Trends and Yarn Workshop Frankston (under 4 skeins). It will be given to a baby due early in the new year.  As well as being a better knitter than me, my sister is also way more organised! 

The scarf below is knitted from Heng Yuan Xiang lace weight yarn that I gave her for her birthday, and uses under 100 grams.  The pattern is Estonian Garden scarf from Fiber Trends  (notice a trend with her pattern choices)?

My sister has already given the scarf to her cousin in law.  I don’t think that I can speak for all Australian knitters, but in my family we do not have a tradition of giving hand-knitted goods at Christmas.  This is probably due to the summer heat, making knitters reluctant to have an intense pre-christmas knitting burst.   The lucky cousin will be returning to the French winter in the very near future.  Here is another (slightly blurry) shot to show the detail. I think that it is gorgeous.

To facilitate further knitting adventures,  my sister received a set of Knit Picks Options needles for Christmas. Some times it is very handy for her to have a sister that runs an online yarn shop.

Baby knitting

Yet another Estonian Lullaby baby blanket – this time to be sent to the UK for a friend’s baby (who is one quarter Estonian). Nothing much exciting to report, (you can see  my earlier post on this pattern for further details) – I’ll have more details later this week of my sister’s version of this pattern (using Yarn Workshop Frankston).

After realising that baby blankets take a long time (especially in fingering weight!) I devised this hat, which is ideal for using up left over sock yarn.  This hat was knitted using left over Footscray.  Another baby hat should be generated over this week for a little girl recently born in Conneticut, and will try and write up the pattern when I am in Australia over Christmas. It will be called the Barker hat, in honour of the most useful baby book author I encountered when the girls were in those early days.

Below you can see them put togther on one of older daughter’s dolls (in her new bedroom). 

Many thanks to all of you who wished me good luck with the move.  We needed every bit of it… To date, we still have only one curtain hanging in the master bedroom (one hanging track is not properly affixed); no paintings hung anywhere (the plaster is cracking and it needs to be fixed before the paintings can be hung); and NO OVEN! The last circumstance is driving me batty.  Two weeks without an oven in the holiday season is some kind of special torture for me. There is an oven in place in the kitchen, apparently it is brand new, but it seems to be completely without a thermostat.  It has only one temperature: thermonuclear.  I discovered this when I managed to burn a curry in 35 minutes after setting it to gas mark 2 (300° F).  Further tests with gas mark 1 revealed the same result. The contractor had promised that it would be fixed by last Friday, and has been dodging our calls since then.  If we were planning to spend Christmas here, I would be truly panicking.  Luckily, we will be having a traditional Australian beach Christmas.

During the two weeks since the move, things have been insane here – lots of orders for Yarn Workshop, my birthday, older daughter’s birthday (luckily I had outsourced the baking of the birthday cake for older daughter), and mass layoffs at my husband’s employer.  Fortunately, he is employed for the time being, but we will see what the new year holds.  If I don’t post again before Christmas, Merry Christmas to you all.

A cycle of gifts

I’ve been the recipient of some lovely knitting related gifts recently – from Tehri I received the snowball, and a lovely handkerchief which is a map of Helsinki.  She must have read how much I wanted to be in Finland. The snowball has the most amazing texture, and stress relieving qualities when squeezed. They are sitting on some Fiber Trends sock blockers that were given to me by my local knitting guru, Yam. The sock blockers were transported by her very patient husband from Los Angeles, and will make my sock photography so much easier. So, thanks all round.

The gifts that I recieved are sitting on a gift that is to go in the mail tomorrow to Australia. It is a baby blanket for a very good friend in Sydney who has just had her first child.  I followed the Fiber Trends pattern Estonian Lullaby using Bella Baby from Spotlight (Ravelry link). I was considering getting a very similar (perhaps identical?) yarn for Yarn Workshop, and am glad that I decided against ordering it.  While the yarn is soft, it grows like no-one’s business, and is quite the nightmare to sew in the ends.  The blanket did not look that big as I was knitting it, but after washing and blocking it grew, and grew, and grew. The blanket is huge! The photo below shows its size on our bed.

While I will own up to a complete failure to swatch, and a use of a larger than recommended needle, I was surprised as how much it grew on machine washing (30 degrees) and machine drying (until it was nearly dry). As tempting as it was to machine dry it further, I stopped myself for fear that the 20% wool in the yarn would felt before the pattern was photographed. The blanket will go in the mail with stern instructions that it is not an heirloom, and that I fully expect it to disintegrate before the little girl’s 5th birthday. I suspect a little felting would do it good!

Project Details

Pattern Estonian Lullaby Baby Blanket (Ravelry link) with the garter stitch border, in the Sport/DK size. I highly recommend this pattern and will make it again.  All the decreases are K2 together, and I had very few problems with stitch counts. I did use a row counter. I purchased the pattern from this Ebay store, and was very happy with the service

Yarn  Spotlight Bella Baby Layette, 80% Bamboo 20% Wool. Most of 9 balls purchased at Kowloon Bay Spotlight.

Needles  Bamboo 5.5 mm.

Alterations Only not using the recommended needle size!