Baby Birds and Baby Socks

Yesterday was my sister Jennet's baby shower. She collects nests with eggs (and has done a few related art series) so I used a "nesting" to get ready for the baby/baby bird theme.

These were the cupcakes

design found here, I split them up doing some with eggs in the nests and some with the baby birds. These eggs are easter egg shaped m&ms. Here's a close up of the baby birds:

These are nest cookies from an m&m cookbook, but these eggs are Cadbury Mini Eggs. I glued the eggs on with a dot of frosting.

These are delicious chow mein noodle cookies with m&ms:

Here we have some of the other refreshments (deviled eggs, heh.)

The centerpiece of pussy willows with different bird ornaments...

The favors were mama blue bird sugar cookies with Cadbury Mini Eggs

And these are the socks I knit her for the future bambino...

They are both a mix of Cascade Fixation and Elan Esprit and the pattern is from Cute Knits for Baby Feet

A Bit of Knitting

Super Mario Mushrooms made for my brother for christmas. Cute, eh?

Winged Tattoo Heart paperweight/stuffy/doohickey - this was a baby shower gift for a former coworker/friend. She loves tattoos and hopes to become a tattoo artist someday so this seemed the perfect gift for her and her first bambino. I love this one and will probably make myself one with a different inscription at some point. The wings in the pattern are to be knit and felted, since that isn't easy wool-free, I cut them out of regular white felt.

This is a variation on the Monteagle bag from the newest Mason-Dixon book. I love this bag but I did have trouble getting one of the stitch patterns into my head, so at one point I just started doing a simplified stitch version instead. I also used the seamless cast-on Kay suggested on the blog. It was a little tricky because I didn't have the appropriate needle length... next time I'll get the right size and it will be much easier.

The strap does stretch more than you think it will when you stretch out the bag to open the stitches... so stop before you think it is long enough. This was a christmas present for my mom. I want one of these too. ;-)

A Cal stuffed kitty to match the Butterkitty... this one went to my nephew for christmas. (cute photos with the baby coming soon!)
is that a cute kitten I've got or what?

This started out as a Lichen Cowl but the yarn lacked the proper stretch/give so it came out an awkward size (too big singled but not big enough to double). So I did some cutting, stitching, and added buttons.

This Tudora was for my sister for christmas. I love this Edwardian looking pattern, the cables add just that right touch.

Another Marley hat, my third. This one I call Muted Marley, with its sophisticated colors. This was for the same coworker/friend as the tattoo heart. I love it, and she said her husband does too. :-)

A long finished project

that I can finally show! I made the Child's Placket Neck Sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts but it's also available for free online. This little gem is for my brand new baby nephew, Zach.

I loved this pattern so I think I'll make it again for other babies. (although, I forgot to look for errata and discovered when I was almost done that there was an error in the pattern. I threw in some random decreases in inappropriate yet invisible places to bring it back in line. Here's a close up of the placket neck with the wooden bead buttons.


And here's my brother modeling it on little Zach (currently one month old). He can't actually wear it yet since I made it big to (hopefully) fit him come sweater weather (it was 84 degrees today). I made the six to twelve month size and he's a big baby so hopefully this will be spot on come cold weather.

And here's a bonus of Zach trying on the Rainbow Marley hat I made him (also big for later)

(cheese part 2 coming up next)

Summer Salad Sampler

I really wanted bread salad for dinner tonight so I stopped at the store on the way home. I saw some nice fruit and decided to make a few different salads for dinner tonight and tomorrow night.

Here's the bread salad, modeled after Panera's - good bread chunked up (this one is called Peasant bread), fresh mozzarella, good tomatoes (from the garden/farmers market when its that time, these are $4 a pint "Splendido" extra sweet grape tomatoes), and honey balsamic dressing It turned out great, yum!

My favorite summer salad is a green salad with lots of fruit on top - whatever your favorites are - my standard is a melon (watermelon), berry, and one or more of: peach, nectarine, plum. This time there is a bit more with: peach, apricot, red grapes, cherries, and plum along with the romaine, mushrooms, tomato, and european cucumber. I like this one with a balsamic dressing too, or, raspberry vinaigrette or something of the sort.

And I also whipped up a macaroni salad.

elbow macaroni with ranch dressing, baco bits, and burgundy olives. Not too attractive since the baco bits and burgundy olives are the same color basically so it is monochromatic, but it tastes great! I was going to use green olives but the jar didn't pop right when I opened it so... I've never bought these burgundy olives before but they grabbed my attention in the store a few weeks ago and I picked them up. They're good! The flavor is different than a plain black olive, and the color is... a bit off putting actually. According to the can they have olive oil and vinegar in them (Burgundy wine vinegar apparently) and according to the website, they come in flavors as well. These were Classic Italian which is the "plain" variety it seems.

And... another baby hat. I finished the Pink Petal hat (Upside-Down Daisy), now hopefully somebody has a girl!

note: In case anyone was unclear, I'm only obsessed with baby hats, not babies. None of these baby hats are for me. ;-)

Even more baby hats

and I'm not done yet, people. Don't try to stop me!

Olive You! This one has a flat square kind of shape, and is kind of fez-like with the braid and pom poms. I loves it. I think I'll make the same shape with different appliqués on it...

And this is Chocolate Blues, a bonnet style. The shape is off a bit because it is once again being modeled by my blown glass vase, which isn't exactly the right shape. Both from Itty-Bitty Hats of course.

I changed this one up a little bit - the pom poms are all one color instead of alternating because I was out of yellow; I shortened the "scarf" into just being a tie - just guessed at how many stitches to cast on for the scarf, this was 100 I think; and there aren't any pom poms on the bottom of the tie either.

Pumpkin Hat

Pumpkin Hat, originally uploaded by Alissao.

My WEBS order came super fast, and arrived today, so I was able to finish the Little Pumpkin Hat this evening. Another cute one...

Squee worthy baby hats...

I'm only half way through the first one, but I think I might be addicted to baby hats. I first fell in love with the cutest baby hats ever, from reading the blue blog. Alison (author of Charmed Knits) has knit a bunch of Susan B. Anderson's baby hats (and other projects) and I really fell in love with them. I bought Itty-Bitty Hats (just look at the cutie on the cover!) when it wasn't available from the local libraries and I just knew I'd want to make at least a few of them over the next couple of years (with the baby boom going on between friends and family...). When I was at WEBS in March I picked up yarn for Rainbow Marley (ravelry link) and bunny tails (ravelry). I should be able to get more than one Rainbow from the yarn I have since you use bits of so many colors.
I'm calling mine a Not-Quite-Rainbow Marley because I couldn't get all the rainbow colors in the yarn I was buying... so it is a semi-muted rainbow. I'm using an 8 instead of a 7 because I didn't have a 7 in the right length. It's a bit loose, I'll use the 7 next time. I was just too anxious to start it last night to wait for a trip to the store. You can't see the pattern that well in this photo, laying down like that, but the different stripes use different patterns - most are knit, some are garter, and then a few wild cards are thrown in like seed stitch. The yarn is Valley Yarns Goshen (cotton, modal, silk) it is a little splitty but soft. I like it. This hat is for my soon-be-born nephew, my brother went through a reggae Bob Marley phase so I'm hoping he'll like it. :-) I haven't gotten to the cool part yet, with the squiggles on top, that will liven it up.

The other thing I like about this book is that for each pattern, there's a little box listing every technique/stitch you need for the pattern. Then it tells you what page each is explained on in the book! Not only does she give you all the info you need but she tells you which page so you aren't flipping all over looking for the stinking seed stitch if you can't remember which one it is! Each stitch also lists how to do it for both straight and circular knitting which is a bonus to not even have to think it out at all.

Top secret projects!

I have been knitting, for real. I just couldn't share it. But now I can! This

is the baby kimono I made for a future bebe! Two of my very good friends are expecting a lovely little one coming this September. And I was happy to be the first to give them a baby present.

This, I can't take much credit for at all - I only made one boring Grandma's Favorite patterned square and other people made all the gorgeous squares. But isn't it (a wedding afghan for other wonderful friends) beautiful?

not the best, complete picture - the thing was huge!

We spent this past weekend at this wedding and bachelorette party and just having wonderful fun with wonderful friends. It was the best weekend in a long, long time. :-)

Another secret project was for the wedding as well, embroidery instead of knitting this time. Using the Sublime Stitching iron-ons I made them a pirate pillow

and two pirate tea towels

this one is my favorite

I've used a lot of different Sublime Stitching iron-ons over the past five years or so and they are really great. There's really no other option for cool, fun iron-ons! They also work great - they say one iron from each design is all that's guaranteed but I've used them multiple times. Even if it gets paler it just needs to be dark enough to stitch over!

To wrap this up I give you a group of my best friends at the wedding. The lovely bride, Kate, is missing since she was busy just being married and all. And Erin, um, sorry you are totally hidden, oops. Note that I'm wearing the frankenstein shrug! A few of my friends are wearing knitted/crocheted beauties as well.