Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away

I have a secret.  One of my most favourite things to do in this world is put baby hats on my pets.  Fills me with sheer delight.  Love it. 

My pets, on the otherhand, do not love it.

Behold:  The Aviatrix by Justine Turner

Specs:

Yarn: Plymouth Encore worsted - leftovers from my BSJ.  Amazingly, there is still some left.  Perhaps some booties are in store.
Needles: 3.25mm, 4.5mm
Size: small.  quite small.  I'm no baby expert, but I would say it's got to be 0-6 mos.
Modifications: I added a second button hole around the 45 row mark on the strap, and am considering adding a second button due North of the one sewn on there.  I have a sneaking suspicion the strap is going to stretch, and I will be aptly prepared when it does.
Impressions: Fast knit.  The repeats are easily memorizable, and the counting is intuitive - a row counter isn't necessary.   Excellent project for in front of the TV time, as it's relatively mindless.

Overall I'm very pleased with this one.

Orly is not.

A little burst of Patriotism

Better late than never, right?

Currently on the needles is:

Pattern: O Canada Mittens by Vicki Taylor-Hood
Yarn: Lionbrand Vanna's Choice in red and Bernat in white
Needles: 2.5 mm
Size: Adult

My 2010 Canadian Olympic mittens! 
I thought about taking the Olympic rings out of the chart, since the Olympics have long
passed but decided to stick with the Olympic theme as
my own personal commemoration to the event.

General impressions so far:

I love them!  The colourwork is beautiful, the charts are easy to read, and the pattern is FREE!  I'm reversing the colours, with red being a dominant and white an accent.  I love, love, LOVE the two colour long tail cast on and the braided ridges.  They really make the cuff pop. 

I also love that the use of two colours makes them doubly thick.  This is important because I'm making them with acryllic rather than wool (I just couldn't find the right shade of red in the wool section).

Am looking forward to casting these off!

One Surprised Baby Jacket coming up!

BSJ. 

Since the dawn of knitting time, I've wanted to knit this ubiquitous pattern. 

Why the delay?  Partly because it took me a while to even buy the pattern, since it isn't affordable on its own (the shipping cost is more than the price of the pattern?  What is this??) and I really didn't want to buy Zimmerman's book for just one pattern.  So for a long time I pined. 

Then one day at the LYS, I asked the girl at the counter (for kicks, you know) if they sold it.  To my shock and amazement they did!  Oh happy day!

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman

Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Encore worsted

Needles: A very long 3.25mm circ

Size: 6 mos. baby size

This is a tricky pattern.  I was having trouble figuring out where/how to increase stitches and found some very helpful videos on youtube.  Highly recommend you give them a watch before getting too far with it.  Apart from the increases/decreases, the pattern is really straightforward, although you may be second guessing yourself as you go along, as it doesn't look much like a cardigan in progress.

All in all, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.  It's a little larger than I was expecting, but it's been my experience with (other people's) baby clothing, bigger is always better.

It will remain buttonless until I find out a) who this puppy is going to and b) what that baby's sex is.

Raising the bar-n

My stash is such a guilty pleasure representing things like excess, dissolved plans, ...  Beauty.

Every few months I reconcile what I have with what I'd like to accomplish, and promise myself, ever so fervently, to knit from the stash. Good plan.

Recent reconciliation has yielded the following project goal:

 

 The Barn Raising Quilt from the book, Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together

 

It requires a little over 40 knit squares for the project.  I've gathered my specimens and have set a loose completion deadline of 18 months from now (18 months!  I must be crazy!).   

 

 

Wish me luck!