more stash busting June 27, 2009

As I’ve mentioned before, I own a whole bunch of Karabella Aurora 8. It has become fully seamed sweaters for me that turned out to be terribly unflattering. The yarn and I have issues. So it has subsequently been relegated to several rather large bags of deknitted yarn. Always on the search for a way to use it that does not involve producing ill-fitting garments for myself, I seem to have hit the motherlode with baby things.  It even turns out to work quite well for toys. Who knew?

Unfortunately, these all turn out to be rather small things, so I still have lots left. Especially in green. But I made a dent with the cabled baby vest, which, though lacking buttons and in need of a good wash, is done!

• pattern: Cabled Baby Vest
• yarn: Karabella Aurora 8
• needles: US size 6

This was a fun, and quick, pattern. Bonus: no seaming. I liked it so much that I designed a hat to accompany it. Available through the link below or through the “free patterns” link at the top of the page.

• pattern: Cabled Baby Hat
• yarn: Karabella Aurora 8
• needles: US size 6

Hmm, now, what else can I make with this yarn?

hats galore June 16, 2009

It took me weeks to sew on the buttons, but the french baby sweater now has a matching hat.

 

• pattern: a Catherine Bouquerel knitting kit from France
• yarn: Pingouin Pingodouce
• needles: US 2

 

There were plans for matching booties, but not sure if that will still happen. If I do make them, I’m pretty sure that will involve a pattern other than the one that came with the kit. I think I’ve had enough with the french translation. 

And I finally made something that would be appropriate for a boy! Another baby hat and socks.

 

• pattern: Newborn Hat and Sock Set
• yarn: Ornaghi Filati Alicante
• pattern: US 3

 

Apparently on a roll with boy things, I’ve also started a cabled baby vest:

It’s a fun pattern and – bonus – uses up yet more stash yarn!

I don’t think this is what nesting means June 5, 2009

We’re under two months until the baby’s due, and this is apparently when the whole “nesting” thing should kick in. But it’s more because of the dwindling time than any real desire to accumulate these things that we’ve finally started getting around to acquiring the baby stuff for pretty much strictly the necessities. The one thing we really cared about was the stroller (we’ve long known we wanted a Quinny Buzz, should we ever have a baby). Check. Everything else just seems like stuff.

Since about March, though, we seem to have been undergoing a systematic strategy of replacing most of our electronics. It’s absolutely not baby-related, but we’ll just make this count. It started with the innocent replacement of our ancient desktop computer. That expanded into building ourselves a whole little network. Then our waffle maker decided to die. (It’s worth mentioning here that waffles are a key outlet for using my sourdough starter when I feed it, oh, every week.) However, in replacing the waffle maker, that also expanded to replacing our (horrid) blender with one that actually works, along with several other kitchen implements. The only thing that has escaped thus far is the hand mixer, but I have my sights set on that one, too.

Conveniently, most everything you could want is on sale somewhere due to the whole economic catastrophe, making this whole effort much more affordable. However, it seems more of it should revolve around baby stuff. There’s still time, I guess. In the meantime, I’ll just continue my quest to use up sock yarn on random things for baby appendages that may or may not turn out to be colors for the correct gender.