Polgara Knits

I swiped the batteries from my old, deceased A300.

This is a picture of the two hats. The pen is there for scale. They both fit rather nicely over my middle three fingers, which reminds me of Mr. Hand from South Park, which is probably not a good association for itty bitty baby hats, but there ya go. [Pattern here.]

This will be Noah’s blanket when it’s finished. I’m using the light pink from Grace’s hat for the accent color, and I’ll be using the light green for Grace’s accent color. [Pattern here.]

The past week was a very expensive one for yarn. You see, on Tuesday one of my dearest friends went into early labor–three months early.  The darlingest little twins ever were born that night, but at only a pound and a half each, they were far too tiny for the crib blankets I was already working on for them, so of course I had to go out and buy new yarn for softer, smaller blankets and hats.

$95 later, I stepped out of Unwind with four balls of RY Classic Yarns Cashsoft DK (10% cashmere!) in pinks and greens; four skeins of Cascade’s Luna in red, yellow, green and purple; three skeins of Tahki’s Cotton Classic in green, blue and aqua; and a new set of size six Clovers.  Damn, but that adds up fast!

So far I’ve made two hats (one came out smaller than the other, despite casting on six extra stitches for it and following the row directions verbatim-wtf?), and half of a 15-in sq. blanket, all from the Cashsoft.  I’d post pictures, but my batteries ran out as I was photographing them, so it’ll have to wait.  I suspect I’ll be needing more Cashsoft to finish the blankets and to make a larger replacement hat.  Figures, it being the most expensive of the three yarns.

I finished the blanket yesterday–my first crocheted project!  As you can see, it doesn’t lie quite as flat as it should; I had difficulty figuring out how many stitches to pick up along the edges, so it’s….oddly shaped, I guess.  Hopefully washing it will even it out a little, but if not, I’m not too worried–it’s a baby blanket, and babies are notoriously forgiving about such details.  Which is good, because I’m sure you’ve noticed the white isn’t pure white, it’s a baby blend with pink and blue mixed in.  This is what happens when I try to use stash yarn only.  But at least the Plymouth Encore is machine washable, which I think is key for any baby gift.  Alpaca may be the most wonderful fiber in the whole wide world, and would make marvelous heirloom quality items, but what mother of an infant has time to handwash anything?  It would sit in a box or drawer somewhere, lovely to look at, but never actually used.  Hopefully this blanket will be used and abused until there’s nothing left but string (which hopefully won’t happen until well after the baby has grown out of it).

In other news, I had a brain fart, and forgot that this purse was supposed to be finished by a deadline–today, to be exact.  Yeah, that didn’t happen.  The knitting part was done long ago, but it needs to be stitched along the bottom and felted.  It’s the felting part that’s been holding things up, since I don’t have my own washing machine, and the water in the machines in my building’s laundry room isn’t hot enough to do the job properly.  I also haven’t tracked down the appropriate accessorizing hardware.  It was supposed to be finished today, because it’s a gift for my friend who took her black belt test yesterday (krav maga).  I suck.  I may show her a picture of the soon-to-be-a-purse, but I doubt it.  I’ll just have to surprise her with it later–hopefully sooner than her next birthday, though.

Also, this picture doesn’t do the colors justice–the red is much deeper and less bright than it appears here. Sadly, I can’t get the colors to be true to life with this camera. Makes me miss my old Powershot A300 sometimes.