FO Meg Pinny

Pattern : Pinny for a Dolly by Kelly Brooker
Yarn : 48gm Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic, Denim

Pinny for a Dolly is a set of 4 dinky wee pinnys to fit the anatomically correct dolls many toddlers have.

This pattern was brought to fruition as an accompaniment to The March Sisters - a series of pinafores for Little Women aged 0-5yrs. (Due for release October 15th 2009)
Little Women love to wear pinafores, and they adore it when their dolly wears something to match!

FULL VERSION of the pattern is for all four pinny styles - Meg (mock cables), Jo (with foldover hem), Beth (lace edge) and Amy (ruffled ege), and all three yarn weights (4ply/Fingering, 8ply/DK/Light Worsted, 10ply/Aran/Heavy Worsted)
(Blurb “borrowed” from Ravelry page)

When one of my favourite designers asked for test knitters for her Pinny for a Dolly pattern, I put my hand up (seriously I love test knitting – think it’s the whole knitting to a deadline thing) and as you can see the result is gorgeous. Teddy is definitely pleased with her new dress, and has now become Morgan's favourite toy.

Kelly has done it yet again with another quick and easy knit, this time for your little peoples favourite dolls and teddy's.

So what are you waiting for? Get the pattern and start knitting! :)

FO Spring Butterfly

Ok – first up, I messed up my blogs colours while trying to play with the layout yesterday so excuse the look for a couple of days - all fixed



Pattern : Spring Butterfly by Rachel Evans
Yarn : The Wool Company Utiku, 89gms Raspberry, 93gms Sunset

As I mentioned before I was lucky enough to test the Spring Butterfly for Rachel. She’s resizing one of her patterns from sizes NB-5y.

Such an easy knit, although I’m going to admit it took me a few tries to get the butterfly at the back but that's more to do with my skills not the pattern. I was also surprised at how quickly it seemed to knit up, especially for someone who’s purl rows take twice as long as her knit rows.

The bodice is double stranded with a cute picot bind off on the arms, I also chose to do a picot bind off down the bottom to tie it all in together :D

Will definitely be making this pattern again – it’s absolutely gorgeous.

(click for a bigger view)

Slackness

I’m such a slack blogger but I kind of have an excuse at the moment – the cameras broken and who wants to read a blog post without pictures? 

I’ve got a couple of posts almost ready to go – just waiting on me to steal borrow mums camera when I see her next.  I was lucky enough to be a test knitter for Rachel recently, she’s in the process of resizing her Spring Butterfly from sizes NB-5y I believe.  So stay tuned for the re-release of this gorgeous pattern.

I’m also working on a bit of a project at the moment, which hopefully will be up and running on Monday :)

Oh, and for Julia – I use Picasa for my collage pictures :D

FO Jo

Pattern : Jo Pinafore by Kelly Brooker
Yarn : Cascade 220 Heathers, 93gms of purple, 80gms of green

When my friend Kelly asked for test knitters for her latest patterns "The March Sisters - a series of Pinafores for Little Women aged 0-5yrs", I jumped at the chance (although I’ve never read the book)

I tested out “Jo – which is a pinafore for the tomboy; a simple, non-girly pinafore perfect for throwing over a long tee and pair of jeans, ready to jump around in the muck” in a size 36 months for my little miss muck who hates getting her hands dirty inside but will quite happily go outside and dig around in the dirt….go figure.

The pattern is a quick and easy knit (even for a size 3!), and as always when I knit Kelly's patterns – I learnt something new, this time it was double knitting! A great knit for sitting in front of the TV.

(click for a bigger view)

I can’t wait to try the other 3 pinafores - Meg, Beth and Amy!!  This series is due to be released mid-October but if you really can’t wait that long, try out Pinny for a Dolly which Kelly has generously offered for free, and if you hurry I think there's a competition ending soon in which you can win some yarny goodness, more about that here

FO Lollipop

Delayed post but nonetheless :P

Pattern : Rainbow Dress by Tikki
Yarn : Contrast - 44gms of Sullivans Cozy Wool
Main Colour - 122gms of Te Awa Wools Natural Wools - Rainbow Colourway

Have always wanted to try a big sized Rainbow Dress (read – bigger than the dolls size I made earlier this year) so when a non-knitting friend asked if someone could make one for her daughter I thought why not. Tried to make it between a size 12 months and a 2 but it didn’t work out very well and when I tried it on Morgan for size – it was a tad tight, so ended up making a size 2.

Very easy and quick knit when I was actually knitting it, would have finished it a whole lot quicker if I wasn’t distracted so easily. Also made a matching hat but forgot to take a photo of the finished project.



This version of the Rainbow Dress was knit using the free pattern before it was updated. The Rainbow Dress is now a pay pattern and can be bought from here or here. Tikki has put alot of work into the updated copy which now comes in sized NB – 10years making it a great value for money :)

Yarn Dying!

Never fear, this isn’t actually about yarn actually dying, it’s about dying wool in all sorts of pretty colours!! 

Yarn dying is something I’ve had some fun with over the last few months. One of the forums I belong to started doing yarn swaps last year in which you have to pick a theme, hand dye some wool and come up with a package with other bits and pieces for your recipient.  I’ve joined in 3 of these now and have had a lot of fun doing them :) Here’s some of the yarn I’ve dyed (keep in mind I’ve only been using food colouring up until now :) )

Stay tuned for some FO posts from me shortly! Oh, and you’ll probably get a whole heap more pictures like this one in my posts, am liking picasa’s photo collages at the moment :)

Catching up

This update is thanks to Kelly so you can all thank her for giving me a kick up the bum :) 

I’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks trying to keep up with the numerous swaps I’ve signed myself up for (mental note to self – try to limit myself to 3 from now on) and to be honest have been swamped under, I think I only have one left to get in the post, which just so happens to be the biggest one, but I’ll get there in the end, and you my fellow friends should get a few more updates from me (possibly even one more today when the kiddies are in bed….but I wouldn’t hold your breath)

So, for now I’ll leave you with some of the things I’ve made this year.  Hopefully there’ll be more to update very soon.