Baby Hat & Booties

It's been AGES since I last posted!  Life's been a bit crazy since my boy moved back to the UK.  For those of you who don't know, he's been living in LA since 2010 so it' crazy exciting that he's back!! It's just all starting to settle down now which means I have more time for crafting...woohoo!

To no surprise, another one of my friends had a baby last month and I went to see them on Monday.  I didn't have time to go shopping, so I had to frantically buy some yarn online hoping it would be supersoft and thankfully it was!  I ended up choosing Red Heart Soft Baby Steps which is 100% acrylic and aran weight. It is really soft and has a lovely sheen to it.

I searched for patterns on Ravelry for booties and a hat using aran/worsted weight yarn.  I decided on the Basic Beanie by Busy Mom Designs.  It looked like it needed a little something so I made a flower for it that I found through another pattern (click here for pattern).  It was super easy to make; I decided to use a 6mm/G hook so it crocheted up a little smaller with tighter stitches.

Next...the booties!  Having made the flower for the hat, I knew I had to put some on the booties too so they were all cute and matching!  The pattern I used for the booties were Cute Baby Boots Crochet Pattern by Teri Crews.  The flower I made up with a pretty simple design:

ch5, join with slip stitch.
*sc, ch1, 3dc, ch1, sc* in each stitch.

That's it!  I was really pleased with how these turned out.  I haven't made anything for a 0-3 month baby in such a long time that I forgot how teeny tiny they were!

A Rosy Intarsia Foray

I took a break from my current wip (a baby pink jumper) to practice some colour work for the first time.

I recently posted about a jumper that I'm currently obsessed with making called "Santorini" by Rowan.  It's so amazing, but does require some pretty detailed intarsia work, which frankly, was way out of my knitting capabilities.  But I really want to make it so I've decided to do some practicing.

I found a really cute (free) pattern on Ravelry for a 5 colour intarsia chart which I thought would be perfect.  Luckily, being the yarn hoarder that I am, I already had 3 different pinks and 2 different greens.

I did a little bit of research and everywhere said that I had to use little bobbins which had a little bit of yarn from each colour of the pattern.  I didn't have any so I went all A-Team like and made my own from a bit of stiff card.

At the time, I had posted a pic of the bobbins and chart to instagram.  I was already 10 rows into it and finding the tangled mess of yarns a bit tedious.  A lovely lady (who is also going to be my knitting partner when I knit Santorini) told me she'd watch a tutorial once and they recommended just using short bits of yarn rather than bobbins.  I tried this and wow, it was sooo much easier!  I definitely would have struggled later on if I'd stuck with the bobbins!

After a few hours, I'd completed the little 30x40 chart.  Lots of lessons learnt and techniques discovered about intarsia knitting.  I got told once that you can carry the main yarn every couple of stitches so you don't have a huge bit at the back once you get to the other side.  Of course in the beginning I either 1. forgot or 2. didn't leave it slack enough.  By the end I'd got the hang of it pretty well.  It didn't stop the back looking like a hot mess though.

I was pretty pleased with how it all turned out, it's looks so pretty!  By no means perfect, but I think it's a pretty good first try at intarsia knitting :)