Knit: Wool Soakers

There is a lot of knitting going on around here lately.  Maybe it is a side effect of nesting? Well, I am just finishing up my third soaker and loving every minute of it!

The first soaker I made was the WHW Diaper Wrap, a free pattern on Ravelry.

Then I made some stripey shorties for dear Helen to run about in this summer.  The pattern for Itchy Fingers Longies, also free on Ravelry, really was a totally new experience for me! I have never measured and custom fit a knit item before, and between measuring my wiggly little girl and trying to complete the mind numbing mathematics calculations, I was really wondering whether or not they would actually turn out! But, they did!

Finally, I purchased the well reviewed Vanilla pattern off of Ravelry and sat down to knit this new little girl a precious purply soaker with lovely yarn hand-dyed by a friend in my online knitting mommies group.

I had one of the most common problems with the pattern - It turned out HUGE! What should have been a size small ending up so large that it fit Helen with room to spare! Heading into another attempt at a small soaker from this pattern, I plan to decrease my needle size and think SMALL! And, yes... those are the ends hanging out - I do hate to sew in ends!

There are more photos on my Ravelry pages: Purply Vanilla & Purple Stripe Shorties.

If you are interested in finding out more about wool Diaper covers, check out my research post.

Knit: Easter Lamb

I had a strong desire to knit Helen a lamb for Easter this year because the lamb is a symbol of Christ (Catholic Culture: Easter Symbols and Food). So I found this Lion Brand Free Pattern (Ravelry Link) and started working.

Each piece is knit flat on straight needles and then stuffed and sewn together. I recommend either knitting the pieces in the round instead or leaving very long tail ends (6-8 inches) to use for the sewing up.

The pattern has all four legs the same length, I chose to make the arms about 5 rows shorter than the legs.

When attaching the arms and legs, I cut a long piece (2 ft) of ivory yarn and pulled it halfway through the center bottom of the lamb. Then using one side of the yarn for each leg, sewed the legs to the bottom of the lamb.  I then wove the yarn ends up through the body to where I wanted the arms placed and used the remainder of each end to sew on the arms. In doing this, I limited the number of ends of would have to sew in and hide to two instead of eight if I had used a separate piece of yarn for each arm and leg.

The pattern did not specify whether to sew the shorter or wider edges of the ears to the head.  I chose to sew the shorter edge to allow for a larger ear.

I definitely recommend wool for this project for a nice sheepy feel.

And, no surprises here, Helen already loves her little lamb... baaaa.
Happy Easter.