Since I still haven’t gotten the baby sweater to the cousin in-law and I had a whole ball of the sirdar baby yarn leftover I decided to knit a few extra things. I’m probably going to set the organic cotton layette stuff aside to give to another pregnant cousin. I’m surrounded by them these days so I know I’ll have to wrap something for another shower present soon. This one’s still getting the peepee teepees though since they’re pretty sure it’s a boy.

The booties and hat are from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Both patterns are easyeasyeasy and look great.

The booties were made using an interesting double knit pattern where I alternate slipped stitches and knit stitches for about two inches then put the alternating stitches on two different double pointed needles then it just opens up into an inside-out toe. Nice way to knit in the round with just two regular needles. And I think it might help me get over the hurdle that’s causing my current sock knitting hate too.

The hat is a basic pattern with several options you can add on. To match the sweater I chose the garter stitch brim and since it looked a bit big for a newborn I made a small cuff. But it’s not sewn in or anything just folded that way.

The flower pattern just came to me because I’ve been seeing crocheted flower pins all over the place and since I’m still not really getting the crochet method I wanted to find a knit pattern. And I *still* had half a ball of yarn and thought this might finally use it all up, which it pretty much did. I found this cute knit flower pattern and made one really big version of it and one about the size of the pattern. Then sewed on a smaller wooden button that matches the huge one on the kimono and attached it to a pin I’d bought at Michael’s the other day. Voila! A present for the mum as well.

To be honest I have no idea whether she’ll like any of it at all. This is a very tiny, very young woman (20 if she’s a day) and, well, let’s just say she has a decidedly different fashion philosophy from mine. So handknit nubby neutral English yarn is likely not her thing. But I can’t help reminding myself that her husband’s mother is the one who took the time to show me how to cast on and do a knit stitch, which started me on this knitting odyssey so this is really for that aunt.

I also took photos of the rest of the birthday presents and added them to the birthday photo set. It’s mostly carefully arranged still lifes with yarn, or as I like to call it..yarn porn.

I also took an artfully arranged photo of the my kool aid yarn in pretty balls.

And a few photos of Meg teaching Jenny how to spin at the most recent Knit Night. Meg has posted some photos as well (including me in my blue sweater!) and hopefully Jeannie will post the ones she took too. We all remembered our digicams this time

Sort of a busy weekend again. A few errands to run, I’m going to try dropping by another knitting group I’ve heard about on Saturday and there’s a twice-delayed birthday dinner with the in-laws. And there’s much kool aid and undyed yarn to be introduced to each other too.

The swamp cooler seems to be fixed. It needed a new fan belt. Seems to be but it’s certainly not working up to it’s potential with this crazy humidity in the 20s. lol I know everyone in the more humid climes are laughing their asses off now. But dammit. This is the desert, most of our coolers use waterlogged pads and a big ass fan to cool our houses. When there’s humidity and almost 100 degree heat our little evap coolers just make our houses into very large steam rooms.