Owlet Jumper

I have been waiting to publish this post but the recipients mummy reads this blog and I wanted it to be a surprise.

I've travelled to Finland again this week with work and I am of course staying with my lovely and generous best friend from University, who's son is my one and only best godson in the whole universe - the jumper is for him, the first in this winters wardrobe from me.

The pattern is almost unbearably cute and I love it, the whole sweater was knit in one weekend, owlet by Kate Davies. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran in the colour mango, lovely and soft to work with, I hope it will keep nicely and not pill like other DB yarns - the twist seems fairly tight.

I made a few tweaks to the pattern as I progressed but that was personal preference and not any problem with the pattern.

Sewing on the buttons for eyes was the only annoying bit - 32 eyes since you asked! The buttons are from the Cloth House in Soho - they have a pretty good selection of trims and buttons as well as lovely fabric.

If I were to knit this again I would change the decreases on the arms as a personal preference I am less fond of the sharp decrease at the end of the sleeve and prefer gradual decreases down the whole length.

The green opalescence seems to glow with the yellow back ground. MMmmmm pretty! It's quite interesting how very slight variations in the knit and the way the eyes are sewn give the owls different facial expressions, third full owl from the left is the most intelligent looking whilst his two next door neighbors have wider set eyes and appear more gormless, fifth from the lefts eyes are lower giving him a more bookish appearance, athropomorphism in knitted owls.

Pattern: Owlet by Kate Davies

Size: Largest of the baby sizes

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran in Mango 5 balls

Needles: 4.5mm, 6mm and 6.5mm

Birthday socks - part 2

Well it has taken a while to publish this post! I knit these socks for my mothers birthday in May - you've already seen the socks for Grannies birthday and hers is the day after Mums.

These are the ever fabulous Monkey socks by Cookie A and I feel like the last knitter in the world to actually make these. The yarn was intended for the lovely Over the Garden Wall socks from the Socktopus club and came as part of the club kit, I will be knitting these socks but the yarn was perfect for Mum and I knew she would not wear something with the lacey toes like the Over the Garden Wall socks. So I bought another skein of the same yarn and used the first to knit these.

The yarn was as predicted absolutely delicious, from my latest favourite dyer Artists Palette Yarns her colours are very clever and subtle and the yarns are gorgeous.

The pooling in this picture looks really obvious but in person it is more muted. These were a super quick knit only a couple of days for each sock and not spending that long per day knitting, it must be the easily memorised pattern. I want a pair of these for myself, I tried these on and need to add an extra repeat to the foot pattern to fit my slightly bigger tootsies.

Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A

Yarn: Sweet Feet from the Artists Palette colour way Socktopus March 2009 club

Needles: Size 2.25mm Lantern Moon sock sticks in ebony wood.