The Year that Was

Last year seemed to be dominated by baby knitting. Four of the girls from work had babies - two girls and two boys. I really enjoyed knitting this outfit. Intarsia is always  a favourite technique for me. I don't usually like stripes, but this knit went well. I used stash yarn.

It is Bellyphant Baby Cardigan by Jennifer Little

I thought the neck was too high, so I lowered it a bit.

I also improvised the hat pattern to make an outfit. 

I liked the blue and navy stripes, so repeated them in the hoodie for boy number two. For the hoodie I chose a cotton blend yarn, as his family now lives at Mt Tom Price, way up in the north west of Australia. It has a fairly hot climate. I improvised the pattern as I couldn't find one which I liked.

The zip was sewn in by machine and went in easily.

This is one of the girl's outfits. It was a Sirdar pattern I bought on 

Patternfish. The hat was a free Spotlight pattern. 

    

For girl number two I gave this cardi, which was my own
design.I had knitted this previously. I didn't have any of the
 pink yarn left,so I did the matching hat in white and lilac.

I was happy with the way the hat turned out.            

Finishing Frenzy

I decided to make an effort this year to finish up some of my long term ufo's. It is hard to change from being a Ufo'er extraordinaire, but I did a count and the total was huge. I have just posted some more finished  projects to my Ravelry page, and the finished total so far is 8  knitted projects, and one crocheted edge. The lace rib socks were my only new project.

Although this was a simple pattern, it seemed to take forever to knit, but I did eventually finish them.

The oldest project was the diamond lace baby cardi. I think this started as a trial for a baby shawl, so it has been languishing for maybe seven years. I decided to turn it into a cardi.

Not sure what I will do with it. I know several expectant mums, so I guess it will find a home.

 It has garter stitch borders, which I don't do 

any more as I find they always curl. I now tend

to do seed stitch instead.

This year is busier than ever at work. We have all sorts of regulatory changes, and Quality Accreditation to put into place. We used to have a very difficult quality system before, but they have now changed it all again. In addition, I will be teaching in the kindergarten from next term. I am looking forward to it, but it will be on top of all my other work, so I think most of my knitting will be fairly easy. My main knitting time is in the car to and from work (DH drives)

Many of my other UFO's are quite complicated, and /or I have messed up and need to take time to sort them out. They mostly need concentration, and are not "Take along knits". Oh well, I will try to rescue some of them from the dark cupboard.