Bathing beauties.....or a gift idea!

Many, many weeks ago I posted a giveaway on my other blog to celebrate: my 40th birthday, my 3 year blogiversary, and my 400th post. Well this week I finally sent out the mystery gift. How lax am I? I can't excuse why it took so long. It wasn't a difficult make. I didn't need to specifically buy anything. I didn't need to think up an idea. I guess I was just too forgetful, the bane of my life. My memory isn't so great any way but I'm sure turning 40 has made it even worse ;) Funny how I can remember where I acquired virtually every scrap of yarn in my stash, but I can't remember something as simple as carrying a parcel to the post office!

But hey, it's done, and should certainly be in it's new home now. So you want to see what it was that took so long:

It involved my default craft - knitting:

And a little cross stitch:

A bit of sewing too:

A handknitted bamboo/cotton facecloth, an all-nasties-free handmade (not by me!) lemongrass soap in it's own little knitted bag, a hand rolled beeswax candle, a little cross stitch trimmed lavender sachet:

All packed away in a pretty little cross stitch trimmed drawstring bag:

I hope it's well liked, especially as I have a few more in mind for yuletide gifting! Always on the lookout for more inspiration though, so what do you have planned?

-x-

Stashbusting - part two.

So I made the hat to match the sweater:


Sorry for the poor photo quality but I just thought this was the most beautiful picture of our little girl, I just had to share.
Again this was hashed up as I went along so no pattern. The leading edge is 8 rows of garter stitch and the rest is plain old stocking stitch, again chosen to show off the colour changes. The decrease was worked with the SL1, K1, PSSO spiral and dropped 6sts on each row I think. I love that little spiral effect on the crown and it looks great on little peoples hats don't you think?
There's about half of one ball left now and a few oddments so I have an idea for them already in mind. Hopefully there will be just enough wool to follow it through. We should all know by tomorrow ;-)

Stashbusting - part one.

The great thing about keeping a crafting blog is that I have points of reference for all things I do, and a record of when I did it, or didn't! So looking back a few days ago to this time last year I came across this post, and remembering how lovely the colours were I decided to dig out the wool again. Well I also remembered that it is a very fine DK, more of a cross between DK and 4 ply, so I thought I would hash up a pattern as I went along rather than relying on following one. I made that mistake here, and had to rip it all back once already. Added to the lack of pattern was the fact that that ripped back wool won't knit to the specified tension anyway as it is more springy and finer than before.
So I thought I'd make a little jumper for Heather and this is what I ended up with:



She definitely has better things to do than pose in her new jumper, can't you tell?

The yarn is Adriafil knitcol 100% merino and self patterned to give these lovely stripes. I didn't want to distort the striped effect by ribbing any part of the jumper so I worked a picot edging to the hem and cuffs instead. I also avoided ribbing the neckline by working a row of double crochet right round, including across the button shoulder opening.
So one more ball of this wool left and I'm thinking a hat might be nice?
Or maybe that would be stripey overkill?