The Lamb Amigos

I made these yarn a little while ago.

I crocheted a baby lamb.

And then I knitted a spring lamb for it as a friend.

The two amigos…off to somewhere?

They found a sleepy Poppy.

Are you awake, Poppy?

She is now!

The things I do to Poppy…I wonder sometimes why she still loves me so.

* * * * * * *

Materials:
Crochet hook size: 4.50mm
Knitting needle size: 5.00mm and 3.50mm
Patterns: p.45 & p.72 in Treasury of Dolls & Cuddly toys by Australia Family Circle

Holiday Hats

I learned about a local knitting group via the Ravelry website. They meet twice a month: on the second and the fourth Thursday mornings. The event is organised by the Downtown Delray Library. Anyone interested can just turn up. I went last Thursday and it was my 3rd visit.

This is a friendly group and they make all sorts of things. One of the knitters also acts as a middleman between the knitting group and a charity for children chemo patients. She brings in free yarns, and if you want to make hats, you just help yourself to the yarn. When you give her your finished hats, she takes them back to the charity organiser. But you don’t have to knit hats if you don’t want to; it’s not a prerequisite of joining the group.

Anyway, last Thursday she brought in a big bag of yarns. She announced that it’s for the “Holiday Hats” - red and green yarn for Christmas, blue and white for the Jewish holiday. Delray is pretty much a holiday town and it is off-season now. Many knitters have left Delray and went back up north. The group is much smaller in number. And the thought of little children going through cancer treatment at Christmas time really pulls at the heart string…so I offered to make hats.

Here are the yarns for the holiday hats, weighing 2 lbs…that’s a lot of yarn.
There is only one thing for it…dig out my knitting machine!

I don’t have a ribber, so have to finish the hats by hand, hence the need of making sure the gauge of my hand-knitting and of my machine knitting are the same.

And four little hats.

Patterns:

Red with green top - Berry Baby Hat free from Ravelry

Red - The Kiss in Just Hats by Lion Brand Yarn

Blue - made up by me

White - made up by me

Lacy Summer Cardigan

The pattern for this cardigan is a chart. Whilst it is not hard to follow the diagram, I didn’t make the job easy by picking a fancy yarn to make this top. The yarn is a mixture of cotton, acrylic, viscose and nylon; in cream color with gold and silver specks and has bumps of white cotton bubbles along the entire length. I didn’t make an accurate cast-on the first attempt simply because it was so difficult to count the chain stitches with this yarn. I did it again and this time I marked the chain stitch for each cluster as I cast-on.
After that, it was straight forward.

I added beads for extra sparkles.

The beads are only sewn around the yoke.

It is actually prettier than what the pictures are showing because I am not able to capture the shine and the sparkles of the beads.

Really happy with how it turns out.

Material: Sirdar SunSeeker Cotton Boutonne DK (A gift from my sister Flo)
Crochet Hook size: 4.0 mm (G)

Pattern: #16 Crochet Cardigan by Puppy Jardin published in European Handknitting 2007 Spring/Summer