Finally some knitting to show.
These were gifted at the baby shower for my co-worker.
First was a crocheted blanket made pre-sex id'd... and I used this as my "tissue" in the gift bag to wrap the other gifts.
I used some orange & white acrylic (for easy wash & dry) boucle for the center section. Then a matching white boucle for the ends. If I were to do it again, I would probably have saved the orange for the ends.
Then for the baby sweater. I had bought the self-striping blue & white yarn with matching blue yarn for a project specifically for this baby. But could not decide on a pattern... or how I was going to do it. I was about to give up and simply do stripes of blue with the self-striping blue with the same hoodie sweater pattern I had made previously in pink/white/blue stripes. .... when I had a 'brainstorm' -- I was watching a knitting show on tv and decided I wanted to "frame" boxes of the colors within the other plain color -- and found a pattern to adapt ... and used that to adjust the hoodie sweater pattern. I liked it while I was doing it, although in the back of my mind I kept thinking that I would probably have preferred it if the "frame" was a contrasting color instead of a coordinating color - to make the color pop. If I had ONLY known how beautiful the self-striping was on its own... I would have simply used the self-striping yarn in a simple stitch for the whole sweater.
I'd already finished the sweater - before I started the booties. AND it was the booties where the heel and foot was made entirely with the self-striping yarn... and I almost wanted to undo the sweater and start it over. The yarn really pops on it's own, and the complicated stitch pattern I used for the sweater didn't really show it off to it's full potential.
But, after the booties, I still had almost a full skein of the self-striping yarn left, and a half-skein of the coordinating blue... so I had to make more... so, along came the hat... and then I had to think for a bit, and found an awesome pants pattern. I didn't like the self-striping quite as well in the pants. And it's a bit much with the sweater - almost like they shouldn't be worn together. If I had to do it over again, I would have NOT used the blue to try to do the complicated stitch pattern on the sweater - which would have saved me enough of the coordinating blue color to have done simple blue pants.
Live & learn - right?
