It is a ... dress!

Yes, so my dear husband's sister is having a girl (yay!)... and when she and her husband called with the news, I just happened to have a lovely dress about 3/4 of the way done.  Amazing coincidence, that!  I liked it when it was finished, but to be really nice, it just needed something more. 

Since I'd used a set of heart buttons on the neckline, I decided to add a whimsical little chained crochet heart down at the hem and see if that would do it... and it did. 











One other difference from the pattern: I was running out of that dark wine colored yarn, so I had to end the dress about 9 rows early.  I foresaw the shortage, so I added the length in the pink but it does have a tendency to curl at the bottom hem.  Careful blocking will fix that, I'm pretty sure.




In the detail pictures, you can see exactly how many tiny stitches there are in this dress.  It reminds me of a book from when I was younger, about a maybe 20-something orphaned man with one hand who falls in love with a girl from town, maybe the daughter of the mayor or something.   It has been ages  since I read it and it seems incredibly sappy now!  Anyway, the man gets hurt, and the girl realizes she loves him too and sets out to find his parents to prove to him that he is good enough for her.  They were killed in the same fire that took his hand when he was a baby, but the girl gets some of his baby clothes from his relatives.  She reassures him that his parents did love him... the way she can tell is because of the tiny stitches in his christening dress.  My niece-to-be, may you never forget how much you're loved... but if you somehow forget, just look at this tiny dress and know that every stitch was crafted with love.

On My Needles

I finally finished those socks!  Somehow the second one always seems to drag...  They're washed and added to the stock at the farm.

The next project I decided to make a quick one, so I did a quick toddler-sized hat out of a beautiful cornflower blue worsted that we dyed over the summer.  It was the last remaining bit of that yarn - we did 4  of the 4 oz skeins (about 1 lb) in the color, and three went the following weekend at a craft fair in Hamilton, MA.  The last skein hung around (as single skeins of a color seem wont to do) until a client chose it for some women's mittens in December.  And the last bit?  Well, now its this:

Sorry that Teddy Bear (my model) is so dark!  For some reason, he didn't look that way and I only had time to snap a single pic.  No pattern on this one, just worked with toddler head measurements and made it up as I went.

I've already cast on and done the top of a Little Sister's Dress.  I did one for my niece when one of my sisters-in-law was pregnant in a lavender cotton, and now my other sister-in-law is pregnant and everyone seems to think it will be a girl.  Given that I've caught the boy-baby bug, I have to indulge my love for the cuteness of little girl clothing somehow...!  If her child doesn't turn out to be a girl, I guess I'll have a ready-made gift for someone else down the road.  Plus it is burning some of my stash - the top is a maroon wool mix and the bottom, a pale pink something of similar weight (label has been lost, unfortunately).  I'll post some pictures when it begins to look more identifiable, as right now it is just a smoosh of color on my needles.

On My Needles

I started a pair of holiday-ish socks before the Winter Craft Fair that we do, and I'm finally getting around to finishing them!  For me, there's nothing like picking up an old project - I come at it with all new energy and it always feels like I'm speeding along compared to how fast I was going before.  Ah, satisfaction! 

These are done in our natural worsted, and the pattern is a mutt - the top is raglan-style, just adapted from sweater patterns; the body is a bobble design from a sock book that my mother-in-law gave me last year; the heel is a standard short-row heel; the foot is the bobbles pattern without the bobbles (if that makes sense!); and the toe is a standard star toe.  They're a women's size 7-9.  I like how they feel like a Christmas stocking, without all the Christmas colors...  Anyway, the first one, pictured below, is done, and the second is to about the mid-foot (knit top-down).