Flower Hats

I made three of these in white a couple of years ago. This year's color turned out to be red, and as I had a deadline, they're finished! It really just takes a couple of days to make a hat like this if one has the time. With toddler and little child in the house, it apparently takes a couple of months...

DD asked for one for herself too. I do have yarn, but not necessarily time, let's see what happens.

A Green Pig Hat

Am not blogging finished objects in order now, since pics of my second last project are only on my iPad and blogspot won't let me add photos from iPad's camera roll - apparently iPhone camera roll uploads work, but not iPad? Will have to go back and give it another try when I get the iPad back from DD (which probably will be next time she has a high fever, so hopefully not too soon...)

Last project was a quickie. Or, well, it took more than three days, but I almost made two of these since my first try ended up too big - this calls for very tight crochet, and first I tried a bit looser to get a softer hat, but that did not work out too well. This hat can be made in two or three days. With children around, that is!

Pattern from Novita Ipana-lehti, wouldn't be too difficult to make it up self, but I'm lazy. On the bad side this way I have to put up with the things that always annoy me when working with Finnish pattern descriptions - my second last project was from Interweave Knits and I so much prefer the exactness of patterns in English!

Novita Isoveli yarn, crochet hook 4,0mm.

This was meant for little brother, but big sister owned it. Will have to see what to do about that. Perhaps she'd like a black angry bird hat enough to trade?

Adventure, Warmth and a Mystery!

Oh dear, I'm actually here! And I have some knitting to report!!!!

But first some crochet, including one of my two reasons for not knitting so much the past year or two.

This young pirate friend of mine spent a couple of days as a fairy princess (a friend's birthday party + just for fun), after which she decided she was a pirate. Immediate need for Mom to crochet an eye patch, that is. Note the necklace, booty from mentioned birthday party.

Anyway, I've been knitting on these trousers for ages, but today I finally finished them! These are meant for next winter, fortunately, and they're huge, but knowing how fast this pirate grows, I think they won't be too bad in half a year or so.

Used Drops Nepal yarn, and adapted a pattern from the same source.

And to finish for today, a book thought from this morning. I really don't have much time for myself, and haven't slept properly for 1½ year, and when I finally have two minutes, THIS is what pops up in my mind:
In Pride and Prejudice it's Lady Catherine who tells Mr Collins that he should get a wife (nearly misspelled that as wifi - oops!).  Why? What made her want him to marry? What had he done? Had he been too friendly with servant girls in the village (unwelcomed of course, but still annoying). Or perhaps Mr Collins never really was interested in women ;-). My own guess is that he had showed some hopes to marry Lady Catherine's daughter, that stupid man... Or even more freaky; that poor girl was about to do something sílly and had to be stopped?

Small standing project

Little brother needs mittens of his own, mom needs small knitting project, has recently learned fair isle knitting, and has some leftover yarn (Drops Fabel white and variegated). Resulting in these:

I borrowed the idea for cuffs from Lilia and the pattern's from Eeva Haavisto's book Sata kansanomaista kuviokudinmallia (phew, Finnish words can be very long and interesting...).

Also a picture taken by my three-year-old showing what's more important than mom's knitting:

Standing up for myself!

Whenever sitting down to knit, my dear children immediately need my attention. Since yesterday I stand and knit. Seems to help, sometimes I even managed to knit 24 sts between mommy-chores. Need to knit small items, though, big things are too heavy when standing up. Fortunately little one needs mittens.

Peppi Longstocking sweater #1

Still too much to do is affecting my knitting opportunities. This project is easy-knit, thick yarn and no seams, and still took me all summer.
Finished a couple of days ago, it's still a little too big for big sister as planned, but useable already. Was so excited that I decided to knit a pair of pants to go with the sweater (anticipating the time when little brother will be needing the overall I knitted last year which should still be ok for big sister this winter, or at least most of it).
Liked knitting with this yarn, soft, nice, easy. Hope it will stand up for some heavy use too.

It looks a bit short in the picture, but it's actually quite long, as are the sleeves. What can I say, I have fast growing kids (sometimes they grow faster than I knit).

PS And I really appreciated that the pattern had no seams. Enough ends to fasten thanks to the stripes anyway!

Liten blå solstråle

The Good Day Sunshine shawl on Knitty's first page was just a little bit too tempting, had to knit! And since it's quite small and does not need much yarn, I found a nice blue left-over ball of Wetterhoff's Silvia in my stash.

Knitting with baby and toddler in the house had some effect, as usual, and I forgot to make the repeat of rows 13-16 (or something like that) on the Ray chart, but did not feel like tinking four rows when I found out. Would have had enough yarn - now I'm left with 15 grams (had approx. 45 when I started) which feels a bit unnecessary, but that's the only problem.

Since my toddler girl has a lace shawl addict mom, I thought it was about time she got a lace shawl of her own, this one's for her (Still haven't figured out how to keep pictures upright when posting here :-( )!