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for babies

My baby is almost grown, so busy with NHS, speech and preparing for grownup life. We will be touring colleges next year! Even though it’s not relevant to my life (no little babies here) I still find myself enjoying knitting and crocheting for babies. There is a simple sweetness to knitting a mini pair of socks, a lacy little bonnet, or a cotton dribble bib. I don’t know if it calls to my love of miniature, my love of muted milky soft colors or just my love of squealing babies, grunting, giggling and of course pudgy baby tummies.

It doesn’t hurt that baby knits are quick as a snap and can be a bit more quirky in color combinations, shapes & design. Both of which appeal to me as I’m not a long-term project knitter. I get distracted, I get resentful of how this damn project is holding me up from moving onto something else, I hate the guilt of having loads of unfinished business. I tend to just avoid large knitting commitments, maybe someday when I settle down honey you’ll get your cardigan. :)

I can also totally appreciate the lovely in an outrageous outburst of happy stripey polka dots and knitting for baby lets me do just that.

I recently knit up this toadstool baby rattle, for me toadstools are straight out of storybooks filled with magical fairies, mossy thickets where everything is illuminated with moon glow and stars. Babies are that sort of whisper soft magic too.

I used the toadstool rattle pattern from the purl bee. It was everything I love about baby knitting, quick, quirky cute and is perfectly useful uselessness! I am sort of wishing I made this out of 100% cotton, the stripes are cotton, but the rest is squishy wool, which will aid in the drying, but might also leave baby with a fuzzy mouth!? It has a bell kitty toy inside so it’s a jinglier instead of a rattler. A little rice inside of a gumball machine plastic egg would have worked nicely too. I might need to make some of these for myself on a much smaller scale.

When I was a baby my grandma crocheted me a blanket, it’s now safely tucked away in a chest and is one of the few things I have that she ever touched. A few weeks back I stumbled onto a huge stack of vintage crochet books, I didn’t look through them at the shop, I wanted to save that treat until I got home. So with my precious treasures in tow, I piled myself on the couch and started to dig.

I about died when I saw this, that is my exact baby blanket, in the exact same colors! ❤

The pamphlet came out in 1974. Can you tell?

Here’s to all the grandmas (and sometimes grandpas too) for all the bulky crochet covered children, and also to those of us keeping the spirit alive with handmade baby knits and crochet!

ELECTRIC BREAD

I have always loved the idea of hearth baked artisan breads with cornmeal and nut crusts, powdery top slits leading into squishy soft slices all slathered in butter ..yummy. I didn’t want some dry, tasteless, cold commercial bread, I wanted chewy, fresh hot butter melting bread!

When our daughter became vegan our bread life changed (well our whole life changed, but for now we will just stick to the bread part) forget the cow butter, forget coupons, forget brand loyalty, forget what’s on sale, it’s now a matter of what’s in it and how/where is it produced. We needed dairy free bread, we wanted bread with limited ingredients, local if possible, 0 preservatives & nothing artificial and on top of that it had to taste good. Me, I wanted easy, I wanted diversity and I wanted fresh bread in the dead of summer.

In walks a bread machine, yes the expensive contraption that was all the rage back in the 90’s. Except now it’s a bit cheaper, a bit quieter, a bit smaller and it doesn’t shimmy itself off the counter. I can have hot fresh-baked bread in 3 hrs or I can timer it the night before and wake up to the smell of baking bread, I can have perfectly supple “turn it into anything thing I want” dough in 1½ hours, all just by putting the ingredients into a metal bucket and pushing START. I don’t have to knead, I don’t have to cover and let rise in a warm place, I can make 1½ or 2 lb loaves, I can even make quick breads & jams in this thing! In the winter I set the machine for the dough cycle, let it go, then pop it into a loaf pan and bake it in my oven to warm up the house. Did I tell you I LOVE ELECTRIC BREAD!

teeny BIG post

I kind of have a slight obsession with miniature, I always fall for things that are teeny replicas of a larger something, like little teacups & tiny tin kitchen sets. I guess I also really love it when something that’s normally small, is blown up to huge proportions, remember the giant swatch wristwatch wall clocks of the 90’s. Swoon.

I’ve been having the urge to play with scale in my knitting as well, I just finished up a teeny version of the nineteen hundred house in #10 cotton thread on 000 needles, it didn’t get as little as I wanted (postage stamp size) but to get it to that size, I think I would’ve had to knit sewing thread and use straight pins as my knitting needles ..no thanks. Still, it turned out small & sweet!

Also in trying to keep my motivation charged up on the beekeeper’s quilt, and my serious longing for cooler temps, I’ve worked out a snowflake honeycomb! Again playing with the normal scale of something as tiny and lovely as a little snowflake, making it big and grand in a pale yellow yarn. Yes I made a yellow snowflake, but not on purpose, it was just the color I was working on next in the quilt when the idea hit!

Would you like to learn how to make a lovely snowflake edging on your honeycombs?

What you need to do:

When you’ve finished your honeycomb puff & you’ve bound off, DON’T CUT YOUR YARN! You will have the last bind off loop remaining on your hook (If you’ve done a knitted bind off, just slip out your needle and insert a crochet hook) I used a 3.5mm hook.

(you could start with an already finished puff too, just join your yarn to a corner and start the snowflake edging)

Now you’re going to start to work a crochet edging around your honeycomb, it’s basically a cluster of 3 picots on the puffs corners & chains on the side edges of the puff, as follows:

Ch3, slst in first ch of ch 3 (picot made)

Ch6, slst in first ch of ch 6 (picot made)

Ch3, slst in first ch of ch 3 (picot made)

Slst in next sc on the body of your honeycomb

This is your first 3 picot snowflake cluster on the corner of your honeycomb puff.

Ch 4, skip next 4 sc on the side edge of your puff, slst in next sc on the side edge.

(this will put you smack dab in the middle on the side of your puff, if your stitches are slightly off, its OK you don’t have to skip exactly 4 just as long as you slst relatively close to the middle on the side of your puff, it will look perfect!)

This is the chain, slst, chain that will get you from one 3 picot cluster corner to the next.

Ch 4, skip next 4 sc on side edge of your puff, slst in next sc (you should be at the corner point of your puff now)

Repeat the 3 picot cluster & chain, slst, chain series, 5 more times around the outside of your honeycomb puff. Join the last ch4 with a slst at the base of your very first picot cluster.

You can attach this into your beekeepers quilt like normal and let the scallops of the flake overlap onto the other honeycombs. OR you can make it an enchanting seasonal ornament/gift topper. Leave it plain or stitch on your favorite chart!

(If you are going to go for the ornament/topper, please make ONE of your ch 6 corner loops, a ch14 so it will create a larger loop perfect for hanging)

I hope you like it, let it snow!