The Calm After the Storm

This morning I woke up feeling rested.  I slept in until I felt decent, and slowly made my way to the computer to respond to emails from the week.  The past 2 months have been this overwhelming era of travel and events, deadlines and due dates.  Between work travel, Squam, TNNA, countless weekends away for cycling trips, and the baby shower last night, there hasn't been much time to just breathe.

I've enjoyed all the going-ons and travel, but this feeling I have this morning is euphoric.   All I have to do is make it through the work day in order to get to a weekend of actually being home.  Sounds lovely, no?

Well, I'm sure you're all wondering how the gift turned out, and although I went with 1 half knitted slipper in my purse (which didn't get touched while I was there because I had the daunting task of MC'ing the night), I was still pretty impressed with what I came up with.

First up, the sweater:

The sweater was inspired by the yarn/color scheme.  I was a bit worried considering I was making it up as I went, which involves more thinking on my part (scary!), but there was only 1 major rip back, and even that wasn't so bad (maybe 5 rows when I was working on the neck).  

The colors are Madelinetosh's Tosh Vintage in Mica and Winter Wheat, the cream is Spud and Chloe Sweater.  I originally purchased the Winter Wheat in Tosh Light, which is fingering weight.  Fingering weight yarn is probably my favorite yarn weight to work with, but given the situation and quick turn around time, I was happy to switch to the worsted weight yarn.  The Tosh Light Winter Wheat is a little lighter than the Vintage, more of a yellow tone where the Vintage reads a little more Tan.  I love them both, but was originally going to go with a grey stripe.  When I found the Mica colorway, all bets were off.

Which leads me to the Milo Soaker: 

I've made it before (click here to see Elise's cute little baby bum in the Milo Soaker) and I'm sure I'll make it again.  It's a quick knit that whips up in no time, and it's cute to boot!  The pattern can be found in Vintage Baby Knits  along with many other wonderful baby patterns.  If you have a little one in your life, and you're a knitter (what an amazing combo!),  it's probably time to get the book!

I wish my camera captured the fabulous-ness of the Mica colorway, but I don't think it got it quite right.  Honestly, I think it's safe to say I have never been more in love with a color before.  It's this perfect balance of vintage-looking faded blues, and I can almost see a hint of lilac.  I can't give it enough praise, wonderful work Miss Madelinetosh!

This little hat was dreamed up as I was working on the sweater, so it too is an original pattern.  I used short row shaping to make the back flap- it may need a little more tweaking before it is ready to 'grow up' and become a real pattern, but I think it will happen sometime soon.  I only wish I had a baby to try it on to see how it works... oh wait- that will happen soon as well!

Here's where things got a little wonky.  I was home two hours before the shower and thought I would be able to whip up a pair of booties.  I found this pattern for Seamless Baby Platform Booties and thought seamless sounded faster.  I like the pattern, and how it's constructed, but at the end I was working with 5 dpns and it was not going as quickly as I imagined.  I think it would've been faster to just find something that was seamed up a bit at the end, instead of dealing with the fickleness of a bunch of dpns. 

 I did do a garter top instead of the rib suggested in the pattern, and if I made them again, I would probably make less of a 'platform' by cutting out a few garter ridges at the bottom.  They seemed a little to roomy for my liking, but altogether a cute, quick knit.

And there you have it.  I've pulled off some crazy knitting tasks in the past, but I'm particularly proud of this one.  Partly because I didn't even do a swatch until Saturday morning, partly because it's been a crazy busy week and I've forced myself to knit in odd places in order to get things done,  but mainly because  I came up with two totally original creations that didn't give me too many issues along the way.  I love how the set works together, and since I already have the yarn in Tosh Light, I may work these items up again for my babe in the fingering.  

And patterns?  After talking to so many amazing people at TNNA, I'm inspired to work a little harder- secret knitting already in the works :-)

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