Zig Zag Baby Blanket.

I have not been updating very regularly lately. That is because I have been keeping a secret from you. I am expecting my second baby soon; like in 5 weeks. I feel like I have been struck with pregnancy brain double hard this time. I have been designing, but when it comes to writing the pattern out it is like I have a major brain freeze. I have a few drafts on my computer, but they just stare at me with sad eyes saying, "People do want to see what you are doing." One of these days I will get back to the program.

For this baby I thought it would be fun to knit for it since I crocheted a lot of things for my daughter. I started with a hat. It turned out okay. Then I made a dress, that ended up being way to small, I'm being told that this baby is measuring in the 80th percentile so I don't have high hopes of it fitting. I also made some leggings, they turned out great. When I get a picture of her wearing them I will post it.

Lastly I made a blanket. (I still have 5 weeks. I'm sure I will think of other things to make.)

I used a stitch pattern that I found on Purl Bee. The Rick Rack Scarf. I made 4 inch squares with the stitch pattern. I used a German twisted cast on, and cast on 25 stitches for 22 rows. For the cast off I used a stretchy cast off.

For the border of the blanket I really wanting to knit on a mitered edge, but I could just not figure out how to do it. So I compromised; went with what I knew and used crochet.  The stitch is a Tunisian Purl stitch and I chained 12. I made short rows for the corners to make the mitered corners. I finished off the edge with a reverse single crochet.

Some of you will comment, "but all the weaving of the loose ends." I know, I know it is horrible. I hate them too. This time though it was not that bad. I kept the ends really long and I wove them in using a yarn needle. Also it turns out my daughter really likes weaving in the ends. I think she did about half of them for me. So you can always hire your kids out to do the unpleasant parts.

I hope this brings you inspiration to create something that is completely different from the original.

Butterfly Kindle Sleeve

I wanted to share with you something that I have been working on. I finished this sleeve for my Kindle Paper White last week. I feel so accomplished at how beautiful it turned out.

I had this idea in my head that I wanted to make a sleeve that had Irish lace on it, and I specifically wanted a butterfly to go on the front. I spent a few nights on Pintrest looking through different Irish Crochet pictures and I slowly formed what you see in the picture.

For the butterfly I took a lot of inspiration from the picture found in the antique pattern library.

For the motifs on the back I used the diagrams found at this blog.

For the top edging I used the diagram found at this blog.

For the small flowers I took inspiration from the butterfly wings and top edging and made up my own flower.

The last pictures are of how I pieced it together. 

For the base of the sleeve I used Luster Sheen. It is a beautiful peacock blue color that really does not show up well in the photos. I got it from an estate sale and I have been saving it for something special. For the lace part I used a worsted size ten thread. All together it probably took 10 hours. I made a lot of it while I watched all the episodes of Broad Church. A very good BBC Mystery.

I know this will be something I keep for a very long time.

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