Knitting Excursions

Baby hat love

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Recently some very close friends on the East Coast had a lovely baby girl. Very soon after that, another friend  who also owns an Etsy business had her baby and ordered hats for the little darling. What did this mean? Lots and lots of baby hats to knit! Luckily for me, I have a large stash of KnitPicks Swish Worsted yarn in child-friendly colors, just waiting to be knit up! It sure felt odd knitting with such thin yarn, since I've been living in superbulky land for the past 6 months or so. Challenge accepted!

I had been eyeing the Golden Pear pattern by Melissa Thomson, and jumped on the opportunity to knit it up in bright green and rouge pink, toned down by a light dove grey. This hat went to my little East Coast lovie.

 

A few days after sending this off, I heard from my friend Melissa that she had had her baby and wanted a baby hat in this same pattern! Oh there was no hesitation on my part, as I was already in love with the pattern. Hers was shades of purple, with a little grey thrown in.

Now since I was on a roll, I figured, why stop now? I pulled out another new love, the Little Scallops hat pattern by Maria Carlander, and whipped up another hat in the same dove grey and Rouge Pink (those baby hats are addictive!!).

Full disclosure - I think this year's knitting might be full of baby hats, because they are fast, super cute, and you get to try out so many color combinations and yarns. My knitter hat is jumping for joy at the thought! Hope you'll join me for this next "level" in my knitting journey. :)

A QUICK NOTE

If you received or saw the spam post last weekend, I sincerely apologize for that, and reassure you that no user information was exposed, as the blog is separate from where your email addresses for the newsletter is stored and sent from. Once again, I'm so very sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Stitches West 2013 is this week

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Once more, one of the premier crafting events on the West Coast is here! Yippee! Although I've lived in this area for the past 4 years, I've only made it to one Stitches West convention, the one held last year. I took one class with Gwen Bortner on using short row shaping in knitwear design, and then had some fun meeting Kristin Omdahl, Michelle Miller (Fickleknitter Designs) and Roxanne Yeun of Zen Yarn Garden. I also picked up some yarny goodness from a few booths at the market and even bumped into a college classmate. I haven't made any plans to attend this year, but that doesn't mean I won't go! My dear neighbor Claudine gave me a $2 off voucher for admission to the Stitches West market, so I'll probably go just to "admire" all the yarny and yarn-related goodness (admire is used very loosely here and can also mean buy...heheheh). I've also made a lunch date with my friend that I bumped into last year, so that should be fun. She informed me that Lion Brand yarn will have their yarn at 20% off. I'll be checking that booth out for sure.

Another booth that I'll definitely stop by will be Roxanne's (of Zen Yarn Garden). Her yarn is just gorgeous! It makes me so happy to see it, touch it, pet it and dream about what I'm going to make with it. Here is the loot I got from her booth last year.

I hope to meet Michelle and Kristin again. Another booth I want to visit is that of Alana Dakos of Never Not Knitting. She has some of the most gorgeous patterns out there, and her new collection, Botanical Knits, is just stunning!! She'll be sharing Booth 1147 with Becoming Art yarn line and shop, so you KNOW I'll be "admiring" that yarn too.

Another crafter, Kimberly of Kimberly's Craftini, has compiled a pretty extensive list of booths to visit and people to see in this post. I think I'll print the list and take it along to my market booth crawl.

If you don't hear from me for a while, I might be lost at the 2013 Stitches West market. :)