We found out! It's a.....

BOY!!!  So I guess it worked out with all the colors ;-)  I've gotten a tiny pair of longies and almost three soakers finished.  Plus I finished a few soakers that were in my "sorry but that thing you're almost done knitting is way too small now" pile from the twins.  I'm hoping to have quite a stash built up BEFORE this one gets here....so I won't add anymore things to that pile!  Pics of the finished items to follow, once this blizzard stops and we have a little natural light ;-)

We're expecting another blessing! Yep, what could be more exciting than another LO to knit for! And since I gave away most of my tiny creations that the twins wore (gotta spread the love of woolies!), I have to knit almost all new stuff....DARN IT!(wink, wink, nudge, nudge ;-).

I'm definitely loving the Purewool for the tiny phase...I'm using up the stuff I bought for the boys before I knew that PW isn't so great for babes on the move (it felts up pretty easily). So, even though we're not sure which flavor is coming, they're getting a lot of boy-colored stuff to start.

Babe's due in April, so I'm thinking 2 pair of longies (in NB and S) will be plenty. And I'm planning 4 Sheepy sacks which should be good for both those sizes. Round that out with 4-5 soakers (haven't decided exactly which ones yet) in small and I should be set. But, because I know how hard it is to knit during those months, I'm hoping to finish a few mediums as well. Aiming for 3-4 longies and 4-5 soakers.

We live in the far north where April is still fairly cold....a blanket would be really nice. I'm thinking of doing that in superwash. It would be my first expedition...I'm just hoping that it's not scratchy. I'm going to give Swish a try...it's such a good price. If it works out, we'll be making most of the non-diaper cover stuff out of it since a wool item had far too great a chance of getting thrown into the washer/dryer around here (as will be seen when I get the garbanzos to take a picture of the lovely tunic I made for my 3yo out of the yummy Neapolitan color that I dyed).

Hand dyed Heaven - YUM!

Is this yummy or what? I was going for Neapolitan and now I'm getting my spoon! The "chocolate" portion is actually a little darker than this. I used Peace Fleece Antarctic White for the base (gotta love PF for it's washability!).

THE PROCESS: I doubled over and tightly tied off two small white sections, then put one side of the skein in the brown dye (in a mason jar) and one side in the pink jar...leaving the little white sections sticking above the mason jars. Then the whole she-bang went in a pot filled with water and put on the stove on med-high until the water was clear in both mason jars


And YES, I got these colors with kool-aid! I'm constantly amazed at the color combinations you can get from those little drink mixes. The chocolate proportion is 10 pkts Lemon Lime to 1 pkt Cherry. It took 55 pkts of LL to dye all the brown sections plus 5 oz trim! The pink proportion is 5 pkt Pink Lemonade to 1 pkt Lemonade with a tiny amount of Grape. It took about 20 pkts of PL to dye about 7 oz of variegated yarn. Not sure it's cost effective, but who can beat the fact that I can mix, heat and dump the kool-aid dye with my twins running under foot with absolutely no worries (not to mention just having to rinse out my spaghetti pot when I'm done!).

This yarn is destined to become a tunic-style top based on this pattern for my darling 3yo. She loves ice cream and I hope she'll love this top!

OK, my blog has died of starvation!!

I-state-your-name promise hearby to do a better job of feeding this blog. Please don't call Blog Protective Services on me!

Haven't been posting--too busy knittin'!

Sorry for the long break in posting...I've had a lot of knitting going on though and I'll get started with the
the overnight soaker I'm working on for my toddler...kinda goofed on the rise and made it too long. I'm going to frog out about 2.5 inches, add the cuffs and the decoration.













Next are the Jungle Longies I'm making for the boys.

These were so much fun to dye, but a little tedious to knit because the yarn was a little thin...so it seemed to take forever! I dyed them with lemon lime kool-aid and then over dyed them with splotches of green food coloring to get that "camo" look. I want to embroider a dino on the hip in brown.

I also knitted a little hat for a sweet baby girl born at our church, but I forgot to get a picture of it!



I've got three more projects on the needles: a tiny soaker for the above little girl made in acrylic since mom doesn't want the hassle of wool (my Sunday project), a bulky hat knit with two strands of yarn, and another pair of longies...this time in an Aran weight yarn that should knit up faster! I'll post pictures of these projects another time.

Another Action Shot...

And here's Thomas in the Fern & Faerie with the Fair Isle band I decorated it with.

Action shots...

James in my recent experiments...changing to continental knitting, new ribbed pattern, and dyed a denim blue.