Congratulations, Jill!

My friend Jill is pregnant and due in about 4 weeks. I went to a baby shower for her last night, which was absolutely fabulous. I saw old friends I haven't talked to in years, and got to just "be" for awhile.

Jill has asked me to attend her son's birth, which has me tickled pink (providing I can get care for my own kiddos during that time). It'll actually be the first birth besides my own kids' that I've attended. I wanted to make her something kind of special and fun, and I was in a bit of a pinch as I didn't buy the yarn for it until last Friday. So here you go, Baby Yoda:

I knit this out of Sublime's Cashmere Merino Silk Aran, it took about 2.5 balls. The yarn is soft, but kind of splitty. I didn't think the pattern was fabulously written, but it *is* a free pattern. Instead of knitting the back, front, and sleeve panels separately and then seaming them together I knit it from the bottom up with the fronts and back together, split for the arms, grafted the shoulder seams, and then picked up sts for the sleeves and worked down. I'm *very* glad I did it that way, as seaming is not my friend.

I suppose I had better get used to the idea though, as I have an adult sweater on the needles for a customer and I decided I should probably knit it as written, though I'm questioning that decision. Either way, here's my Baby Yoda in Artichoke Green, just waiting for a baby to be put into it.

New Yarns

Here are two new yarns I dyed up for tomorrow's stocking:

Meet "Eve"

It is similar to the "Sunset" colorway, but without the blue. The base yarn is 70% Merino, 30% Mohair and is dyed with professional quality acid dyes. Colors are dark pink, orange, salmon, light pink, and white. It reskeined beautifully and I hope it finds a new home.

And the second, was a bit of a nemesis to me. Meet "Scrappy"

Like any child, scrappy was a bit of a nuisance, but worth the effort when all is said and done. I split this 4oz hank into 9 relatively equal sections and dyed them separately. "Scrappy Pants" are all the rage these days, but with them come lots and lots of ends to weave in. This skein takes the weaving out of scrappy pants.

I did repeat colorways, so if you split the ball in half you'd have two identical balls, the outside ends being the same. I figured this way you could knit both legs at once starting from each end of the ball and have them end up pretty close. So sections 1 and 9 are the same, 2 and 8, 3 and 7, 4 and 6, and then 5 is different. It was a lot of work to come up with colorways that would be different but flow a little, reusing colors here and there to create autonomy, and keeping it fairly gender neutral. It's kind of a bright, fun skein. I hope to see it knit up.

Still Around, and Still Knitting

I realize it's been awhile... again. We had a nice trip to KY to visit my husband, and an even better trip to MO to visit him while he's waiting for a physical. Here's a picture of us in KY walking to dinner:

And another one in MO at a splash pad we found a few miles from our hotel:

Both were good trips, but far too short.

In the knitting world, I have been knitting. I have a sweater for a friend's daughter (size 8) coming along, I'll have to post pictures of it. I also just *finally* finished this custom:

It has been done for ages, except the duplicate stitch on the butt. I love how they turned out, and I hope the mom loves them as much.

I got some yarn in the mail today for a couple of Etsy sweaters, I'll post those at they get rolling.