By The Wayside

I seem to have forgotten my knitting this past couple of weeks. I've been so busy trying to keep the house tidy and keeping the kittens alive, who are now 3 weeks old as of today that I my knitting duties have fallen by the wayside.

I have tonnes of patterns and free websites bookmarked on my browser so I suppose I should just get on with it. I have wool and needles, not necessary the size I need but I have enough to keep me going so I should just get going right? What's been putting me off? Knitting should be the perfect excuse for me to sit around on my butt all day and click click away but I don't so what do I do instead... I actually have no idea - brain is mushed as you know.

My mum is busy knitting away for me, which is incredibly insane since she has fibromyalgia (apparently spelt right) so her body tells her when she has done too much, which is probably a quarter of the way through the day and if my mum gets further than quarter of the way through the day then the next day she is paying for it by aching all over. My mum told me she was doing 8 lines at a time on our baby blanket. 8 lines. And that blanket is huge, delicate and beautiful. So I really have no excuse to get my butt going on the hooded cardigan pattern my mum sent me. I have a pile of gorgeous things my mum has made and so far I've made baby a cardigan, with no buttons... I really should get some buttons. Hat that needs its bow, booties and mitts to match.

By the way, the house isn't even tidy so this isn't an excuse I can even use anymore. I was trying to clean up using some good old FlyLady techniques - if you haven't heard of them look them up. But then I got ill and achy and had a knot in my back for DAYS! That no matter what I did I couldn't get rid of and for some reason I hate cleaning up whilst other people are in the house I don't know why. Maybe it annoys me that they're sat down chilling out whilst I am cleaning - I don't know. But the house is back to square one again... a mess. I need some kind of structure but it just keeps going out the window. Hopefully my sister, Emily, and her baby daughter are moving out tomorrow so I can do a major clean and feel all fresh and new for a day, because the day after I am guaranteed to feel like a mess.

Pregnancy insomnia apparently...

So that's when I can sit and do my knitting, as well as carry on with the challenge of looking after a 3 week old kitten who now needs to be fed every 3 hours. Yep every 3 hours. Even at night. it's a good job I don't really sleep isn't it? Feels good to get that out.

Trial, Error and Then Some

In the middle of last week I finally finished the cardigan knitting pattern that my mum sent me via email. I must have done something right because it actually looked like it was supposed to and everything sewed up in the right places and voila I made a cardigan. It just needs buttons.

So, on Friday, I decided to get started on a pretty but simple pattern that Adam's mum had given me. I am using a beautifully soft wool that my sister Emily bought me a month ago when she was out in town with her daughter and it is the perfect pink. I don't usually like pink, in fact I really don't like pink, but, this pink is beautiful. It is the definition of baby pink.

I looked at the pattern and previously Adam's mum had highlighted a size that she wanted to do for Adam's nephew, Leo. I figured I should go with a smaller size as I don't remember if she was knitting for Leo when he was first born. I started to cast on and did a few rows and it looked tiny! It definitely looked small and when I sized it up against other cardigans I have and the one I made previously, it didn't size up at all.

So, I pulled it out.

Then I decided to follow Adam's mums highlights as it wasn't the smallest or the biggest and seemed to measure about right. I cast on I knit a few rows, it didn't look too small so I knit a few more, then went from rib to stocking stitch and carried on, until I realised that the back of the cardigan would need to be 27cm long and my baby cardigans were only 20cm long; that's 7cm, which is a lot, and I had knitted about 12cm before realising this was going to be way too big for a newborn and sure I could have carried on and hoped in a little while baby Ava would be big enough to fit into it; which I am sure at some point she will, but something didn't seem right so...

... I pulled it out.

Now I am doing the smallest size again and even if it kinda looks too small the measurements match some of the cardigans my mum has made for baby Ava so I am just going to go with it and hope it works. I just got a bit bored of doing stocking stitch which is actually the easiest stitch to do besides knit knit knit knit knit - garter. But oh well.

We had an appointment with the midwife today and all is well with baby Ava, but I shall update you more on her tomorrow.

P.S. Sorry this post is so late. I've been out all day and then got home, had dinner, did FHE, and watched a TV program I've been meaning to watch all week.

Fish & Chips and Babies

I went to church today, as I do every Sunday and at the beginning of this morning's Primary someone on the Primary Presidency made an announcement. They said that for a service at a place they worked some of the staff were working on a project called 'Fish and Chip Babies'.

They were asking for all avid knitters to try and make jumpers/ hats and clothing to send to children in Africa. The jumpers had to be in dark or bright colours and the jumpers weren't to be pale or striped. I don't know the reasoning for no stripes but I shall explain soon why no pale coloured jumpers were required.

These jumpers would then be sent to children who were born as said in Africa in hospitals where HIV and AIDS were a common and sad occurance. The children were known as the 'Fish and Chip Babies' because when they are born and allowed to go home they are sent home and wrapped up in no more than newspaper. The group were asking for no pale colours to be used in the jumpers because some of the jumpers will never get washed and so bright and bold colours will be best to use.

There were shocks all around the room at this announcement. Living in a country where I know for a fact my child will go home in a beautifully home made blanket, strapped up to it's (her) eyeballs in a comfy car seat and going to a place where they will always be kept safe, warm and fed made me realise how thankful I should be for such a small blessing as a blanket.

Annoyingly enough, my baby brain prevailed in retaining the knitting pattern for this jumpers, and I left it at church. But I read the pattern and it looked very straight forward to me so for any avid knitted who is more than capable of doing a beginner's pattern it should be simple enough to do. Now, if you can't knit then it is obviously fine that you don't find the pattern but, please, ask your family members or anyone you know if they can help you out in knitting even one jumper. If you know 5 people that can knit, that's still 5 beautiful babies born in to hard circumstances going home with more than the mothers could give them.

Please Google the pattern if you are interested, as I left my sheet at church, BUT if you wait until next week I shall have all the details of the patterns and where the jumpers need to be sent to.

See more here:-

Tiny knitted goods flown out to poor African 'Fish & Chip' Babies (Daily Gazette)

Knit for Africa - This website has patterns on it too!

Helping Fish & Chip Babies in Uganda - Patterns included too!

Knit, Sew, Stitch

Yes, yes. Another one of those tabs at the top of the page that says 'Coming Soon' on it but if you check all the other tabs they finally have something of interest on them! I promise.

About five maybe six years ago my mum sat down to knit something for the Bliss charity - a charity for those beautiful little children born too soon and so they have tiny little bodies and maybe aren't so well. It was Christmas time and the church every year made bundles to give to the mothers of the premature babies. Mum was knitting hats the size of tennis balls and cardigans that would fit only the smallest of dolls; never mind a baby. I was always really fascinated by what she was doing and would watch her needles click clicking together magically changing a ball of wool into something that could be worn or used. I wanted to help and do something for the Bliss babies too and so did my sister, Emily. So, we started to knit. Or, rather, Emily started to knit and I got frustrated, told mum I couldn't do and sat and watched from afar as my sister and my mum click clicked together in their little clubbing of needle clicking.

Time went by, a few years in fact, things happened and my patience changed and it was Christmas again, or coming up to Christmas so my mum got her knitting needles out and I sat again in awe of what she was doing and decided that this time I would try it. I would sit down and put needle to needle with wool and create something. My first piece of 'something' had holes in it. It had dropped stitches or too many stitches and couldn't have been used for anything useful but I did it and I got the hang of it. And because I had figured it out as a treat Mum and I went out to the shop bought some wool and a pattern to make a hat and a scarf. It was a plain scarf with a simple pattern but it was still a scarf and when I was finished making it I was extremely proud of the blessing I had received to have patience to be able to get it done. I was also blessed with a warm neck and head for the winter time!

Two years since then and my skills have gotten a little better and I can finally read patterns without my mum having to write them out for me. And since I have a baby on the way I decided to give a cardigan a shot. I wasn't very good last time and I don't even think I sewed it up properly. But this time I have followed the pattern to the T and I may have gotten stuck and I may have pulled it out more than once but that's just because I want it to be the best it can be for our baby Ava.

So, every now and again I will write a post on the piece of clothing I am knitting at the moment and on the Knit, Sew, Stitch page I will put the pictures of the things I have been knitting recently. I think the more I do the better at it I will get. Nobody can say practice doesn't make perfect in this circumstance especially since before I started my cardigan and a blanket I made a couple of weeks ago I didn't even know what an 'eyelet' was let alone how to knit one!

Getting there...