Topsy-Turvey

I have not forgotten that I said I wanted to try and make a toy. I definitely want to create something to go with the Miracle of the Gulls cardis. A topsy–turvey doll would be adorable – with a seagull on one side and a cricket on the other. A similar design to this wonderful Bird and Egg by Susan B. Anderson would work great:

I will need to elongate the egg shape and figure out how to do the cricket legs but I think I can do it. 

Buttons and More Buttons

As I think about the Miracle of the Gulls motif for the baby cardi that I am still designing, I am concerned that the connection between the crickets and the gulls will not be seen. I am making the pattern so you can either knit the seagull motif or the cricket motif. So in order to make the connection, I would like to have a seagull button on the cricket sweater and a cricket button on the seagull sweater. What a great excuse to shop on Etsy! But to my dismay, not many people make seagull or cricket buttons.

So I decided to make my own. I got images of old children’s illustrations and some fine art that has images of crickets or gulls. I then took the images and printed them on fabric. I just used the fabric printing paper found at most craft stores.

I think I want only one button on the cardi instead of several. And I made the images smaller or larger for different size buttons because I am not sure what size I will use yet.  I then put the images in the appropriate size circles in my page layout program. I cut out each circle and used a button tool bought at my local fabric store.

Ta da! Seagull and Cricket Buttons.

Now I need to decide which size to use and if I really only want one button. 

Worse Form of Hell

For this baby sweater, I would like to try and design a cardigan that has no seams. Like almost everyone else, I hate sewing up sweaters. But every pattern I see for seamless cardigans still has you picking up stitches for the button band. I think picking up stitches is a worse form of hell than seaming, so I definitely don’t want to do that. I am going to attempt to make a pattern with no seaming and all bands knitted in.

And here is my beginning attempt. The collar might turn out a little weird so I might need to tweak that. But so far it is going well. The yarn I am using is Handmaiden Camelspin. It is so beautiful and looks like ripening wheat.

I also have some Handmaiden Seasilk in ebony that I will use for the crickets.

I am sticking with Handmaiden yarn (it is incredibly beautiful!) for the seagull version and using Mini Maiden in Jacobean Blue.

The yarn is a bit expensive but so delicious to knit with and the cardis will hopefully only be one skein so you don’t have to sell your car to make a sweater.