Website up!

After a few months of knitting, a lot of set backs, and waiting for the website to be opened Baby Bottom Blues is live! :) The website is hosted by Hyenacart.com which is a site that offers "earth-, child-, and family-friendly items." It is a great site and I am hoping to sell lots of longies, skirties, soakers etc. There are 4 fabulous knitters who are selling on the website- Brenda, Jessie, Karen and myself! Our first items are up for sale and we will be adding more this week. So please stop by and buy, buy, buy, buy! haha :)

The website is BabyBottomBlues we also have a Facebook group and I'll probably get a twitter up and running soon. :)

I hope you "like" our page and I am hoping that this becomes a way for my to continue doing what I love (knitting) and maybe making some money while doing it.

And just an update --- as someone who wasn't going to do any Christmas knitting this year -- well lets just say I am and it is another year of probably not getting it all done till New Years!

I'm back.

Hello Blog! It has been a few months hasn't it! haha I guess I needed a break from Blog land. Or I didn't have anything to say (which I find rather hard to believe!) I've done a lot of knitting in the past few months. However I haven't taken a photo of any of it. I was a bad blogger. Today's post is not about my knitting however. It is ALL about Harry Potter! :) Which premiers in the US on Friday. I will be seeing it in IMAX on Friday at 7 pm. So sadly everyone is going to have to deal with Harry Potter mania this week. Starting with this post which focuses around a Harry Potter Themed Tea at Sugars Tea Room.

My friends Guenevere, Ali, Brenda and Tara attended with me. First off we were sorted into our rooms. We were put into the forbidden forest.
Here Guenevere is doing her favorite thing. Drinking tea! :)
I can't remember what we named the cat, but we did, and he is having an ice cream sundae! :)
The trolley came around and I spent a Galleon on a Mad Eye Moody lollipop, a butterbeer (which was as good as I had dreamt it to be!), a chocolate frog and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Bead.
We drank pumpkin tea, and it was the BEST tea I have EVER experienced.
Yummy tea sandwiches. They were themed but they tasted great! haha We have a veggi, a cucumber, ham salad, chicken salad, egg salad and potato salad.
Ali (eyes closed of course!) and Miss. Guenevere.
One of the lovely Hogwarts students giving Brenda and Tara more tea.

I can't wait for Friday and the second to last Harry Potter movie (ever)!

A sweater in 33 days!

First off this blob is my finished sweater blocking. :) I finished it last Thursday. I have to say that picking up the stitches all the way around and casting them off took a LONG time! But it was worth it. It really looks finished and after all the CRAZINESS it fits! I tried it on at work pre block and the photo below is my in my LOVELY work shirt in the basement. But its warm and it fits and it makes me happy. I will do a post after its blocked with how much yarn I used and all the changes I made to the pattern. (And they are many!)

I have been busily knitting a skirty with soaker which I finished on Thursday. (I also finished a pair of socks that I had been working on for MONTHS! Thursday was a great day for my knitting life!)

I used a whole skein of Cascade 220 (dyed by Jen) and about 1/2 a skein of the orange Cascade 220 for the skirty/soaker.

I had never done a skirty before and I found that I really didn't like it. Although since I am going to be running a business making these things I need to get over that! It isn't that they are hard it is mostly that they are boring. I bought the license for the EviePants All in One . Which means I can make skirties, shorties, capris, soakers and longies using her pattern and sell them. (Money is GOOD!) It is a great pattern I really like how she had the short rows set up (to make room for the diaper) and it really doesn't take long to make a pair.

These blue ones are not for sale. My friend Bernadette's sister is having a baby and I was invited to the shower. So I am making these pants (which need blocked) a sweater and some bibs and burp cloths. I'm hoping thats enough because I'm poor and can't buy a car sear and I don't have the time to knit anything else. I added a cable down the leg on this one. I love cables by the way. I think everything should have cables. I think they are really easy and add a lovely Irish look! (Have I mention my love for all things Irish before?!)

I used VERY little of the gray 220 for the trip and just over 1/2 of a skein of 220 Hand Paints from Cascade for the pants themselves.

I made this bid on Saturday for my friend Brenda. She is having a little girl in January and I need gifts for her to! (Have I mentioned my slight fear of crying babies. They make me nervous!) Anyway the bib has a cable up the side and around the bib. I used Sugar and Cream and it is a purple yellow and cream color! (Which are the colors of String Thing Shop the store Brenda owns!)

I've been so busy knitting I haven't posted!

Hello fellow bloggers! As I said in the title I have been a busy little knitter! And guess what it is totally paying off! My sweater WORKED. I have pretty much rewritten the pattern using the actual pattern as more of a template! I finished both of the sleeves in about a week. I had to use the smallest size the pattern called for. Even though I did the smallest size they are still a little large! Which with my gigantic arms is a miracle. I have never in my life owned something that was to big in the arms. But I've tried it on for all my knitting friends and they say the arms look fine. So I have a feeling that I'm just not used to having room in the sleeves. :)

I took a break for about 5 days on the sweater while the second sleeve blocked and made a super cute pair of longies. My friend Brenda, myself and a few others are going to be selling longies, soakers, shorties and skirties to the clothing diapering community via Hyena Cart. So I wanted to make a second pair of the longies and get some practice. The yarn I used was hand dyed my the wonderful Jen or The Purl of Knitting .

I learned how to seam a sleeve into a sweater for the first time! There was some youtube.com watching involved! So thank you to all the knitters out there in cyber land who put videos up! You are the best! :) It took forever to sew the sleeves in and than sew them closed. I think learning the mattress stitch on my navy blue sweater MIGHT not have been my best idea. The hole for the sleeve was bigger then the sleeve by about 1/2 an inch. So I stitched the hole closed. Better a little big then a little small!

The great thing about adding a few inches to the top of the sweater (which was less stitches and a little more interesting) was that I didn't have to knit as far on the bottom! The sweater falls about mid pocket on my jeans. I thought if I went any longer it would be to long. I used a size 10 needle to cast off because my cast off is generally very tight!

All I have left to do is finish the cable edging up to the neck. Then I have to pick up a million and a half stitches for the edge. The pattern only calls for 5 rows of ribbing on the edge. I however am fairly certain that I will be using at least 2 inches. I want to make sure that this sweater CLOSES! :)

My knitting/blogger friend Julie has offered to help my resize a pattern for "my" size. The problem is the sweaters that are calling to me call for a semi bulky yarn to a bulky. And the GOLDEN rule of knitting for the fat girl is NEVER EVER use bulky yarn. :( But I have visions of myself in a bulky cabled sweater on a snowy day. :( Stupid knitting rules. Here is the sweater I love!

Also welcome fall! I finally get to pull my knitted socks out again! :) These are my Cookie A. monkeys. I don't think I've worn them at all yet! I heart the fall!

"But why is the rum gone?!"

I've been working on this sweater for 8 days now and I am FINALLY beginning to have some faith that it is going to work! I finished the back and the two front sections.

The sweater isn't looking so great in this photo (although how great is the shade I used as a white background?!) So I decided to block the sweater before I continued. I want to try it on again and I think if it's been blocked it'll be easier to sew the sleeves on.

I had some camera issues tonight. For some reason the shots were grainy and shaky! I think that lighting issues and my own ineptness were serious factors!
The cable is hard to see unless you are on top of the sweater. But I like it. And really thats all that matters -- right!?

Next up -- two sleeves. I'm like 6 inches into the first one! It's all stockinette so it is BORING! However I like boring -- it makes watching movies easier!

I do have one concern! Which is that the arm holes are WAY WAY to big for the sleeves. But I have a plan. I'm just hoping I don't need it -- mostly because I don't know if I could explain it in here!

These men helped me get through the back of the sweater yesterday! I leave you with them! :)

Oh this sweater ....

Well I am still working on the sweater. I haven't given up yet. Which I think might be my stubbornness! The band is supposed to be 578 rows for the size I was working on. And it was supposed to be 58 inches. At 420 rows mine was 79 inches!!!!!!!! So I went to Ravelry and looked at all the other people who have worked on this. I am not the first person to have this problem! (Phew it isn't my terrible knitting!!) So I ripped back to the correct amount of inches and that I started picking up for the top.

I'm going at this sweater with the expectation that at any moment I will rip this out and never work on it again. However I did a lot of math and some measuring and if all goes according to plan I will have a sweater by Rhinebeck!

My strategy for the sweater is NOTES!!! I'm writing EVERYTHING down so that when I have to repeat it for the other side I can! I figure that way even if it doesn't fit I can always give it to someone and it wont be lopsided! As I said I picked up for the top (although the sweater says do the bottom first.) I figure that if the top doesn't work I'll rip, but I wont have done ENDLESS back and forth on the bottom already!

My mantra is from my Grandmother (Or the Fra!)

"Prepare for the Worst. Hope for the Best"

This is about 1.5 inches of the top (attached to the band). You cast off for the sleeves and work back and forth on the front. (Starting with the right.) I've done another 20 or so rows since this picture and so far so good.

Fingers crossed!

Ripped.

Suzie has been frogged! The dark color of the Berroco, the cables, and the Alpaca simply didn't mix. It look my 30 minutes to cast on 287 stitches and I did the first 20ish rows and just didn't think it was coming out nicely. So I did a swatch of just the cable (thinking maybe I was doing something wrong.) However there was no salvaging my poor Suzie! So she went to the frog pond. The photo below is a picture of her when she came off the needles and before she was ripped out.

So the next question was ..... WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW! I was away from a computer, my needles and only had the book "More Big Girl Knits"! So I went through the book frantically and found "Cable Love". Which is a pattern I've lusted after for awhile. The cables are MUCH less complicated and I figured since the band is what you do first it didn't really matter if it didn't look great because who cares about ripping out 22 stitches. I mean I just ripped out 20 rows of 287. 22 doesn't impress me anymore! :)

After doing the first 120 rows (of the 578 for the band) I really like it so far. The color is still dark but I think once its blocked it'll look great. And I've learned dark color = boringish sweater. But I'm happier. I don't know if it will be done in time for my Birthday. But I would be very excited if it was!

So here is a new sweater that I hope not to rip out. And that I hope to complete sooner rather than later!