Whoosh

I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth, but blogwise I haven't really had a lot of time to put anything online. March has been busy. Busy with what? I have no idea. Really. It just went whoosh. One morning I just woke up and it was the end of the month again. How? Pffff, you tell me. It's not as if I have been knitting up a fury and produced loads of things. It's not as if I have already finished another book and been busy with that (eh... bit of a sore point that, but I'll get to that in a minute). March was just taken up by loads of little things. The odd run, the odd trip to mum and the hospital, the odd trip to the allotment and loads of work. Yes, there has been loads of work, but of the type that gets in the way of proper work. A few days spent at the police station interpreting (which is great, but still, time guzzlers), lots of little jobs for companies far away and closer-by, doing VAT returns, getting started on my annual accounts, that type of stuff. And as a result, I only got started on my third book (writing-wise) yesterday. With a deadline in about 2 weeks. I AM SOOOOO ..... I will finish it, I will survive, but again, I left it way too late for inspiration to hit me (well, it's still only giving me the occasional nudge, to be honest, I bet the hammer hitting bit won't happen until later on in the week). Tomorrow I'm off to shadow a GP for the book, and I'm hoping that that will give me plenty of material to do some significant writing over the next few days.

And in between, whenever I wasn't too beat that I rolled into bed straight away after finishing work, I did a little bit of knitting. I had already finished the Little Sister Dress (Ravelry link) for my friend Daniella, but now that she has finally given birth to her gorgeous bundle of joy Sietske Karlijn, after two boisterous boys, I can now show it here.

It is a great little knit! The ribbing did not always come out as nice as I wanted to, as I knit most of it in the evenings, and especially when you knit darkish yarn in the semi-dark, things can go wrong a bit. Bit the idea is so simple and so effective! I knit the 3m size, as my friend's other two kiddies were biggies at birth, and Karlijn proved no different. She arrived at a healthy 4200 grams, and will be fitting this little dress quite soon!

The yarn is Drops Alpaca, one of my yarns of choice. But again, I ran into the 'smell' issue when it came to blocking it. It smells horribly when it's wet. It's almost as if you have a wet alpaca running around in your house, really! Luckily, as soon as it's dry, the smell goes away, and the yarn just has that lovely sniff of 'real' fibre. Great!

The buttons were bought at the Handwerkbeurs. I had two sets, but decided on the simpler, slight bigger and round ones in the end, as the design is so simple, that adding really flash buttons just doesn't work. This is definitely a design I will be knitting again! A close-up of the buttons.

This picture shows the dress with the onesie that served as the 'colour inspiration'. The cream with pink, hot orange and reds just said burgundy to me. And it looks great! The only change I made was crocheting around the edging under the arms and around the button opening, just to neaten the edges up a bit. Apart from that, no changes...

As I had already sent off the dress before the birth, I decided to knit up a little toy for our visit last weekend. This is the Daisy toy (Ravelry link) from the Bernat website. The green I had was not super (note to self, buy more green), but I think it is super cute! I actually should have put a little bell in the toy, that would have totally finished it off, but I had already closed the donut and added the petals before I realised that, and then it was too late. And it only took an evening to make, really quick!

Before little Sietske Karlijn came along, I went to visit another friend of mine, who also give birth to a baby girl: Laurine. And for Laurine I made a little Sophie. Sophie is also such a joy to make! I purchased the pattern from Ysolda together with Elijah, which I made for my little cousin a few weeks (eh... months) ago. The plan had been to knit up Sophie for Hannah for Xmas, but that never happened. At the Handwerkbeurs I got this beautiful soft-pink baby merino from Drops (Wolhemel my usual yarn pimp) and it took about one and a half balls to knit up this little bunny. The design is just amazing! It's a bit fiddly when you start on the arms, legs and ears, but boy, the result is so satisfying.

You just don't want to let go... (A certain little boy was almost heartbroken when Sophie left... I think this pattern will be knit up again soon...)