a spot of sunshine

Remember how I claimed I wouldn't start a new crochet project until AFTER the big brown (boring) border on the Noro giant granny square was done?  Yeah, right... I *know* there's one more skein of brown yarn hiding in my stash somewhere, but I haven't plucked up my courage to dig through and find it.

I couldn't resist any longer, plus a dear friend has a baby due to make his entry into this world quite soon. Enter the granny star afghan:

I'm mostly following this pattern (rav link), which is very cute and fun to make.  Be forewarned, though, that the pattern leaves out a crucial step. In order for the star shaping to work, you need to skip working a 2 DC "cluster" at the inner angles of the star.  I'm probably halfway done with this already -- it's going very quickly.

The yarn is Bernat Cottontots, an affordable 100% cotton yarn that comes in cheerful colors. I knit a baby blanket with this yarn years ago... it turned out beautifully, held up well, and received lots of love. The yarn is a little tough on the wrists to knit, but it's much easier to crochet.

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Sadly I haven't been knitting or crocheting nearly as much as I would like, as I've been swamped. Reading, cooking, and TV watching have also gone down the tubes, so pretty much any form of relaxing has been abandoned.

Somehow I did manage to squeeze in a baby sweater for (yet another) shower, though it took me over a month.

pattern: owlet, by Kate Davies

yarn: precious handspun yarn by Mia

needles: US 7 and 9

my Ravelry project page

notes:
What a great way to use Mia's beautiful handspun yarn! Truly a treat. Many thanks, Mia. :-)

I love the little owl cables, but I'm not a big fan of bottom-up sweaters. Attaching the sleeves was a pain, and I suspect that instructions for how to do the underarms are a bit wonky. You're supposed to leave the body's underarm stitches live to graft later, but there aren't any matching live stitches from the sleeves! I fiddled around a while until I just gave up, bound off the stitches, and seamed it up.

The short rows to raise the back of the neck don't look great when you do the owl yoke in a contrasting color, just fyi. They do the trick, but it looks a bit odd.