What are you working on at the moment?

Me? Usually I'm a one project at a time girl.  Maybe I can throw a knitting project in with a sewing project, but really that's the extent of my sewing multi tasking. I prefer to focus and finish.  Well something has happened because I now find myself with four projects currently on the go. I mean really on the go and not just in my wish list, which like everyone elses is overflowing and only getting bigger..

Number one on the sewing list is obviously my drop waist shirt dress.  Sadly, today I only managed to cut out the Tiny Dancer fabric and then I promptly put it back in the cupboard. I just didn't feel like sewing it today.  Strange. My due date for this is July so there is still time. Slow and steady on this one.

 

Tomorrow marks the start of the Bombshell sewalong so today I spent my afternoon prepping the pattern and listening to this Thread Cult pod cast rather than sewing my shirt dress.  Last night I panicked and decided that the fabric I had in the stash left over from this dress, which I've always wanted to use in a swimsuit might not actually be water resistant let alone chlorine resistant.. so I did a midnight buy from Tessuti and ordered this fabulous fabric.

Last week I bought some double muslin as I had some great plans to join in the pyjama party , but I went a bit 'off piste' as Jo would say and ended up making a mess of them.  I've been wanting, like some old lady, a little blanket for my legs when I'm watching tv (first I was obsessed with Mr Selfridge, then Game of Thrones and now it's Sherlock) - well it is winter, so I decided to cut up my pj mess and make it into a lo fi quilt, using the rest of the double muslin I have in the stash.  It is very lo fi, but will be lovely to snuggle up under.. and because I'll hand quilt and hand sew the binding it also means I can be under it while I'm sewing. Yay.

Lastly, I've got this little babie beanie on the go for my French teacher who is expecting her first baby (a girl).  Clearly I'm a knitter with only one trick in the book.  A baby beanie... well two if you count baby leg warmers. 

FINISHED! A knitted (yes knitted) baby beanie

I started this beanie when we were in Thredbo a couple of weeks ago but  I undid it all on Tuesday night after realising that I probably couldn't in all conscience give the beanie as it was with all the dodgey stitches and mistakes.  I wasn't too sad pulling it apart as I was watching back to back episodes of season 1 of The Hour  late into the night and was happily knitting away.  If you haven't seen The Hour by the way, then you must - because apart from anything story related (which is brilliant) it will make you want to go out and make a Charlotte pencil skirt!)  Really!

The beanie is knitted using Felici Sport Self Striping Yarn in Dockside (which I think is being discontinued). I bought four balls of this on ebay after seeing the socks made by Jen from Grainline.  I'm not sure why I bought four given this beanie only used one but there you go.
The seam (which I'm hiding) is a little bit dodgy but.. all in all I think a pretty cute make for only my second knitting project.
Given I'm posting about this baby beanie I thought I'd pull from the archives the gift I made for the big brother of this little baby to be.  I made this quilt back in June 2010.  Looking at it now I probably could have thought a bit more about the colour placement but I had a lot of fun making this.  Funny, how these two gifts probably took about the same amount of time!

 

Alpine Knitting

I'm in the mountains so that means knitting.

Last year, I made the lo fi easy baby blanket during trips to the snow, back and in between.  This time I've started on a baby beanie for friends having a baby boy in February (or March?).  It's been a long time since I've knitted something with decreases (or increases) so hopefully I'll be able to work it out from my little instruction manual from a night course I did years ago.  If not I have bought, on recommendation from Roobeedoo, Learn to Knit, Love to Knit.  I'm hoping this will be the start of something as I'm keen to take some knitting on our trip to France in March.

Of course, I'm a Grainline Fan Girl so I'm using the Felici Sport Self Striping yarn that I found on ebay (I couldn't find it in Australia?).  I had heard how addictive it is to knit with self striping yarn and now I can completely agree.... though I can really only sneak in some early morning knitting or a quick 5 minutes in the afternoon. 

Oh and here is a completely gratuitous photo of Oliver on the Thredbo Riverside walk today in his very own self designed Harry Potter tshirt!