Little Purl of the Orient

Granny Squares Revisited

I haven't forgotten about the Granny Squares. How can I when I see them everyday now? Remember we were doing some renovation works in the apartment and my husband requested for 15 granny squares to decorate JY's room? Well, in the end, only 12 was needed. I crocheted a border around them to make it the right size and he brought it to the upholstery shop to have it sewn it into a headboard for JY.

The paintings are folk arts that my husband got from Beijing. I'm undecided whether they would look better if they are framed in a lighter colour. We didn't buy a new chair for JY but use one of the dinning chairs plus a chair seat as it is not high enough for her.

No, I didn't sew the yellow fitted bed sheet. I bought the fabric to use as a quilt backing for JY's yellow quilt which is yet to be started. When we got her the new mattress, all her old sheets don't fit so I cut out the fabric, ready to sew and then chickened out. Too uncomfortable with the elastic bands. So mil brought the cut fabric to the market and had it sewn by the lady in the alteration shop who charged us quite a bit, in my opinion. And I thought to myself, there has to be another way.

That's JY, rather happy with her new room. Below is a very well-slept on (read 'very crumpled') pillow case that I sewed with Heather Ross yellow gnome fabric. This is a good and easy warm up project. Somehow, I don't like the pillow and the bedsheet to be in the same fabric but coordinated so I let JY choose from my yellow fabrics stashed for her yellow quilt and she picked this.

Oh yes, the softie is Jenny (now known as Moo Moo) specially designed and handmade by Lyn.

Then my mom showed me how to sew in the elastic for the fitted sheet when she visited us last month. This pink floral one is made by my mother. No need to go to the alteration lady, says my mom. And I sewed another coordinating pillow case for the pink sheet. Good thing is that there are so many colours in the granny squares, I can make bedsheets and pillows in every colour of the rainbow.

It is extremely difficult to have a nice and neat moment to photograph JY's room for the blog. This is normally the state of her room.

After the two pillow cases, I finally felt warmed up enough to tackle the elastic bands and casings, etc. And sewed CY one new fitted bed sheet. I still have yet to sew a matching pillow case, so photos later.

The wee knits round-up

The other time I mentioned I was knitting some booties for little boys. I've planned for a few pairs of booties and socks but managed to complete only one pair.

Here you go, Christine's Booties, so easy to knit (no-sew) but oh-so-handsome (if I may say so myself). I used one strand of black Lang Jawoll sock yarn leftover from this pair of Lichen Socks together with one strand of Brown Sheep Wildfoote from the pair of Monkey. For the cords, I crocheted with two strands of Wildfoote in a new method that I just learned from a Japanese book. I'll show you next time how to do it.

Then again, I planned for many, many hats but I just made 3. First is a Baby Shedir over 96 st, lured over to this blog post, which has all the details how to down size it, all the way from Flickr. Did I ever mention I love Flickr? I know now it is all about Raverly but I'm happy with Flickr. The yarn is Rowan Calmer and I used just 21g. I had fret over insufficient yarn when I knitted the adult version earlier this year, and little did I know that I have a blob leftover from knitting Whisper. The Shedir pattern is here.

Two other hats knitted from 59g of leftover Yarntini yarn. I unraveled the bit of Misty Garden and knitted a Sweet Baby Cap and a simple top down hat ala Barbara Walker's formula in her book.

So this is the whole lot that I sent off to Brigid.

And this is the pile that didn't make it. The lighter grey is a half done Vine Lace Baby Hat. Seems a straight forward enough knit but I kept making mistake that I had to re-knit it 2 times and was still not getting it right. The single cream/blue sock is knitted using Ann Budd's toe-up recipe in summer 2007 IK. And I managed to finish its mate just before sending the parcel off albeit messing up the toes, the short-row heels and second foot with one more stitch than the first. See.

One of the many patterns that I've wanted to knit for Kisiizi Appeal is Cat Bordhi's Life Ring Socks - free pdf pattern. But if I couldn't even have the right capacity now to knit the Vine Lace Hat, I don't think I could grapple with the invisible cast on. I've come across the synopsis of her new book, New Pathway for Sock Knitters, Book One in IK and have been eagerly looking forward to it. All those new sock architectures sound just too tantalizing. If you haven't read Clara's review, do check it out. Now I just need to check where I can buy it online.

Three blankets

As always, I'm over optimistic in thinking that I could do more than I have time for. There was only time for me to complete half the list of little knits that I planned for the Kisiizi Appeal. I'll show you those in the next post because I'm going to show you some blankets I sewed over the past two weekends. All fabrics are from stash and I'm so happy for that.

I emailed Bridgid, who's collecting the items for the Appeal, earlier on whether I could send some sewn wooly blankets too instead of knitted ones and she said yes, so I got sewing.

The first one is brown and pink. Looking at it now, it looks a bit Denyse Schmidt inspired. The brown is a wool fabric which I'd wanted to make some winter bags with. I think a kiddo in Uganda will have more use of this blanket than I with the bag.

I threw in some pink Heather Ross cotton to pick up the pink herringbone in the brown and backed it with a Japanese cotton floral fabric.

The second one is green and orange. The patchwork portion, made up mostly of terry cloth, was started ages ago when I first got my sewing machine. Sewing the terry cloth gave me so much trouble (it's too stretchy and the puckering is a nightmare) that I gave up. Now I think it is put to good use. The backing is a cotton fabric left over from CY's new fitted bed sheet that I sewed her. Yes, I've been sewing fitted bed sheets and pillow cases for my girls lately and I haven't blogged about that.

This blue robot one is for our friend's son, L, that I mentioned here. JY helped me with the layout as I haven't got too many robot fabric squares having scored them on ebay eons ago.

My mother sewed many scrap patchwork blankets for us when we were small and she backs them with flannel, nice and comfortable for the warm summer weather so I'm using the same formula. I've still have got some flannel leftover from backing nephew's Moderne Baby so I used that here. The blue is a lightweight denim and I didn't use any batting.

I remember Rose, a reader of this blog, telling me that she sews ribbon with some red inside a baby's sweater to ward off evil spirits. So I added some red chickie ribbon over here for little L.

All ready to be gifted.