August update

Thought I'd better write something, it's been so long. As usual, I've been busy with Molly and life in general. Should be working my socks off to try to get my course finished but that's not been happening and I haven't been doing a lot of knitting either. In fact, I'm not sure what I actually do with all my time.

I do have a FO to show off, after months of cursing and listening to Molly cry every time I worked on it, I finally finished her Bergere de France cardigan. It has lots of mistake but I'm happy enough with it, especially since it still fits her despite it supposedly being for up to three months (she's now seven, would you believe?!). Of course, it's been way to hot here for her to wear it, it's been in the 30's lately, phew, too hot for me, I can tell you. Bring on the autumn I say.

I can't believe we're over half-way through August already and I haven't touched any Christmas knitting yet. I think I have it all planned but I think I'm going to keep it down this year. I did have a helping hand keeping the costs down though, I usually say I will only knit from my stash but that never happens as all the yarn I buy, I buy because I like it and I want to knit it for me! So, luckily a lady in Annemasse, just over the boarder in France, had lots of Garnstudio yarn for sale after she had gone out of business and she's moving and needed to get rid of it, 2CHF (£1.15) a ball, wow, that's cheap! I bought 25 balls for various Christmas projects. I would have bought more but only had 60CHF on me and didn't want to go overboard as my stash is big enough as it is at the moment and I really need to stop adding to it. I was very impressed with my self-control!

I am off to the UK tomorrow with Molly for a month and really looking forward to it, although I will miss Mr H. He will hopefully be coming over for the last week of my visit as it will be my birthday. Again, I will have to try to control my yarn urges as my mum keeps getting beautiful new stock in the shop and I always want it. Maybe I can get Mr H to bring an empty suitcase over for me...

Baby hat

I knit a very cute baby hat for my friend's baby, Rosie. I hope it's going to fit, it's too big for Molly but my friend's baby's only about 3 weeks old, so hopefully it will be OK.

The pattern is Vine Lace Baby Hat from Knitting Daily. I knit it using Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino on 3mm dpns. I might knit a bigger one for Molly.

I'm currently knitting a soaker for Molly now that I am using cloth nappies. We seem to be getting on OK with the nappies. So far I have been using terry nappies with Nature Babies wraps. I really like these wraps as all the poppers mean that you can really adjust the nappy to fit properly and so far we have had no leaks, so that is great. I really want to try knitted soakers as I think they might be better for Molly's skin than the PUL wraps. The soaker I'm knitting at the moment is the Wool Diaper Cover from Ottobre Design. I'm knitting it using Rowan Country and Twilley's Freedom Wool.

A quick birthday gift

It's my friend's birthday on Halloween, so I thought, what more appropriate thrifty gift than a knitted pumpkin and here it is...

It was a really quick knit, I knocked it up today. The pattern is Pumpkin by Marnie Ann Joyce. I knit it using some left over orange yarn I bought in Manor last year (used for my knitted carrot for the same friend, I guess I think she has a thing for orange fruit and vegetables!) knit double on 4mm dpns.

I think I might knit another one tomorrow for another friend who's birthday it was yesterday as I know she'll like it.

I have almost finished knitting my Wendy hooded top for baby, I just need to knit the button band and hood ribbing and finish sewing it up. After that, I think I will move onto the Pinwheel Baby Blanket by Genia Planck as I really need to knit some nice baby blankets to fill the lovely pram we bought on Monday to make it nice and warm and comfortable.

We also had our 20 week scan on Wednesday. Baby is doing absolutely fine and seems to be developing perfectly. We're still holding out on waiting until the birth to find out the sex, which is actually quite difficult but we will try our best not to give in! I have no idea myself, when I first found out I was pregnant, I was convinced it's a girl but then for a while I thought, no, it's a boy and now I try not to think about it too much otherwise I'm sure it will drive me insane!

So, I will leave you with our future bundle-of-joy at 20 weeks...

Two Gifts (kind of)

I have another Christmas present off my needles. I finally finished the scarf I was knitting for my brother for Christmas. It looks pretty good and I'm really pleased with it. I don't particularly like the yarn I used but it is soft and it's meant to be hypo-allergenic, which hopefully means it won't aggravate my brother's eczema.

I knit it using Patons Zhivago and it's the Elongated Cable Scarf by Jenn Nevitt. I used just under 5 balls of yarn.

Now that's off my needles I can get on with some baby knitting. At the moment I am knitting a baby beanie using Laines du Nord Baby Star. It's very cute and I'm about halfway through it. I am also knitting a little hoodie by Wendy in Wendy Peter Pan DK. There are so many things I want to knit for baby and occasionally it makes me want to find out the baby's sex but I'm staying strong and will wait for it to be a surprise.

I met a group of mum's to be this afternoon, which was really nice. I put an ad on the expat site here and six of us met up for coffee to discuss our experiences and share stories. It was so nice to meet other pregnant women as I don't know anyone else really here who's pregnant or who has children. Actually, I know one other girl with a child and she's been really great since I told her I'm pregnant and she knits too!

Up North

Posting has been quiet and will remain so for the next couple of weeks. I am currently up in York on my Montessori apparatus workshop. The weather here has been abysmal, it's really like autumn. It has been a bit of a shock to the system after 30 degree heat in Geneva to cold, wet and windy in York. I would have some photos to take but I seem to have left my camera cable in Geneva (I hope).

I like York, although I haven't had a chance to look in any of the shops as they're all closed when I'm not on my workshop. It's quite nice walking through the city at 8am when all the shops are getting ready to open. My youth hostel is about a 40 minute walk from where the workshop is held in town. It was interesting to walk across one of the bridges yesterday morning and to see that the river had burst its banks with lots of road, benches, trees and cars under water.

As the weather is so miserable, I felt the need to start a pair of socks. I bought a pair of Knit Picks Harmony needles and a ball of Opal sock yarn from my mum's shop before I came up to York so I cast on the socks on Sunday night. I'm only doing my generic pattern, even though I vowed I would never do so again but I think sometimes a plain sock is called for with certain self-patterning yarns.

I'm also working on a baby sweater for that little baby that you would have seen in my previous post. I'm coming up for 13 weeks now so feel that it's safe to knit. I think I cast on my first baby item on the day of week 12 after I had my scan. For all of you who want to know, I'm due on 25 February but it's more likely to be somewhere around the 1oth as I have to have an elective c-section. We're not going to find out the sex. I think it might be a girl but of course, who knows. Tell me your old wives' tales and maybe I will try some of them out if they're not too wacky!

Serial Project Starter

I planned on just working on my Iceland sweater but I couldn't help myself! My friend is having twins (a boy and a girl) so I just had to cast something on for them! I am knitting his and hers Baby Yoda Sweaters (the proud parents are big Star Wars fans!). I am knitting them in Patons Washed Haze, each in a different shade of green.

This is proving very simple and quick to knit. There is very little shaping involved, which is great, so hopefully they won't interfere too much with my sweater!

I have also cast on Bud Baby Booties from Let's Knit! Issue #1. The girl's version is knit in Patons Fairytale DK, I'm not sure what the boy's will be in but I think I have a few balls of baby DK sitting in my stash. My friend says she expects knitted booties from me for the twins, so I felt I should oblige! She's 22 weeks gone, since she is having twins, I'm giving myself 10 weeks to get the baby things finished as twins tend to be early. The Baby Yoda Sweaters are rather big, so they might not actually be suitable for the twins from birth if they are smaller than a normal newborn but at least they will have something to grow into.

I haven't made a huge amount of progress with my Iceland Sweater. I was having problems with the stitch pattern and couldn't get past row three. I eventually worked out where I was going wrong (after frogging it 5 times!) and have now completed one repeat of the pattern. I think it's looking good. I'm just waiting for the yarn for K's sweater to arrive (it really should be here by now, I should have just brought it back from the UK with me) but I think I will have to hide it when it arrives as K says I have to knit it fast and I'm not allowed to work on anything else! Right, like that's ever going to happen!