Grandmothers knit...

One of the inspirations for starting to knit again was that my grandmother, Nannie Belle, was a fabulous knitter and made almost all of my sweaters when I was growing up. Except when she was cooking (which she also did very well), it's hard to remember her without knitting needles in her hands in those days. So when I found out that my daughter-in-law was pregnant I just assumed I had to start knitting baby sweaters for the baby. That lead to a number of friends asking me to make sweaters for their soon-to-arrive grandchildren, and then my other daughter-in-law had a baby, so more projects were lined up. Here are some of the things I've done in the past year:

(Left) Max, age 8 days, modelling his first sweater and hat knit by Nonna. Okay, so the the hat is a little big...








(Right)Here is Max again, about nine months later, in his Cable Patchwork Sweater (from Beautiful Baby). I wasn't used to juggling different balls of yarn at the same time and they kept getting tangled. It was interesting managing three different patterns with different repeats. Thank goodness for stitch and row counters!





(Left) When we found out that Gaia was on her way, the needles went back into action. I had found some pink baby alpaca on the internet but it turned out to be a darker color than I thought, and I made the same sweater I had made for Max using one strand of the baby alpaca knit together with one strand of white KnitPicks Palette. It is incredibly soft and has a slightly heathery look that doesn't come across in the photo.

When we went to Israel to visit Gaia, I worked on this blue poncho. It's too big for her now, but she will grow into it eventually. It is blue acrylic from stash and the trim is KFI Liberty.









The Dinosaur sweater from Bernat Kids is waiting for Max to grow into it. I had planned to make it from Knitpicks Wool of the Andes, but that isn't available in white. In fact, it turned out to be trickier than I thought to find 100% wool worsted in white, so I used Cascade 220 for the white and the purplish blue. Colors are really hard to match on the internet - I really thought I was ordering a light blue and was surprised when it turned out to be purple-er than it looked on all three of our monitors. Oh, well -- a dinosaur can't be too fussy about the color of its legs.

QUESTION: I am now trying to figure out which pattern to make next... It is Gaia's turn and there are about 8 different things that are candidates, including Anouk, a dress from Knitty. Have any of you had any experience with this pattern?