Some knitting stuff

Recently I've been working only about 20 miles from where my brother's family live, so I've been able to see much more of my nephews in the evenings. If my bro's on a night shift I've been helping my SIL with bathtime (which is great fun!) and also babysitting as I've arranged to stay in a B & B not far from them. And one time I managed to get a photo of the first knitted garment I made (I made it before I had a digital camera so couldn't photo it at the time!). It was originally made for Noah (I thought it would take 6 months to make; it took 10 days, so it took him a while to grow into it!). Now Dylan can wear it:

It's a Sirdar cabled cardi pattern, using Sirdar Snuggly Aran and the wooden buttons are from the Button Queen, on Marylebone Lane in London. I'd been knitting for about 6 weeks when I started this, and didn't know any other knitters, so there was no one to tell me that a plain stocking stitch garment might be easier than cables and bobbles for a first go... I knitted it in the final fortnight of Dad's life, so most of it was knitted in a very dimly lit living room at Mum's house whilst I was sitting with Dad (what was I thinking - navy blue with hardly any light, as well as all those cables?!). But it looks cool now (just don't look at it too closely, especially the seams) and both the nephews turned out with blue eyes so they look really sweet in it!

I've also been trying to teach Dylan how to catalogue. It's never too early to recruit future librarians - 11 months old, why not?

And I've finished my Helter Skelter socks (anyone who was on Skip North - you saw me start these off!). This was one of the patterns from the Fyberspates sock club, and the yarn is the January yarn from the sock club - 90% alpaca, 10% nylon. They're lovely and soft and squishy, and will be very warm! I used 2.5mm needles for the cuff and 2.25mm for the heel and foot.