Knitting for babies, children and me

I can post pictures of some of my most recent knitting now. I made this jumper for a friend's baby, born at the end of November. I was really pleased with the pattern - the Seamless Baby Sweater by Sarah Stanfield, which I first saw on someone else's blog. It was a really fun knit, with just the armpits to graft and no other sewing up (always good). In fact, I knitted a large proportion of this whilst camping at Greenbelt in August and it was a great knit for a festival as most of the time you can knit away without looking at the pattern. The yarn is Brown Sheep Wildfoote Luxury Sock yarn, which I got a while ago in a yarn swop with someone in the US. It's nice yarn to knit with, and I love the colour, it's more purply than it appears in the photo.

Oh, and I've been asked to be Godmother to the recipient of the jumper! Cool or what?! I've got two Godchildren already, but they're both boys (the nephews) so it will be nice to have a girl to knit for as well.

The recipient of this hat and bootees hasn't been born yet, he's due on New Year's day, but his Mum (one of my work colleagues) went on maternity leave last week, so I gave her these before she left. It's the hat and bootee pattern I've used several times before, using Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. Several people were heard to say "Gosh, that looks so good you could have bought it in a shop", which surprised me (I thought handmade was better than bought-in-a-shop but there you go). I won't be knitting for them...

And these are my nephew's finished slipper socks. They're for his 7th birthday (how on earth did I get old and wrinkly enough to have a 7 year old nephew?). Pattern is Garter Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch (I love that book) and the yarn is King Cole Merino Blend DK. It's nice yarn, easily available and sensibly priced, as well as being 100% wool and machine washable.

I squirted glow in the dark fabric paint on the bottom to make them non-slip.

And I'm still knitting my Isabella jumper, which keeps getting relegated behind other projects. This is the first sleeve, I knitted this far, then realised I wouldn't have enough yarn to do all the shaping at the top (I have one ball of it left, which I've divided in half using my digital kitchen scales). So after taking this photo I frogged it and am now knitting the sleeves from the top, reversing the instructions...

I also finally got round to doing some sewing, whilst watching the Downton Abbey blu-ray disc the OH bought me as a surprise. This is one of the tea towel loops I've been meaning to sew on some tea towels for about the last six months. This sort of sewing is OK, as I can do it in front of the TV (where I do most of my crafty stuff). I still haven't turned up my new work trousers (bought 9 months ago) because that involves getting the sewing machine out.

And I've done some more batch cooking whilst I had a day at home waiting for the man-who-clears-the-gutters to appear. This is Spicy Pumpkin and Sweetcorn soup, from the Waitrose weekly newspaper thingy, and which I can't now find online. As I now get a FREE lunch at work every day I've started making soup to have in the evening, as I don't want two cooked meals every day. It has actually made life a lot easier as some evenings before I started the new job I was producing a veggie and a meaty evening meal.

And this is vast quantities of tuna pasta sauce - I don't eat fish, but it's what I usually dish up for the OH on a knitting group night when there isn't much time for cooking!

Christmas knitting update to follow after Christmas!