Baby socks free pattern. 12 - 18 months

It is getting colder and I'm knitting lots of stuff to make my Little Man ready for the winter. And some warm socks are a must-have thing, so I made a couple of pairs and can share the pattern with all of you.



So you will need a bit of sock yarn (4ply) and 2.5mm double pointed needles. What is sock yarn? It's quite thin, about 200m in 50g, and usually it has 75% wool (or more) and some nylon in it to make the socks stretchy and washable in the washing mashine (on mild wash still). You can use other yarns, of course, in fact if you use a thin DK yarn with the same size needles it will still give you the same size. Just check the gauge before you start :)

Gauge: 4 rows X 2.5 st = 1 X 1 cm

Abbreviations used:
st - stich
k - knit
p - purl
k2tog - knit 2 together
p2tog - purl 2 together
ssk - slip slip knit (here is the on video how to do that)

Cast on 32 stiches and divide them between 4 needles. You have to cast on really loosely, so I would adwise to cas on on two needles (just put them together and acst on as if they were one, then remove one of the needles and divide the stitches between four needles). There will be 8 st on each needle then. We'll work in rounds starting with the 1x1 rib.
Round 1: *k1, p1*, repeat from * to * till the end of the round.
Rounds 2 - 9: repeat round 1
Round 10: knit
Round 11 - 23: repeat row 10
then work only on first and second needle, which means - with 16 st. Take them to one needle and work in rows.
Row 24: knit 16, turn
Row 25: purl 16, turn
Row 26 - 33: repeat row 24-25.
Row 34: knit 11, ssk, turn
Row 35: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn
Row 36: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 7, ssk, turn
Row 37: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn
Row 38: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 7, ssk, turn
Row 39: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn
Row 40: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 7, ssk, turn
Row 41: take the first st off to the holding needle to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 7, p2tog, turn

And you'we done the heel!
Now you have 8 st on the heel. Take the first st off the holding needle to the working needle and knit that  7 remaining st from the top of the heel, then cast on 10st along the left side of the heel, knit the stiches from 3rd and 4th needle, cast on 10 st along the right side of the feel and knit 4 st from the top of the heel. Now you should have 14 st on the 1st needle (10 from the side of the heel and 4 from top of the heel), 14 st on the second (the same as on the first one), 8 st on the 3rd, 8 st on the 4th.

Now we'll start making the decreases as we need to have 8st on each needle and we have much more than that on the 1st and the 2nd needle. Remember that we just finished knitting the stitches from the first needle. Now we'll work in rounds again making the decreases in the beginning ot the 1st and in the end of the 2nd needle as follows:
Round 42: knit 12 st from the second needle, k2tog, knit st from the 3rd and the 4th needle
Round 43: ssk, knit 12 (first needle), knit 11, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 44: ssk, knit 11 (first needle), knit 10, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 45: ssk, knit 10 (first needle), knit 9, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 46: ssk, knit 9 (first needle), knit 8, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 47: ssk, knit 8 (first needle), knit 7, k2tog (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Round 48: ssk, knit 7 (first needle), knit 8 (second needle), knit 8 (3rd needle), knit 8 (4th needle).
Now you should have 8 st on each needle.

Knit 24 more rounds with no decreases.

NB! This quantity of rows is calculated from the average lenght of baby foot at this age, which is 12.5 cm. But please note that all babies are different and some of them can have much smaller or bigger feet at the same age. For example, Little Man is only 11 months old, but his feet (well, the whole baby in fact) are quite big, exactly 12.5 cm. So, before you start knitting I would advise you to measure your baby's feet and adjust this part to your baby's actuall size by knitting more or less than 24 rows.

Then you need to start decreasing to form the toe:
Round 1: K2tog in the beginning and end of each needle (6st on each needle)
Round 2: knit
Round 3 - 4: repeat rounds 1-2 of the toe (4st on each needle)
Round 5: knit every two st together (2st on each needle)
Round 6: knit every two st together (1 st on each needle).
You will have 4 st left. Cut the yarn leaving 10cm long tail. Using the tapestry needle sew the last st together and hide the yarn ends.
Repeat for the second sock!

If you knit some socks using my pattern, please leave a link to the picture of your creation in comments. I'd love to see it :) And please let me know if you find any mistakes in the pattern too.

Two blog project. Stage two.

So, Kristina posted the second picture for our two blog project:

Actually, she posted it on the 5th of November and I just was too busy with baby stuff to repost and tell a bit more about it. This means I have to have the square done till the 26th of November.
As it's a swirl I allready have the idea of how to make it, just need to find the matching yarns. Probably it will be a bit tricky to follow the nice lines of the house roofs but I really want to try it as I like them, especially the big red one in the bottom.

At the moment I'm working on the new sock pattern, 12-18 months this time. Tomorrow I will test it and hopefully will be able to share it the same day. But it definetly needs some testing before posting it to the blog as I'm a bit worried about the details and want to make it really clear and easy to follow. So see you all tomorrow and get your needles ready in case you are in need of some baby socks :)

Baby Phoebe blanket and some news about my Little Man

Well, here I am again this Thursday morning to show you a baby blanket I made for a lovely baby Phoebe on her first birthday. Little Man was invited to her party but was ill that day (had a real Niagara waterfall from his nose) so we cold not go. And then it took me more than a month to actually meet Phoebe's mum Jenny and give her the blanket. And as I didn't want to show it before the little owner gets it I'm showing it only now despite it was finished in September.



Sorry for the picture quality, had to take them in the evening right before I gave the blanket away. I really wanted to make a picture of it outside, but the weather just didn't let me do it.
Here is a little close-up to show you the edging. I was using the tutorial from Attic24 for the edging and must say that it's a good way to finish a blanket. Looks nice and feminine, but not too feminine if you know what I mean.



For the squares I used a Squaring Big Circle tutorial from Signed With An Owl and I'm totally in love with this granny square. It's bright, it's fun and it looks really good. So no wonder I really like the result.
When I was crocheting this Little Man was trying to steal the blanket from me and ewerything I said about it beeing pink and girlish, so not for him, just didn't help. So I guess he liked it too.

By the way, if you are interested in Little Man, he is just fine and started walking two days ago. It doesn't mean that now he is walking all the time, as he is choosing between walking and crawling and since crawling is easier and faster he still prefers to crawl mos of the time. But when he is walking through the room hugging a teddy bear it just looks sooooo sweet! The only problem with taking a photo of it is that the moment Little Man sees a camera he goes back to crawling. Is he shy? Not shure about it yet but will try again and see if I can manage to make some pictures.
Here is how he looks now, little smiling boy:

Two blog project. First square.

If you remember, we, me and my friend Kristina, started a two blog project. You can read about it here. The main point was - Kristina makes a photo and I use this photo as an inspiration and make a crochet square. Later this squares will be joined in a blanket.
Today I'm ready to present my first square.
So, Kristina's photo was this:


And here is what I made:



A close-up for you to see how I made it.



Of course I had to make it much more simple than the original picture and as my husband said it doesn't look exactly like the picture, but the main idea was to use the picture as an inspiration, not as a pattern, so I think I made it quite good. And I like the result. Do you?

Be inspired! A two blog project.

As we all know, it's good to have friends. And it's even better to have creative friends who inspire you. This is what happens between me and my friend Kristina who is a photographer. And as we bot have blogs (mine about crafts, hers about photography) we decided to make a two blog project.
So, the idea is following: she takes a picture of something that caught her eye and I make a 20x20 cm crochet square using her picture as an inspiration. It won't be any old style granny squares, I want to create something totally new and modern. And, when there is enough squares, I will make a blanket from them to represent all our work in one big project.
If someone is interested in taking part and creating something beeing inspired with Kristina's photos you are more than wellcome to join us! All crocheters, knitters, quilters, artists are wellcome! Just let us know and share the links to your finished square in comments :) Here you also can find an original blog post from Kristina about our little project.

Now it's time for the first picture from Kristina. Here it is in all it's beauty:

Looks cool as I like orange :)
So, stay in touch and see what I can crochet from this :)

Baby socks free knitting pattern. 3-6 months

As so many people like my newborn socks and some of them asked me to make the bigger size pattern too I finaly did it. I used double knit yarn, but it was actually quite fine for double knit (it allways surprises me how yarn can vary in DK range).
The pattern is similar to the newborn sock pattern, only the rib part folds in half when the sock is done, so it is made to be much longer than it was in newborn socks. Of couse, you can make the rib small, then you need to make 5, or 7, or 10 (definetly not less than 5) rows of rib in the beginning instead of 15.

So again you will need a bit of yarn and 2.5mm double pointed needles.

Cast on 28 stiches and divide them between 4 needles. There will be 7 st on each needle then. We'll work in rounds starting with the 1x1 rib.
Round 1: *k1, p1*, repeat 9 more times from * to *.
Rounds 2 - 15: repeat round 1
Round 16: knit
Round 17 - 25: repeat row 16
then work only on first and second needles, which means - with 14 st. Take them to one needle and work in rows.
Row 26: knit
Row 27: purl
Row 28 - 31: repeat row 16-17 two more times.
Row 32: knit 9, k2tog, turn
Row 33: take the first st off to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 4, p2tog, turn
Row 34: take the first st off to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 4, k2tog, turn
Row 35: take the first st off to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 4, p2tog, turn
Row 36: take the first st off to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 4, k2tog, turn
Row 37: take the first st off to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 4, p2tog, turn
Row 38: take the first st off to the working needle (don't knit it!), knit 4, k2tog, turn
Row 39: take the first st off to the working needle (don't purl it!), purl 4, p2tog, turn

And you'we done the heel!
Knit that 6 st from the top of the heel, then cast on 4st along the side of the heel, knit the stiches from 3rd and 4th needle, cast on 4 st along the other side of the feel. Now you should divide stiches as following: 7 st on the 1st needle (4 from the side of the heel and 3 from top of the heel), 7 st on the second (the same as on the first one), 7 st on the 3rd, 7 st on the 4th.
Knit 14 more rounds.
Then you need to start decreasing to form the toes. K2tog in the beginning and end of each needle in every second row twice, then knit every two st together. You will have 6 st left. Cut the yarn leaving 15cm long tail. Using the tapestry needle sew the last st together and hide the yarn ends.
Repeat for the second sock!

Knitting a log cabin

I've tried a new technick in knitting - the log cabin. Actually I was interested in this technic because of patchwork and was actually looking for patchwork tutorials. But found a really clever video on making a knitted one and decided to give it a try. In the same time my mum bought a new sofa and was telling me that the new cussions on it are just terrible - too light in colour and you can't remove the cussion covers to clean. So in the same time I was trying a new technic and making a cussion cover for my mum's new sofa. Can't tell that the result is brilliant but it was quite interesting to make.



And here is the video I mentioned in case if someone wants to try it too.

Ta-dah! Green fields blanket finished!

I finally finished my "Green fields" blanket! I started it just before Tte Little Man was born. Remembering the day in the hospital, when we had to wait for six hours (I'm kidding you not!) to get some doctors attention as I wasn't the urgent one and I was sitting there and crocheting... And then the nurse brought all the equipment to monitor the baby and it did show that I was actually having contractions, just didn't feel them! Oh, this memories are the ones that probably allways will be with me as the sweet ones, also all the rest 9 hours were full of pain, but in the end The Little Man was born and it was one of the happiest moments of my life.
Anyway, back to the blanket. It took me almoust nine months to finish, but now I'm proud to present it to the whole world :)



The edging is my favourite scallop edge:



So now it is given to my mum as a Birthday present, newer mind her Birthday is the 10th of September. I just couldn't wait for so long! And I'm really glad she likes it :)

What was my inspiration in choosing the colours? Well, I could say that it's England, the green fields in all different shades of this wonderfull colour and the grass, that stays green even in winter under the snow. And my little garden too. That's why I took some photos of it to show you.





Isn't that inspiring? Looking at this pictures I even want to start another project in green... And what usually inspires you?

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Fabric balls!

Just a quick little post to show you the fabric balls I made for The Little Man. He really likes them and we are practising some sort of football now :)



The pattern and tutorial fore them are here: http://www.purlbee.com/fabric-beach-balls/ and if you heven't seen Purl Bee before prepare to waste some time browsing all of their tutorials and ideas, as they've got tons of them for sewing, knitting and crochet lovers!
And I will try to get some sleep and be organized for my shopping and packing tomorrow.

The owl

When I was making gifts before Fathers Day I bought three plain vests for our Little Man and made the "SON" aplique on one of them. As I thought it looks fun I had an idea of making some apliques on two other ones. So I searched the Internet and found an Owl aplique pattern which I liked immediatelly. It was a bit too big for a 6-9 months vest, so I printed it out on 70% (not 100%) and made one for the Little Man.



Looks like he likes it :) It was easy to make and fun to look at so I would really recomend it :)

Brighten up the day!

So it's raining adain. And I found a yellow leaf on our table in the yard. Which probably should mean that the summer is ower. It's allways a bit sad as it just flies away so quickly and I allways have this feeling that I had so many things I wanted to do in the summer and just had no time for them. Probably, it comes from childhood and school years...
Anyway, this day is so grey, that I just wanted to brighten it up (or at least my blog) with some colourfull pictures. That's why I'll show you the project I made for a great friend and a wonderfull person on her birthday. She likes coffee, so the present had to be coffee-related.
And here it is: a mug with a mug warmer (not really shure how to call this thing), a tin with some coffee, a mug rug and a birthday card.



It all started with the mug rug and a pattern I found in Pink Penguin blog. It's owner, lovely Ayumi, kindly shared not only the pattern for it, but the wery clear instructions on how to make it. I really got inspired and started it stright away. Please bear in mind that this is my wery first mug rug and I wasn't sewing anything for quite a long time. Last time I had some experience with my sewing machine even before Little Man was born, I think. So it is not ideal. But I had so much fun making it! And I will definetly make some more. I really like the idea of a mug rug itself and it might be a good project to practice in quilting.



The mug warmer was made as a crazy quilted peace using the fabrick scraps I had from the mug rug.



And here is the other side of it.



And, of course, a Birthday card. By the way, I noticed that I really enjoy making cards with fabrick. It is allways fun and in the end you allways have a unique card that looks much more interesting than the ones in the shops. At least you can be shure that noone else will give your friend exactly the same card as you :)

So, I feel a bit more in the mood now and will go and have some knitting done. Hope you all have a nice evening and if you like sewing and are between projects at the moment, go and try Ayumi's little tea pots! You will enjoy it, I promise!

Oh, almoust forgot! Here is some new bunny inspiration:

He is sooooo cute! Found here and painted by Anastasia Loseva from Latvia, the country I originally come from and the country we (me and Little Man) are flying to in a week to meet my family.

Knitted baby cardigans. Free patterns found online.

Ok, so I was searching the Web again. This time I had a reason - just found out, that my good old school friend became a Dad and he and his fiance had a lovely boy. Well, of course I needed to knit something for that little man! But all the patterns I had were for bigger babies (ok, it's not true, I had a few for newborns, but they just didn't inspire me). So I went online and spend some time searching. And some of the patterns look so nice, that I just have to share them with you!

1. Concentric stripes cardigan for 0-3 months made by Inner Child Crochet

2. Garter yoke baby cardigan for approximately 6-12 months made by Jennifer. She also suggests to use fine yarn for smaller size.

3. Easy baby cardigan by Diane Soucy. Size is newborn and it really looks easy. Fast, fun, super-cute pattern, as it's said on Ravelry.



 4. Little garter cardi by by Ragga Eiriksdottir foind on Knitting Iceland. Sizes: 3-6 mo (9-12 mo) 2-3 y. Great, isn't it? It is a seamless cardi, so might be a bit tricky to make but looks like it's worth it.

5. Sunnyside baby sweater from Tanis Fiber Arts. It looks gorgeous and has a variety of sizes avalable: 3-6 (6-12, 12-18, 18-24) months.



6. Plain cardigan by Pickles from Norway. Size 0-3 months is free, bigger sizes are available in their shop. And they have a lot of other cool free patterns too, like Cool Kid Hooded Hat or The Oslo Anorak

7. Grow-along cardigan. This is for bigger babies, from 6-8 months to 1 1/2 years, but it is so beautiful, that I couldn't resist.

They are just lovely! All of them. So now I only need to decide which one I will make

Some family news

Wow, it's amazing time here in our little family! My parents came all the way from Latvia to meet Little Man. My mum was here when he was born and she saw him in his very first days - a tiny little creature with big blue eyes (well, not so tiny - 3.920kg, but small anyway) and now he is 10.24kg and 76cm long and totally not tiny anymore! And my dad haven't seen him at all! Thanks to Skype they both saw him quite often, but it's not the same thing. At least he knew their voices and faces, so there was no fear when he finally saw them both. Was a bit confused with his granddad in the beginning, but recognized grandma immediatelly. That's what the mighty Internet does!
They arrived yesturday night and today was a day of family fun, new toys and gifts for Little Man. And for me too, of course. Now for two weeks my mum and dad are here with us and it means a bit more spare time for me. At least I hope so :)

And the last news - LITTLE MAN STARTED CRAWLING YESTURDAY MORNING!!! Hurray! I'm sooooooooooo proud of him!

Every baby needs a teddy

Probably all the babies have their own teddy bears. And not only babies. I was collecting teddy bears myself a couple of years ago. My Little Man has his own teddy too. Actually this is the first toy he had, as it was given to me by my sister when she came to our wedding and brought that teddy all the way down from Denmark. Little Man was still inside me and had just passed his 20 week scan. after his birth my sister came to see him and started playing with him showing him the teddy bear and after she left I continued to do that - showing him the teddy and telling stories about his. So soom Little Man understood that teddy is his friend and he bacame a favourite toy.

That is why I decided that my little nephew needs to have his own teddy too. Little Man's teddy bear was my inspiration, but the teddy I made was crocheted from lovely soft cotton. This is another June project. Took me three days to make and a month to post about it.



Here he is sitting on my sofa right before I gave it to little baby Leon. He is not too small - just the right size for a baby's little hands. Compare him with my hand on the next picture :)



And here is the teddy and his prototype - our beloved Danish teddy bear.



My husband said this teddy looks like a little bee. So may be I'll make the next one with a body of black and yellow stripes so he really would look like a bee. A bee bear. Sounds good :)

Father's day 2012

On the 17th of June we had Father's Day here in UK. For my husband it was the first Father's Day in his life so I really wanted to make it special. And it is allways more difficult to make a gift for a man, they usually like something usefull, not just something pretty like we, women, do. So it was a challenge untill he mentioned that he really would like a hat. And not just any hat, but an orange hat with a ram scull. I sad that I'll try but can't promise and of couse decided to definetly make him one.
So I want to the internet and spent a day trying to find a knitting pattern for a ram scull. No results. Then I tried to find a cross stitch pattern to adapt it. No result either. And after all I had to make one myself. It was the first time I did something like that and here is what I ended with:

I made this apliqued T-shirt and a vest for our Little Man too, so everyone would know who they both are - dad and son :)
And I was really happy watching how proudlu my husband was wearing both the hat and his new T-shirt.
And I really like this picture. Aren't they just lovely together?

A big summer tote I designed for a wool shop.

June was a really busy month for me. I've done so much stuff that had no time to write any posts about it. But it is just wrong to neglect my own blog for the whole month! So now I'm back with some pictures and stories about my June.
One of the things I made in June was a big summer tote. Actually I was asked to design one for "Knitters World Scarborough" (it's our local wool shop), so I had to make it and make the pattern of what I did. And here is the result:



And here is me with the tote full of apples in one of the bright sunny days after I finished it. Well, the face expression could have been better, but the sun was shining right into my eyes.



I've used 100% mercherised cotton, a total of 150g, and a crochet hook Nr.3 (yes, my favourite one:)) and the pattern is now available at "Knitters World Scarborough". They are working on their web page so hopefully it will soon be available on-line too.

This makes me proud of myself and I kind of feel like a designer. And I must admit that this is a cool feeling :)

Cussion for grandma

My grandma had her birthday on the 5th of July and I made her a present. So here is a little story about all of that.
My grandma is a person who teached me to knit back in my childhood. She was doing a lot of sewing, knitting and embroidery and even now she still is making cross-stitch, despite her age, pains in her neck and bad eyesight.
As I remember, she allways used to have some handmade cussions on her sofa in the living room and I thought that she would love to have another one made by me. So I searched in the Internet and found a project I liked:

http://www.crochet-world.com/printer.php?mode=article&article_id=1182

So we ( me and My Little Man) went to the wool shop to pick up some yarn for the project. I decided to let him pick the colours for his grandgrandma. And all the colours he was choosing were pink or a mix of pink with something else. And it wasn't some dusty pink or purple pink, noooo it was really bright pink, pinky pink, I would say. In the end we agreed to take a colour changing yarn, that had pink in it, but some other colours too.
In the process of crocheting I discovered that in DK that I was using the cussion would be too small, so I had to make 5x5, not 4x4 squares as in the original pattern. I also changed the back and just made it plain white with treble crochets.
Then I had to soak all the squares in the water, pin them to a water resistant surface and let them dry naturally.



Tons of pins and an hour later it looked like this:







It was actually a good thing to do so the squares would really look like squares. Then I joined them together using this method from lovely Lucy from Attic24, added the back part and inserted a cussion inside.

The most stupid thig is - I forgot to take a picture of the finished cussion and a birthday card I made. But I'm really glad my grandma really liked this cussion :)

About the pattern - it's really easy and, even working slowly, you could finish this in a couple of days. But, if you are going to use double knit yarn like I did, I would advise to make it 5x5 squares, otherwise you'll end up with a really tiny cussion.

New charity project - "Knit for Japan"

Looks like I found a charity project I'll participate in this year. It's called "Knit for Japan" and was started by a german, who lives in Japan to help the victims of March 2011 earthquake in Japan. First he wants to join all the granny squares into a huge blanket for the Ginnes record book and then the blanket will be divided back into regular size afghans and donated to temporary housing facilities in Tohoku/ Japan, to support victims of the March 2011 earthquake. You can follow the link and find out more, or may be participate too.

Last year I made a charity blanket for the orphants in Russia. Here it is finished before I sent it:



Hope one little girl really loves it as it was really a lot of love put into it :)

I think that it is quite a good tradition - participating in at least one charity project every year. I really believe in this things. And I believe in them more than in donating some money.

Duck family busuness

There is a pond just 5min away from our house. I've posted some pictures of it in winter here and here. Now it's all changed there and last time we were there we noticed a lot of new duck families growing around the pond.



This one was the first one we met. 3 ducklings and their parrents.



The next couple had 5 ducklings. They look bigger and older but still try to be closer to mum and dad.



This family has 3 apparently big ducklings and they even were not afraid of people passing by.



Safe road crossing: one of the parrents in the front, then all the babies and the other parrent behind.

There even is a swan couple and I really wanted to find them to check if they have some babies too. Well, yes, they have! And they have a lot!






There definetly were 5 of them. May be even more as some were hiding.

And have you noticed the whole field of little white flowers on the pictures. Well, here they are:



I could not resist to make a close-up :)

Little Man was looking around from his new pram (we call it Ferrari or the fire brigade car as it's bright red), made some funny noises and even let me make a picture of him:



It is so lovely to live near such a nice place and to see how seasons change there.