Diamonds Are A Baby Girl's Best Friend

Well, that’s the house move all over with… I think there will be a stage 2 to come soon – more about later perhaps – but for now, I am installed in a new place in Townsville, north Queensland, and packing up and moving is no longer taking up my days! Hooray!!

Rather than another catching-up post though, I have some exciting new news to share!!!! I have just become an Auntie for the first time!!!!!!  I really am tremendously excited about it, and can be caught during spare moments gazing at pictures of my new niece while sporting a big dopey grin. She really is so beautiful, and it feels quite strange to have all this love for a tiny little bundle that I’ve never even met. Although that said, before she was born I knew I had all this love inside me just waiting for her when she arrived, so I guess that was a slightly stranger feeling :)  (I haven’t met her yet because sadly for me, I am in Australia while she is in Wales. I am saving up for my ticket home though!)

Now you may be wondering why I hadn’t already been posting about making some crochet goodness for this little mite, and I have a good reason for that: she was pretty early! She wasn’t expected until January, so I thought I had time to move first and crochet later. How wrong I was… So now I am playing hooky catch-up to get a blanket off to this brand new little lady.

My niece’s mum and dad were the recipients of the glorious Mumbles Ripple, made at their request in sea colours. Sea colours was again the request when it came to the baby blanket, and from the various pattern options I showed them, they liked the look of filet crochet with geometric patterns. I had never done filet crochet before, but I understood the principle so this was all good, however yarn was a sticking point. With no decent yarn shops anywhere nearby, how on earth could I quickly get some yarn worthy of a new baby? Especially at Christmas time when the mail is busiest?? Luckily my stash came to the rescue!

While packing, I came across this yarn that I had bought some time ago and put away ready for a time when I could knit and could use it to make a cardigan for myself. I also love the blue/green ocean colours favoured by my brother and his wife, and had managed to pick up these packs of yarn in the sale. 

I had chosen this yarn because it was so deliciously soft with its blend of wool, acrylic and silk, and had chosen this colour as it is such a gorgeous rich blue. It also has this slight shading in the colour, which makes it a bit more interesting.

I also picked out a ball of cream James C Brett merino yarn, which is really wonderfully soft and gorgeous to the touch. I thought it could make a very simple (as I only had 1 ball of the cream) border for the blanket. I think it will look good together:

With the yarn sorted, I needed to figure out the exact pattern.  It was kind of agonising to have to wait until certain amounts of packing necessity had been completed before I could get to work on this. Finally the time came and I could draw out my ideas. I thought I would need a test though before using up my gorgeous yarn, so the next time we went to new local Kmart for some basic essentials, I picked up a ball of their super cheapy crappy yarn just to pattern test. Kmart also has a baby clothes section, so how could I resist that?

It’s summer here in the southern hemisphere right now, so it wasn’t easy to find clothes that would be too useful back home for the winter. I did however pick up this cute little set of sun smart swimming gear, in a size I hope she will need when it’s finally summer in Wales again:

And this totally cute t-shirt – it was the bicycle that sold it to me:

Of course, no self-respecting new auntie could stop there, so I also got some cute leggings with frilly bits on the bum, an owl-themed sleep set, an owl patterned onesie, funky bibs… 

I was most disappointed not to find any clothes with patterns of Australian animals, but that is my mission for the weekend!

Back to the blanket plans, and over the course of a couple of evenings (that’s how little spare time I had) I managed to whip up testers for filet zigzags and filet triangles. I liked both, so I asked for help choosing which design to start with. My husband pointed to the triangles and said I should do the diamond one as they are a girl’s best friend, and I loved that idea, so I changed the pattern from triangles to diamonds. (I still really like the possibilities with triangles though, perhaps a bit more than the diamonds, so she may end up with yet another blanket!)

And here is the progress so far – diamonds are a baby girl’s best friend :)

Sorry for the lack of useful details - I will do a less rushed, more helpful post later. But right now, I have a whole lot of hooky to get on with!!