Babies are the sweetest...

My Sister-in-law and my brother just had their first baby, and I am a new proud auntie... But honestly, when people told me that they were an aunt/uncle and had nephews and nieces, I was always happy for them, but not *excited*. I am sorry for not showing the proper emotions! Two days in and I'm already jumping out of my shoes, showing coworkers and friends pictures of my adorable niece, and I'm overwhelmed with a sense of pride for having such a beautiful baby in the family!

I didn't know it was going to be a girl, but my gut told me it would be. I started making a unisex baby blanket before she was born; I thought I was being proactive in knitting it early, but she thought she would come out a week early! I was frantically knitting this up in the 24 hours following her birth. I love the unisex colours that I chose, but ultimately I'm excited that they had a girl, and I'm excited for all the girly things I will knit her.

Hoodie Baby Blanket by Nikol Lohr

Lion Brand Cotton-Ease (50% cotton, 50% acrylic, the best baby cotton to knit with!!)

Made for my beautiful niece Talia

Ravelry Link

Surprisingly, I've never tried the 'broken garter stitch' before (which I used on the outside of the blanket, in Grey). This is one of my new favorite stitches, and I'm going to try it on some dishcloths. I love the simplicity of it, and the stitches look like little cobblestone roads. And I'd also like to mention thatI'm so proud of my sister-in-law because she was calm and collected when she went into labour, and incredibly strong throughout the entire childbirth; she didn't need any drugs at all. Truly inspiring.

Ravelympics was a failure... sort of.

So, I participated in Ravelympics this year. Part of me wanted an insane knitting challenge, and part of me obviously didn't know what I was getting myself into. If you've never heard of it, it's a challenge to knit a project (or two, three, four...) over the course of the Olympics. If you've heard of it (and participated), you probably felt the same way I did. I'm not quite sure why I chose so many events to participate in, and I didn't complete half of them. My crowning achievement was completing a sweater within the 17 days.

I had hopes to:
-knit a sweater (pictures below!)... PASS
-knit a hat (Which I did, but it was an impromptu hat and now I'm not sure what to do with it, probably not a hat I should have made)... PASS
-write up two patterns (cowl, mentioned in an earlier post, and an apple cozie), FAIL
-finish some mittens I promised I would make for my BF over a year ago...FAIL
-create a small rug from a previous sweater that I knit and now hate... FAIL

I love this sweater, although my gauge was off by a lot on the neck part. I ended up placing buttons on a diagonal to try and take care of the loose garter-stitch neck... and it seems to have worked!

Garter Stitch Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre

Berroco Alpaca and Noro Silk Garden
Made for me
Ravelry Link

My life is a little less hectic, now that the winter holidays are out of the way. I'm hoping to get into some sewing in the next couple of weeks and make a baby blanket (or two) because I'm going to be an aunt!