Being dead to the world by 10.30pm every evening means that pretty much anything could happen in my bedroom at night and I’d be oblivious to it. As it happens, I awoke to a very nice surprise today in the form of this artistic effort on my bedroom wall by Mr B to celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. Who needs Hallmark, eh?

I’ve been building furniture for a couple of days and now have somewhere to store all my baby clothes. Hurrah! This also means I can be a domestic goddess and have a jaunty row of tiny sleepsuits and vests on the line.

I’m 32 weeks and 4 days now and TBH, I can’t see the bump staying put for another seven weeks. Though I think I said that last time and ended up waiting past 41 weeks. Right now I mostly miss being able to walk in a non-ducklike manner.

Pattern: Helena by Alison Green Will
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, 2½ x 50g balls in colour: #18006
Needles: 3.75mm and 2.75mm circs and dpns

I actually finished this over a week ago, but it’s been in the pile waiting for blocking and buttons.

I wasn’t intending to knit another cardigan; not when there’s my own one to finish and still the poor baby has a lack of feet warmers. But I saw this pattern on Ravelry and remembered the chunk of leftovers I had from the Peapod Cardigan and figured that anything I use doesn’t have to be found storage space in my stash! As it was, I had literally two metres of yarn left over, so I really got as much out of the yarn as possible, though I admit I was sweating over whether I’d have enough when it came to the border!

The pattern was really simple to follow and I didn’t do anything to change it. Though I chose to make buttonholes instead of the ties that the original pattern uses. They’ll either get knotted or come undone and bug me and quite honestly, I think buttons look nicer. I had to re-do the buttonhole border a couple of times because it kept pulling in and looking crap and I’m still not totally happy with it, but after fiddling around with a sewn cast off from Montse Stanley’s Knitter’s Handbook, it looks passable. If it was a gift, though, I’d probably redo it for the third time.

Now I must concentrate on warming her legs and feet and finishing off that pesky giant lap blanket cardigan for me…

Pattern: Baby Galway Mitts by Jennifer Hoel
Yarn: Rowan 4ply Soft (discontinued) approx 12g in colour: Fairy
Needles: 2mm circs for Magic Looping

It’s been a busy few days here. I’ve had more midwife appointments and “lovely” routine blood tests to prove that my blood is red and runny or whatever the reason is and we’re slowly (in my case, at least, because I don’t do moving fast any more!) starting a massive clear out of our bedroom so we can fit in a chest of drawers for all the knitted baby clothes and a changing table.

So I didn’t feel much like heaving about the February Lady Sweater at the weekend, unsurprisingly. It’s heavy, even though it’s on a circular needle, so I decided something tiny that wasn’t a hat would be a better option!

The pattern is based on the Galway Hat in Alice Starmore’s Aran Knitting. I loved knitting something so intricate on such a small scale, and I suspect it’ll be the only chance I get to knit something remotely related to that book unless a) I win the lottery or b) it’s republished at a non-scary price. The bobbles were worked using my new-found favourite method, naturally, and each mitten probably only took an hour or so to make.

The yarn is leftovers from the Endpaper Mitts I knitted ages ago. Now I know just how much yarn they take to knit, I may be tempted to knit more (though perhaps plain ones which will be even quicker) until I have a mitten stash to rival the hat one!

Pattern: Daisy by Stephanie Pearl McPhee
Yarn: Twilley’s Freedom Spirit, 2½ x 50g in colour: #509
Needles: 4mm circs

The stripes just keep on coming. I had the urge to make another little hooded jacket like the Tomten, and this pattern caught my eye. It’s incredibly simple to knit and suits a self-striping yarn, I think, if you don’t want to fuss about with the embellishments (which I don’t).

The yarn striped beautifully on the sleeves and body of the cardigan, but the hood pooled a bit, sadly. I think it must be the stitch count which disagreed with it, which is a shame. It’s a very fluffy yarn, slightly slubby and splices nicely which meant minimal ends to weave in afterwards. I have enough left over for a matching you-know-what if I’m so inclined, but I think that might be going a bit too far.

Pattern: Basic Hat Pattern from The Knitters’s Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd
Yarn: Dalegarn Falk in Black and Yellow, as detailed here
Needles: 3mm circs and dpns

Yes, another hat..! Having the oddments of yarn from the ManU Hat lying around was just too irresistible. It only took an afternoon to whip up as well.

The pattern is the same one I usually make for the small people’s winter hats. I decided to knit the Preemie size as, based on the Yarn Standards head circumference chart, the average newborn baby has a 14″ (35.5cm) head circumference and the Preemie size measures 15″. It should also have a bit of stretch in it in case of giant headedness. Not sure where that leaves using the book to make hats for actual tiny babies, though, as they’d surely swim on them. *ponders*

Now it’s back to endless rows of Gull Stitch for the February Lady Sweater. I reckon I’m about two thirds of the way done with the lace now, so it’s just a case of sitting down with a good film and chocolate and a drink to hand and just knitting away for a couple of hours.

…and more distraction from the existing WIPs. *blushes*

A post to catch up on a few WIPs and answer a few questions that came via the comments.

Firstly, thanks for all the congratulations on my 4th Blogiversary. I tend to get a bit introspective when it comes to anniversaries. Imagine what I’m like on my birthday! I am proud of my little blog in that I have managed to keep it going for so long and that it proves I do a heck of a lot of knitting. So I imagine I’ll gladly hand over the money to keep it going for another year when the time comes. To clarify the paying part: I have my own domain name (http://www.hauntedyarns.com) where I host my blog. So I pay for the webspace each year and to keep the domain name every two years. Back when I decided to buy my own webspace rather than having a free blog, the advantage was that I had somewhere to host pattern pdfs; this was pre-Ravelry which of course has made it less of a need now as I host them all there.

I am woefully behind with the second clue for the Aurantium Shawl. Clue 3 came out early on Tuesday and is the edging, so the end is in sight, if only I can knuckle down and knit it!

I’ve not even finished the first chart of Clue 2: my excuse being that making 9 stitches from 3 is bloomin fiddly with laceweight yarn and takes too much brain power. Though I can tell it’s going to look stunning when it’s done. Probably too stunning for me to get baby sick on, so I may give it to my Grandma as an early Christmas present.

The February Lady Sweater is also making slow progress. Each row is long and the yarn is in 50g balls so runs out really quickly (the number of ends I’ll have to weave in at the end is depressing) but it’s enjoyable knitting.

Of course, I could get both things done a lot quicker if I wasn’t so easily distracted by shiny new patterns like some sort of knitting magpie..!

Pattern: ManU Hat by torirot design
Yarn: Dalegarn Falk, 1 x 50g in each of Black (#0090), Yellow (#2417) and Red (#4018)
Needles: 2.5mm and 3mm circs, and 3mm dpns

I didn’t get as much knitting done over the weekend as I’d hoped, but thanks to a good session yesterday afternoon, the hat was done and, after encouraging speedy drying with the electric fan, all ready to be worn.

It’s a lovely pattern. I can’t praise it enough. The charts are easy to follow and the directions are really clear. It’s not a symmetrical pattern so it’s a case of having to watch every line, but it’s still more instinctive than the Cow Print Hat was – there are only so many ways to knit a letter T or E, for example.

The yarn is fantastic. It knits up really evenly and there was no colour run: and as I was using red and black, two of the biggest culprits for bleeding everywhere, that was a huge relief! It’s hard to find sport weight yarn easily in the UK. There’s really only Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, which I’ve used a couple of times when needing sport weight yarn for hats, but it’s definitely more of a luxury option. Falk isn’t as soft, obviously, but it feels really nice, much the same as any superwash pure wool yarn after it’s been washed, and is definitely going to be my go-to yarn when I need a sport weight from now on. There’s A Cardigan for Merry for a start, once I can decide on a colour..!

I have enough of the yellow and black left over (would need to buy more red) for another hat, if I knew another small Man U fan (DS2 doesn’t like football and has already requested a camouflage coloured hat for the winter). So I think I’ll use it to make a wee bumblebee hat for the baby instead.

Most importantly, the hat meets the stringent standards of an 11 year old and it’s not often that happens.

This blog is four years old today! I started it to have a photographic record of my finished projects and to have somewhere to witter about various yarny subjects. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to have more and more people visiting and I know you’re there, even if you aren’t commenting.

Back in March/April when I was feeling like death warmed up, I did wonder whether I would ever get back to blogging again. And when the baby arrives, I also think that anything regular is going to be impossible to achieve, not least because I’ll have nothing to write about knitting, just how many nappies I’ve changed and whether I got any sleep the previous night. Which doesn’t make for great reading for a knitting blog! Added to that the fact that I have to pay for the webspace irrespective of how often I blog, right now I don’t know whether I’ll be keeping the blog after January, when it comes up for renewal and whether there’ll therefore be a fifth blogiversary.

But all that is in the future and not something I have to worry about for the moment. So do take a slice of cake and I’ll put the kettle on as champagne is off the menu at the moment.