Sheep and Wool and Stuff

In 1982 there were 22 sheep per person in New Zealand.  As of March 2016 the ratio went down to six sheep per person.  My brother-in-law, who lived in New Zealand for two years, brought me a couple of mondo skeins of baby weight grey wool yarn.  By the way, Danny is the best gift giver ever.  He knew I liked to knit and brought me yarn.  What a wonderful and thoughtful surprise!

Knowing that not-easy-to-care-for scratchy wool yarn would not be the best choice for a baby sweater, I made a baby sweater.  I guess I was ready to start a new project and the sample swatch I knit up with this yarn worked out perfectly for the bobbly sweater I had been wanting to make.  I love making bobbles and it's a good thing because there were plenty of them in the pattern.  At one point, I taught myself to knit backwards so that I wouldn't have to turn the knitting three times for each of the five thousand bobbles.  Anyway, here's the sweater.

I used a pattern from Classic Knits for Kids by Debbie Bliss.  At the time, she was my all-time favorite knit designer!  A picture of the sweater is on page 29 and the directions are on pages 65-67.

I saved the sweater forever and ever - for when Danny and his future wife would have a baby girl.  Danny eventually married and he and his wife had two boys, and it seemed that their family was complete.  Then, one day when their youngest was four or five, they surprised everyone by announcing they were having another baby - a girl this time.  I was excited to finally send the "yarn" back to Danny.  That was just a few years ago - probably at least 20 years after I had made the sweater.  Surprisingly, there were no moth holes in it.  Yeah, mission accomplished!

Twin Sweaters

Over two years ago I blogged about these sweaters.  Has it really been two years already?  Anyway, the twins can finally wear them.  In fact, this is an old picture and they might be close to growing out of them by now.

Aren't they cute?  The sweaters and the dresses are cute too, right?  Ann (their mom) hand-smocked (almost wrote smoked) those dresses.  I still can't figure out how she finds the time to sew with three little mischievous and energetic princesses running about the castle all day long.

These sweaters remind me of a time when I thought my knitting days were over.  My fingers would go tingly and numb while knitting them.  It was pretty scary.  I'm happy to report that after lots of different medical interventions and a long absence from knitting, I picked up my knitting needles a few months ago and was able to do it.  I had to tweak the way I do it, but I could do it.  That was a happy day.  I celebrated by having an online streaming-athon and finishing up a bunch of half-finished projects.