Finally Knitting!

Through the family visits this summer my needles have been purring along. Several weeks ago we picked up my mom and dad and drove to Kansas City to visit Son #2. My travel project was a prayer shawl for a dear friend who lost her son two years ago on July 27th when he was in his mid 20's. I wanted to give her a token of comfort at the difficult time of the anniversary of his tragic death. This prayer shawl was different than the others I have made. The notes will be on my Ravelry project page. I began with a lace border and then picked up along the edge. The body of the shawl was simple garter stitch and then I bound off in the lace border. The true color of the shawl is best shown in the photo of it on the chair. It is a beautiful dusty periwinkle.

I also finished this retro baby set to give away. Greenwoman gave me the idea to finish the ties with pompoms. It look me a while to figure out how to attach the pompoms. All the instructions just said, "Attach to string" or "Sew". What I finally did was thread the twisted cord into a blunt sewing needle and then I punched the needle through the pompom, tied a big knot, and then pulled the knot into the core of the pompom. It feels secure and looks very cute! The photo was actually taken before I took them off and started over. The finished product looked much tidier. I found excellent pompom instructions sans cardboard circles (pain in the neck) at Bella Dia.

The booties seem too big for the rest of the set. I used antique buttons, non-matching, for Saartje's booties. I also used a variation of the pattern by Fleegle but found it to be a bit more trouble than it was worth and would rather sew them up next time.

For the pink bonnet, in the delicious Cotsoy, I simply extended the garter border to form ties. It took several tries to get it right and I probably didn't take notes so if I make this bonnet again, I'll have to figure it all over again. Sigh. Why do I do that?