It’s been a tradition of mine for a while to do baby birth samplers (in cross-stitch) for each new baby. If I wasn’t able to have it ready as a “new baby” gift, I’d often give it at the baby’s first birthday. This is something I may or may not continue, but I find cross-stitch is getting a little trickier for me these days. Knitting is more comfortable for me and less straining and tiring. And the results and still just as a personal, yet are practical and enjoyed more on a day-to-day basis!

When I decided to start learning, I jumped in head-first! I bought one booklet with many baby patterns and several balls of coordinating yarn in blues. I had 2 close friends in mind for the first projects, whom I had known since grade 7 and grade 10, and whose little boys would be cousins! I admit now I probably *should* have started off with something simple, like a cap or a pair of booties. But no, I really fell in love with this little sweater pattern and had to start that right away!

The details were adorable: little stripey hoodie, nifty pattern along the v-neck collar…

It was a very challenging project and I plodded along pretty slowly! Lots of pieces and steps. I put to use all 3 stitch-holders that my son had bought me for Christmas (well, with strong encouragement from Daddy!). But finally, it was complete!

One part of the sweater I was really happy about was the faux drawstring along the hood. It wasn’t in the pattern, but I felt adding one would look oh-so-cute, making the hoodie look more genuine to the kind an older child would wear. So I researched online until I learned how to make an I-cordand then just found a way to weave one in! I made it small it enough that it wouldn’t pose any hazard to a little one wearing the sweater!

When it came time to wrap up this handmade gift from the heart, I had the perfect gift tag in mind… having just bought Stampin’ Up’s new knitting set of stamps! I created a tag that has a little sweater and the caption reads: “Hand knit by…”.

As for a label, well that took a little longer to come up with. I finished the sweater in time for the baby’s birth in the spring (and knit a generous size 6 months – on larger needles than called for – as this little one’s big brother had been an adorably roly poly guy!) but the label wasn’t quite ready. So I ended up bringing it along next time I saw them (at big brother’s 2nd birthday party) and stitching it in!

Here is a beautiful pic of the little baby and his mum. I’m so glad he has already been getting some use of of the cozy sweater!

Now that I’ve started my adventures in “baby knitting”, there is no turning back! I absolutely *love* working with the light yarn, especially now that the weather has become warmer… it is just too darn hot some days to work with wool and thicker yarn! I am doing things a little backwards by starting out with such a huge ambitious project and then moving on to other things, but it just taught me that I can pretty much learn to knit up anything I set my mind to as long as I have a good pattern and all the right materials (and time).

Stay tuned to see lots more knitted works from me!

These two cards were created for the occasions of a Housewarming party and a birthday party for friends of ours. We didn’t even end up getting to the housewarming party – it took all our energy to prepare for it and do some shopping and then we were tired and had to go home and get the kids some dinner and send them to bed! And only my DH was able to go to the birthday party. But I can always be there in spirit through my creations…

Materials: Riding Hood Red cardstock base and ink, Close to Cocoa cardstock, Pirouette Pink cardstock, Chocolate Chip cardstock and ink, “Tagger’s Dozen” stamp set, Tag Punches (small and large – from Stampin’ Up), chocolate brown ribbon. The small flower stamp is actually from another set altogether, yet the petals look very similar to the flowers in the little box in the Tagger’s Dozen stamp – see this closeup!

Materials: I tried a really different colour combination for this one: Elegant Eggplant, Not Quite Navy, Tempting Turquoise and Black. The ribbon is Bashful Blue. Also included a lot of silver pen writing (wide pen from Martha Stewart, narrow pen from Creative Memories) and inked onto a star stamp (from Stampin’ Up). The “Happy Birthday” stamp is a single from Stampin’ Up. The inside of the card has a message written on cardstock edged with the notebook punch (SU) which is one of my faves!

One of my favourite things is when the kids do something all on their own that is special and thoughtful. I love the tags my son made this year – his handwriting is still in the early stages and he needs lots of room so he started each name on the front of the tags and continued on with each name around the back! Just adorable. As for my daughter, I gave her some money of her own to buy me some presents when we were out shopping together and she picked out some nice things for me, including a makeup brush set and a little face mask package.

I love thoughtful gifts from anyone – not just the kids! so I was thrilled with the beautiful framed set of photos our friend Kat put together for us and the cute candle set from Karen. My hubby did a great job of treating me to lots of nice things despite our tight budget and spent all of his Coke points on a magazine subscription for me that I’ll get to enjoy all year. I could only get DH one real gift this year, so I stretched it out and made it fun by having him go through a treasure hunt to find it (under his favourite chair where it had been for 2 weeks without him even knowing it! lol)

A portion of my Christmas gift money went towards putting together a new holiday album – I have already used up 3 full 12×12 scrapbooks just for Christmas photos from 1999 to 2008!!! So album #4 is in the works and I’ve already finished the title page. Right now I’m enjoying the task of sorting through all the photos to pick the ones that turned out the best to include in the new album’s pages.

Other 12×12 albums I still have some work to do in are: the Family 07/08 album, Harmony’s birthday album, Avery’s birthday album, and both kids’ school albums. I definitely feel like I’m less into scrapbooking these days than I used to be, and also our photo-taking style and opportunities have changed. The kids are older now, and less keen on posing for the camera so there really aren’t as many reasons to catch moments on film. And although they still seem to be growing and changing so fast, it is much less quick compared to when they were babies and toddlers, when their appearance and skill set could change in a matter of days or weeks! All of this has me wondering about maybe putting together a photo book for all the 2009 photos (and future years) instead of continuing to have family scrapbooks for each year. What do you think?