Dale of Norway Markblomst Baby Sweater

I had a neighbor who was pregnant this summer with her third pregnancy, a long-awaited baby girl.  As it turned out, it was a difficult pregnancy medically, so I decided to make her something very special, a Dale of Norway baby sweater and hat.  After beginning the project, however, I attended the Golden Gate Fiber Institute 2010 at Point Bonita, CA, working for 8 hours a day with my hands, with a drop spindle, spinning wheel, and double-pointed knitting needles.  A week after I returned home, I started experiencing nerve damage, ulnar and carpal tunnel injuries.  For at least a month, I could barely knit without my hands going completely numb.

Unfortunately, because of the medical issues, the baby girl was born early and needed to be treated in the NICU due to lung immaturity.  In the meantime, my hands gradually got better, and I finally finished the little garments and am going to gift them to my former neighbor this week.  I'm really looking forward to seeing her reaction.

Patons Classic Wool Fair Isle Tote

I converted this Patons pattern from hand-knitting to machine knitting and decided to knit it with some of my handspun yarns from my ever-growing stash of handspun. It is a tad tricky to machine knit because the main and contrast yarns keep changing every 1 to 4 rows, so I input it into the computer hooked up to this bulky electronic knitting machine and knit it with Designaknit from the screen. That way, the program kept me apprised of which yarns to change and when to change them. Slow going but a lot faster than hand-knitting it. Took about an hour to knit the 71 rows, changing yarns, on average, every two rows.

The needlebed wasn't large enough to do the entire width, so I have another width to do tomorrow. Then I will attach them to each other, attach the cicrcular bottom I've already hand-knit, then put the top stitches on a circular needle, remove the green waste yarn from the top and bottom, knit the top edge and handles. Then I will felt the entire thing and, perhaps, line it. Should be a lovely tote bag.

When I completed this bag, I felted it in my washing machine, just to full it slightly and hold all the yarns together neatly.

This pattern was adapted from a free download available at: http://www.patonsyarns.com/totetofelt/ClassicWool_FairIsleTote.pdf