The Gifts of Knitting

I could TELL you that I’ve been knitting, but that’s all.  But for the most part I can’t tell you WHAT I’ve been knitting, so this post is really rather pointless.  

I can’t tell you, of course, because all of my latest knitting is Gift Knitting, and the giftees just might be among you, dear readers.  I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.  I will promise to post pictures when the items are gifted later this summer. 

One set of stuff has already been gifted.  I could show you pictures of the two pairs of lovely baby socks and the Little Helper Bucket I made for Sonar X9’s teacher, who is expecting her second baby very soon.  I could.  If I had remembered to take pictures of them before we wrapped them up with bows and tissue paper and sent them on their way.  Such is the trouble with finishing gifts the night before you hand them over.  

A note on the Little Helper Bucket:  the Sew Mama Sew tutorial calls it a Toy Gathering Bucket.  Without the felt toys, it would make a great container to create a Nursing Bucket.  Fill it with resuable breast pads, nursing balm, a couple of soft burp rags, a snazzy water bottle, some chapstick, a notepad and pen, some of those teeny nail clippers, or anything else that the new parents might like to have handy when it’s time to feed the baby.  

In the meantime I’ll distract you with an oldie but goodie that includes babies and knitting, circa 2004.

Smaller Sonars on a lovely knit blanket; click to embiggen

That’s Sonar X1 (now 7), Sonar X5days (now 5 years), and Sonar X4 (now 9) back in the day.  The blanket underneath them was made by a lovely group of knitters that I hung out with regularly back then.  For this stealthy project, they distributed skeins of sock yarn and sampler patterns and set out to make blocks—many, many blocks—which were then crocheted together by their ringleader.  It’s a large baby blanket, but not too heavy.  I’ve always marveled at how long it must have taken them to make it with that lightweight yarn, and how they kept it a complete secret and flaggergasted me into tears while I was nine months pregnant.  Granted, prompting me to tears when I was nine months pregnant wasn’t exactly a hard thing to do, but the love that went into that blanket still astounds and warms me.  People bandy about terms like “instant heirloom” pretty frequently, but this one is the genuine article.  I hope it goes on warming babies in our family for many generations to come.  

My dear friends should know that I have no such miraculous powers of knitting to call upon these days, and you should expect more modest marvels for the babes you have cooking.  xo