Extreme Knitting Redhead: Baby knits/crochet, a coffee morning/cake sale and loads more!

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Baby knits/crochet, a coffee morning/cake sale and loads more!

Edmund's vest

OK, I seem to be having a problem with photos created as 'landscape' but then flipped round to be 'portrait' before I upload them. When I upload them onto here they are all stretched out sideways like this:

How annoying is that?! I've tried everything but it still won't do it properly so I'm giving up for the moment, otherwise it will take forever to update everything.

So what you are looking at here is the little vest I made for Edmund, Lisa and Andrew's beautiful baby boy who I met for the first time at our coffee morning on friday. He is absolutely gorgeous with the most beautiful blue eyes.

Here's the back all squidged up but I hope you get the idea.

It was knit in Hayfield Baby Bonus 4ply in the colour 'mint' using 2.75 and 3.25 needles. I used the measurements from a jumper I knit for a baby aged 6 months to work out the gauge and size. Then I swatched in a box pattern (row 1 k2p2, row 2 p2k2 and so on) and added a couple of simple cables for interest. I rarely knit cables these day as I think I overdosed on them in the 70s/80s when aran knits were very much in vogue.

The jumper pattern I based it on was plain stockinette with a round neck so I had to work out how to convert it to a V neck as I decided I liked the idea of that with the cables. I'm not very good at adapting patterns so it took a few goes to get it right! I actually enjoyed the cables and it was fun working out how to get the decrease right for the V. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Baby crochet

Then I decided I wanted to crochet some more of the crocodile stitch bootees but this time for Ann, whose first grand-daughter is due in September, as a thank you for organising the coffee morning (more on that later).

I'd bought some special little buttons with bunnies on them especially but could I remember where I'd put them? No I jolly well couldn't! Of course they should have been in my button box but they weren't and so, as I was in a rush to finish them in time I had to rummage through my pearl buttons to find something suitable.

I always smile when I see this little box as it was my mum's. It's an old face powder container and she's stuck a label on top using bits of old masking tape. Recycling at it's best!

Going off at a tangent, as I do, I changed the mat on my dressing table the other day and it just looked so pretty I wanted to show some of mum's handiwork. The pretty butterflies are embroidered in whitework. There's drawn threadwork on display and then just look at the pretty crocheted butterfly edging. So pretty and such fine work.

The coffee morning and cake sale

As I'm still having trouble uploading photos I shall just leave this little teaser. Suffice to say that the event exceeded all expectations!

To be continued............

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Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.