One Fat Cat

Today is my birthday and so, in keeping with tradition, I'm happy to present a new pattern as a gift to all my readers! I was working on this design when my granddaughter spotted it. She has a little stuffed kitten, named "Purple Kitty" which she takes with her everywhere. She was very excited and wanted me to name the cloth after her kitten. I was all set to do just that, but every time I looked at it, all I could think was "that is one fat cat"! I'm sorry to disappoint Ruthie, but that's what I decided to go with for a name. This guy really is one fat, but happy cat! Doesn't he look like he just ate a bowl of cream?

This is the first time that I've used Hobby Lobby's yarn "I Love This Cotton!" There are tons of bibs on Ravelry that have been knitted with this yarn and I wanted to try it myself. It is much softer than the Peaches & Creme I usually use, however, I don't think it would be as absorbent for a bib. The P&C makes a much firmer fabric. It would be really nice for a face cloth though. Of course, this is just my opinion. Unfortunately for me, I don't have any babies around to conduct an experiment!

I'm having difficulty uploading a picture of the cloth. For some reason, it keeps turning upside down! You can see that I do have a cloth though and the pdf files are in the sidebar. Hopefully, when I post the cloth on Ravelry, it will be right side up!

I hope you'll enjoy the pattern.  Many thanks to my great knitting buddy and friend, Tunie, who helped me test knit. Her "purple kitty" is actually green! Watch for it to show up in her projects page.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Fall.  The leaves here in my corner of New England are just gorgeous.  A lovely month to celebrate a birthday!

Where do all these babies come from?

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted. I've been knitting up a storm all summer long and I never find the time to post. As I've told you, I knit the baby hats for my local hospital and, at first, it was just a relaxing little adventure.  It's a very small hospital and if they had ten babies a month, they were busy. Well, it seems like they have a new female ob-gyn doctor who's attracting new moms like crazy.  Over the summer, I've had to knit more than eighty hats! That's right, eighty! Just since the middle of August, I've knit forty two and they need another twenty for October! I'm a little burnt out on baby hats and I'm ready to move on, but I did make the commitment, so I'll keep it up.  In the meantime, I thought maybe you'd like to see a few that I've done!

One of my favorite hats for the boys, is this cute car hat.

Just to be different, I did this other version:

Looks a little more like a Fall or Winter hat, don't you think? I try to keep the hats seasonal, so of course, I had to knit the famous Pumpkin Hat:

This is her ribbed version and apparently, is one of the favorites with the nurses! The fathers, however, all go right for the football hats. I posted the directions for these on my blog a couple of years ago  The link to the directions is here.

I did knit a couple of "girly" hats as well.  This is my latest:

It's just a my basic beanie pattern with a seed stitch band, but check out that flower!  I've been working on my crochet skills and took a class on Craftsy.  It still takes me awhile to make a flower, but I'm starting to get a bit faster! 

I also couldn't resist including a couple of super hero hats:

I knit a beanie and then duplicate stitched the logo. I found free charts that worked great.  Superman is here and the Batman logo is here. The only change I made to the Batman chart was to add an extra stitch on each side of the first and last row. It just made it a bit more symmetrical.

Finally, I thought I'd make a Halloween hat, just in case they have a baby born that day:

I striped it to look like candy corn and I crocheted the little cat!  I found the pattern for the cat on YouTube here. I had to make it with finer yarn (Cotton Classic Lite) and a smaller hook in order to reduce it to a usable size, but I think it came out okay!  

Now, look for a new dishcloth and bib pattern from me this Sunday. It's my annual birthday pattern! My granddaughter inspired it and I hope you'll like it! 

Tunie Fish

Are you sitting down? I don't want the shock of seeing a new post from me to be too overwhelming! It's been a long time and I was beginning to think I should just pack it in and put everyone out of their misery, but obviously, I decided to go another year! It's a little more difficult for me now that both my husband and I are retired and are on a fixed income. I have to justify the expense of hosting the website without any income! I won't sell the patterns though, so I'll have to come up with something else. In the meantime, I'll try to be a little more active.

I was trying to think of another design to fit in with the other nautical cloths I've done in the past and I thought maybe I'd do a fish, but what kind of fish? A Tunie fish of course, named after my very best knitting buddy and friend, Tunie!  She lives in Australia and has a wonderful sense of humor so she thought it was pretty funny herself. You should read the story of how she got her name "Tunie" on her profile page on Ravelry where she goes by peacockmom. It's hilarious.

If you look close, you'll see that the side fin is actually a heart.  A special nod to my wonderful friend.

Lately, there have been a rash of blankets knitted with these "wavy" cloths. I'm still waiting to see pictures of some, but I'm just so flattered that you like them well enough to make blankets out of them!

The pdf for the bib is here and cloth is here or you can grab them from the sidebar.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer.  Here in my little corner of New England, it's been hot and humid with no rain.  I'm so ready for a day or two at the beach! Maybe even a month. . .

Andy the Panda

When my younger sister and I were growing up, we each had a collection of stuffed animals. Mine consisted of two dogs, but my sister had a whole menagerie. Among them, was her beloved panda named "Andy".  This design reminds me of him.

I used the original Peaches & Creme cotton in Dark Grape for the cloth and Light Grape for the bib, even though it looks more gray than purple in the picture!

It's a quick and easy knit. The pdf files are in the sidebar or you can click here for the cloth and here for the bib.

Many thanks to my good buddy, Tunie, for helping me out with the testing.  Everyone should have someone like her in their life!

Quickie Hearts

I thought I would do a quick little post, so you can see that I'm still alive.  I have been off to a rocky start this year.  One of my doctors thought I might have cancer, but my other one, disagreed.  I've been through a whole round of testing and it looks like my second doctor was right.  Everything (so far) is negative, so yay for me!  I still have some more tests to do, but I'm in a happier frame of mind, as you can imagine!

I do have lots of fun stuff to share, but I thought I'd just start with these cute little kitchen scrubbies.  I knit them for little stocking stuffer gifts for all the women in my family.

The yarn is Red Heart's Scrubby in Cherry. I used this cute free pattern from Simply Notable. It's all done in garter stitch and is a quick and easy knit on U.S. Size 8 needles.

I thought the yarn would be difficult to knit with, but it wasn't bad. It is a little rough, but then that's its purpose.  It's 100% polyester. Also, there's no stitch definition with it, so a garter stitch project is perfect.

The best part is that they actually seem to work!  Always a plus.

Have a happy Valentine's Day. I hope you get to hug whoever is sweetest in your life.