There are some situations that I just can’t be in without wanting my camera in my hand. Bubble blowing, especially on a sunny and mild autumn day, is one of them.

Pattern: Flax by Tin Can Knits
Yarn: Tanis Fiber Arts Green Label Aran Weight in Chris Grey, Sunset and Gold
Size: 0-6 months (but came out a bit bigger due to my gauge)
Yardage: I was using leftovers but probably about 1 or maybe 1.25 skeins (should have weighed it)
Needles: 4.00 mm and 5.00 mm bamboo
Ravelry link here.

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I’m so happy to be posting about this little sweater. I made it for the first baby of a dear friend who now lives far away. I knew baby was due to arrive sometime in late August but didn’t know the exact date and early in August started putting together a little box of goodies for baby and mum. Then I realized I absolutely had to knit this baby a sweater.

With little time to spare I started to look for a pattern. It had to be quick so I settled on a few things: it had to be worsted weight or heavier, it had to be in the round with minimal purling, and it had to be the smallest size. It didn’t take me long to settle on Flax. I have quite a few partial balls of Green Label in my stash and I thought these colours would suit an Ottawa baby. I skipped swatching and substituted intuition and a belief that the sweater was more likely to come out bigger than expected than smaller and that’s not really a problem given the way tiny humans grow. Since I was doing stripes I left out the garter panels down the sleeves. I thought the garter would look a little messy with the stripes and it made things go a little faster too.

I finished up this sweater and blocked it on 15 August. I wonder if I was somehow tuned in to this baby because I learned later that she arrived the very next day. The parcel of goodies didn’t reach her until a couple of weeks later but it makes me smile to know that her sweater was finished in time.

The past few weeks have been busy and I’ve fallen dreadfully behind in the things I want to share here. Maisie has started pre-school and we’re settling in to a new routine that I am hopeful will give me more reliable blogging time. I’m going to start catching up by sharing these photos of our sailing trip a few weeks ago.

As soon as she could see the first glimmer of open water on the lake Maisie started asking if we could go on Pops’s boat. She ended up having quite a wait. The boats don’t go in until early June and Pops had some trouble with his mooring point this year and then the weather was a little too windy or much too wet. After a particularly anxious week where every day began with “Maybe we’ll go on Pops’s boat today” and ended with a whole bunch of wind and rain, we got a perfect Saturday afternoon.

We had enough wind for sailing but not so much we felt cold. We saw kayakers, float planes, other sailboats and numerous birds. Maisie caught on to “coming about” and keeping her head down while the boom swung across very quickly. After a few tacks she decided she preferred to be down in the cabin when the boat turned. This meant that the command “stand-by to come about” resulted in Maisie scrambling down the companion way while Rob and I found the jib sheets. She enjoyed it so much she started asking to go about every time we started on a new course. Sometimes even before the jib was completely set.