Sunday, February 07, 2010

Bloomin' Beautiful!

Just thought I would do a quickie blog post while R's getting the boat ready for what's become our special Sunday session out on the river. By tonight I'll be too sore to do anything much less type :)

As I said before, I am addicted to tiKKi's Bloom pattern. It's all I've been knitting lately and I have more planned. I'm even considering licensing the pattern and going back to selling knits -- after all, how many versions of the same dress can Matilda (and *all* her girl cousins and friends) have LOL!

Anyway, this was my first Bloom. I hand-dyed 100g kettle-dyed blues and greens BWM spinning fibre and 100g teal. I spun the singles on my electric spinner and plied them on my Ashford Joy. It looked to be like a heavy worsted yarn. So I had 200g of this and decided to cast on. I knew I wouldn't have enough but I was planning on spinning up some more in a more solid teal for the bottom pattern (below the skirt diamonds). Well I didn't get very far with the yarn:



I have since frogged it and knit the bodice in some BWM Mystique 16ply (seen in above photo) that I had leftover from my Counterpane Pullover. Yes you heard right, 16ply!! I am knitting this one to pattern, the lighter handspun will be good for the skirt part.

My second Bloom was for Matilda's 4th birthday dress. I knit this one in BWM 10ply Luxury in Ruby, from the stash and a colour I've loved for ages and just had to have (with no particular project in mind). I added an extra pattern of diamonds on the skirt, making a total of five rows of diamonds for a longer skirt. The hardest part was choosing the ribbon, I must have spent about half an hour at Spotlight trying to pick the perfect one.

Here she is on the day...



Blowing out the candles... (how embarassing is that cake, but hey it was the best I could do with gluten free, egg free, dairy free, lots of sugar LOL deeeelicious!)



The gorgeous little girl in the background is Shinae, her 5 year old cousin. She's getting a pink (her fave colour) Bloom soon :)

And this is Samantha, her 10 year old cousin who is getting a large Bloom made out of this Gradual Gradient of dark cobalt to light, light aqua to dark and back to light (as you can see, her favourite colour is blue. I took measurements on the day LOL). The yarn is BRIDGHID, a nice plump superwash worsted. I will have to do some maths for this one.





While we're showing off pictures, there is also a Bloom in Mikayla's future. She's Abby's 8month old daughter. I think a light lilac BWM alpaca one for her, gifted to me by the generous Kelly G. Mikayla looks great in that colour.



And the piece-de-resistance... a Bloom for Matilda's dolly! She has a really big head and is really quite pudgy so the standard dolly pattern didn't fit over her head, so I did some modifications and cast on 76 stitches. The bodice is in 10ply Luxury leftover from M's dress, and the skirt in 8ply Luxury in the same colour. Here is dolly in her box...



The ladybug stickers were expertly applied by Matilda before I wrapped things up, I thought they added a bit of jazz to good ol dolly who's been fingernail painted, texta'ed, and stickered throughout her time with us.

Dolly was quite the party animal (was it the punch???), here she is the day after:



And a great end to a great day... (shall I make Bloom's for these guys too?? Hmmm...) My brother and Roy.



Right now I'm knitting a black Medium Bloom for mamasue's JDRF auction. Bodice in Merino Deluxe DK and the rest in a very dark Athabasca in MAIA (Henry's Attic Worsted). It will be top length instead of a dress as I only have 100g hand-dyed yarn. About to do the diamond panels on the bottom.

See, some knitting content :) :) :)

5 comments:

Ann said...

Happy Birthday Matilda. She looks so gorgeous in her dress & you did a beautiful job!

celia said...

rthday, Matilda!

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