Happy holidays everyone!

Oink oink!

Why is it that a woman never seems to have enough shoes? Strangely, ever since I have become a mother, my shoe-hunger seems to have shifted to wanting to make/buy shoes for my daughter all the time. Luckily she needs new ones ever so often, as she is still growing very fast. These fleece slippers I finished yesterday. Made from scraps, using a superb (and free!!!) pattern by Ohelene.
Thanks Ohelene! My girl is very happy with her new slippers!
For those of you that 'suffer' from the same syndrome, there's more links to free and cute baby shoe patterns at Laurie's Old school Acres.

Pretty in purple

This little cap and shirt I finished yesterday. I sent it to a friend who got a beautiful and really tiny daughter last week. She was born two weeks early and so she is a real featherweight. Luckily they're out of the hospital now and doing fine. If you want to sew something for a preemie (or a tiny newborn), here's a bunch of links to charity sites with great patterns: www.newbornsinneed.org Offers a good Preemie Size Chart.
www.carewear.org Has lovely patterns, and a handy Knitting Needle Conversion Chart.
Barbara Wampler's BWcharitycreations Holds a pattern for a romper, and an open-front shirt.
www.touchinglittlelives.org Sweet preemie sleeper pattern.
www.rayofhope.co.uk Lots of knitting & crochet patterns & links.

Crafted foods

Crafted foods have always struck a chord with me somehow. When I found my needles had got completely stuck and all rusty (!) in my old pincushion (which I didn't particularly like but had kept over 20 years) I suddenly realized I most definitely wanted a new one. The kind of pincushion that would not only be good to my pins, but put a smile on my face as well. I found inspiration at Maria Binns' One hour craft, and crafted myself SOME tasty pincushion ;0)
Also check out Becky Veverka's cupcake hat and Cinnamon Cooper's berry tart hat. Want something more healthy? Go marvel at Monika Schåfer's veggies! Yum!!!
EDIT: Just a moment ago I read this sweet and moving article, and my mouth literally fell open at the pictures that go with it: just look at those tea cups!!!

Knitware!

When reading some posts at the knitting forum on Craftster, I stumbled upon Linda's lovely blog. She posted a link to free pattern drafting software which I went to investigate right away. Knitware Design is offered for free, by a company called Great Knit Designs -and it IS great!!!
The demo version can do almost everything the paid version does, and it's not even limited to a trial period! It comes in three parts: Basics, Sweaters and Skirts & shawls. Installing it was easy, and the program itself is not hard to get going either (nope, never read a manual ;)) The green cardi was done with the Sweater program; Basics lets you design things like doll clothes (of course Miepie needed a cardigan too) and even dog sweaters!!! Enough for now, I have to hurry back to my needles...

One, two... three!

With autumn stealthily approaching, knitting fever hit me again. On visiting knitting-crochet.com I came across this pattern for fast and easy (tiny) baby booties, from Jean Jenner. There was no picture, but when I tried it out it proved so super cute that I wanted to try making a pair that would fit my toddler. The first try came out way too big (of course :P) but the final result turned out lovely, don't you think?
I've drawn a pattern for it, using a very helpful (and free downloadable!) knitting font that can be found at Aire River Design, as I find charts much easier to knit from than written instructions. I'll be happy to share the pattern, or swap it for some other nice pattern/link/tip or trick! Just holler if you're interested ;)

Consider this:

Setting up and keeping up a website is a time consuming enterprise. Promoting it on the web even more so. Let's say you really put your heart into it, and many hours of your valuable spare time. If you provided your readers with high quality content, and gave them wonderful free stuff to download as well, you'd expect them to be glad, wouldn't you? And just suppose that they are, would you think they'd let you in on it? No they won't! Not even 1 in 1000 visitors makes the effort to let you know they appreciate what you did! So why not be that happy exception and say thanks, or send a pic if you've used somebody's free patterns????!!! One generous lady that has such a high quality content website is Jessica Tromp. She offers countless free knitting charts, patterns, crochet and more. And in addition she helps you out if you're badly in need of knitting help too! So: hooray for Jessica, and all the others that make the internet a wonderful place!!!
The above sweater is done from one of Jessica's hello Kitty knitting charts. Kitty fans: don't miss her adorable hello Kitty felt toy pattern.

Yay for recycling!

July was hot, August has been cold and wet. Luckily this came back from the cleaner's last week: a little princess seam winter coat I made for my girl.
At first I wasn't so sure designing and sewing a real coat, collar, lining, neat buttonholes etc. would work out, so I figured I'd start by cutting up a blue wool trenchcoat I picked up at the thrift store (a little yucky, so I took it to the cleaner's immediately after I finished it :oP)
What got me all inspired to give the whole project a try was an illustrated work-in-progress report I saw at Natron & Soda's site, where Soda creates a gorgeous pink winter coat.
Following her example, I used an existing pattern (my BF came home one day with a pile of old sewing magazines he'd found when taking out the trash) for getting the sleeves and shoulder parts the right size. And you know what, it wasn't really difficult, (meaning I didn't have to rip too many seams). OK, the collar is curling a bit odd at one side and the pockets didn't work out so I just skipped them, but my baby LOVES the smiley-buttons, and the rich blue looks fabulous on her. Recycling can be such fun! If you're not into it yet, take a look at Flobberdewotsky and get inspired!