Audrey's Fan Hat and Booties

It's an exciting time for our family. We found out this week that our second grandchild will also be a little girl!  So, we are expecting Audrey in August and Cecila in November. It's so wonderful that the cousins will be close in age.  I hope that they will be the best of friends.

I have been working on several projects in anticipation of the newest members of our family.  The first is the Baby Jane's a free pattern on Ravelry by Valerie Johnson.  It's an excellent pattern and took me 1 hour to make a bootie and probably a half hour to add the buttons and the flowers.  I love the way they turned out.

I purchased the buttons at the Textile Mart here in Hangzhou.  I purchased 14 pearlized buttons buttons for about $1.03 USD.    I was able to use the wonderful peach coloured ones for one pair of booties and the centre of the flower on the hat.  While at the textile market I was also able to purchase 3 meters of suit fabric so that I can have a suit made for my son Tim.  It cost $20 USD and will make a great suit for his upcoming mission. I also purchased a canopy to go over a crib.  It's so cute with embroidered flowers and cost me $10 USD.  Lots of fun finds at the Textile Mart this trip.  It was worth enduring the horrible heat and humidity to find them.  I also felt great physically, living here in China has really helped my endurance.

The fan lace baby hat is a newborn size and also was an easy knit.  I love the pattern of the lace on the hat.  The flower also came from Ravelry. The blog for the flowers has a tutorial as well as the pattern.

I love the free patterns on Ravelry. I purchase a lot of patterns so I always appreciate the ones that are free. Especially ones that are as well written as these three were. I would like to thank the designers for making them available to me! I wanted to add flowers to the booties and was searching for some small flowers to add.  The ones that I found were in a book called 60 Quick Baby Knits, I was so excited to see that I already had the book on my shelf.  I am always disappointed when I can't download the pattern.  It's one of the difficulties of living over seas.  If I find a book I want I have to wait until I return to the USA to purchase it.  So much easier if I can just add it to my computer and begin reading right away.

The yarn for this project came from Knitpicks.com, CotLin, in Island Coral and also Swam.  For the french knots at the centres of the flowers I used some left over sock yarn, in a variegated green.  One skein of the Island Coral made the 2 sets of booties, one in size 0-3 months and one in size 3-6 months, as well as the newborn size Fan hat.  I had about 9 yards of yarn left when I was finished and I think it will make a great flower on some future hat.