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.

Fall Knitting!

 As you can see I have been busy knitting, maybe it's because of the move to Idaho and I know I am going to freeze this winter but wool really does just seem right to me right now!  You can find the link to the free owl pattern here:

 http://daisycottagedesigns.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-owl-hat-crochet-pattern.html

It was fairly easy to crochet, although I haven't done much crocheting so it took some thinking on my part but as you can see I finished it1 ( Well, almost I still need to sew on the buttons for the eyes! But I did purchase them so I should be able to finish it soon!
 So many daughters of friends are having babies, I have been on the hunt for the ultimate baby bootie pattern.  One that will actually stay on their tiny feet and keep their feet warm this winter. These work up quickly! And they turned out way cute! With the ribbon you wind though the eyelets they do stay on!  The free pattern can be found here:

http://baby-projects.livejournal.com/15134.html

 My 16 year old son, Tim loved the owl hat that I made for my new nephew so I looked for a new pattern that could be made man size!  He loves the hat, I made it with Knit picks yarn, their wool of the andes. It should be quite warm for him this winter.  I can't keep the pom poms on so I have to work on it. The free pattern can be found here:

http://zayantemom.blogspot.com/2010/01/almost-pattern-for-earflap-hat.html

I opted to not put the owl face on the hat much to his disappointment!




I have 3 quilts at the quilters that I can't wait to get back from her.  She said I should have them by Thanksgiving.  I hope they come next week.  I will be posting the pattern for the table runner here when the quilt comes home.  It was quite easy.

I am also working on a crochet blanket for a christmas present as well as a pair of socks.  Hopefully, I will be posting those soon.

I've been working on genealogy and trying find the documents needed to have my ancestor listed in the DAR.  I found this great free research log to assist me in keeping track of where I have looked and where I need to go next and why! They also have an electronic version which will come in handy as I am going on a fact finding mission to Danville, Illinois after thanksgiving.  I hope to pull original documents for the DAR.

https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/images/5/50/Research_Log.pdf

I hope it helps to keep me more organized. I have been hit or miss in recording where I have looked.  Previously, the only time I recorded where I looked is when I found information!  It has caused a lot of duplication on my part in research.  I hope to post my family tree here shortly so soon as I figure out how to put a copy on the blog. I also watch two webinars this week that were very helpful in organizing your family history.  Both can be found on the Legacy Family Tree site here:

http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/Webinars.asp

The two I watched on Organizing are: FamilyRoots Organizer System by Mary Hill and Organizing for Success by Karen Clifford.  They each contained different approaches to organizing your files. Karen's involved the use of notebooks and Mary's involved the use of color file systems.  Both will work well with my Legacy system.  I think that I will be using both of the systems in my work.  Both have great applications for how my documents are currently organized. I have massive amounts of documents collected not only by me but by my Aunt Ruthie.  The great thing about being interested in genealogy, is the family helps out by passing documents on to you!

I also watched Cracking the case of Natan Brown's parents by marian Pierre-Louis.  An excellent example of working on solving brick walls.  And although she didn't introduce any new strategies I haven't already done or tried.  It was nice to have my research techniques validated!

As you might have guessed I use Legacy software to keep track of my family history but I think the webinars are worthwhile no matter what software you use.  By the way, when my computer arrived from India, Legacy had disappeared from my computer, when I tried to reload it, the computer would lock up.  A big thank you to tech support.  I heard back from them in fifteen minutes and had my computer up and running again.  I have an IMac computer which I love.  So for family history software I run it under VMFusion so I can use the windows software.  I also use VMFusion for my quilting software.  Although Mac has great programs, I just haven't found a good replacement for them in apple technology.  I have all the family history software because I help people do their family history so I try to be knowledgable about the various programs available.

Last but not least today, an update on Chloe and Tim.  We were watching our new favorite show Terra Nova and Chloe came attacked Tim, in her own fun loving way.  Whenever he lays on the floor to watch Tim, Chloe thinks its an invitation for LOVE!