Sweet enough to eat

Tiny little booties. All done. So sweet.

100% merino wool felt and 100% Alpaca yarn, with cotton embroidery floss

Today, in a photo

We made it through a pretty miserable heat wave where we were treated to really high humidity along with the high temperatures.  I thought for a while I might do injury to Mr. Coco, 'cuz he loves the heat, and he was disgustingly chipper through the entire week. No harm came to him however. The heat wave has finally broken, and all is well again.

And now I can get back to all the things I normally like doing. I'm working on more baby booties (See the chickies?) and I'm starting a project for a not-yet-born baby girl (a sweater, maybe?) and I've got prototype cookies goin' on for a sale next month.  Lots of fun stuff.

In this photo, you can also see the lovely bags that my friends have made for me. The black one on the left is by my friend Karen. It's the perfect size for a pair of socks (or baby booties). I know she has more bags for sale. The pink one up top is one my friend Kate made for me. (Kate is somewhat of a bag-making expert. She can't seem to stop making them.) Kate's bag is perfect for my baby girl project which I've just barely begun.

If I get bored with all these, I still have the Smiley Sweater waiting in the wings. It's good to have options.

Tiny toes

I can't quite remember now how I got here, but I seem to be making baby booties. Now that the cookie commitments are fulfilled (for the moment), the Smiley Sweater beckons, and yet, I'm making boots for babies. I blame it on the heat.

I put the quarters in the photo, so you'd see exactly how small and precious these boots are. I think they'd fit a baby of about 6 to 9 months. 100% merino wool felt and some truly scrumptious 70% wool/20% angora/10% silk for the cuffs. So soft and special.

I guess it all started when I saw a pile of knitting books in some yarn shop's newsletter. I was quite taken by the photo on the cover of Baby Love: Knitted Booties for Tiny Feet.  All I could see was the cover and title, but the photo was intriguing enough for me to go into search mode. The book is by Catherine Bouquerel.

Further searching led me to a fabulous deal on the very last copy at http://bookoutlet.ca/ at the very moment when they had a promotion going on. It was meant to be. I just love the way she has reduced for the instep of the bootie.

Here's my take on Peter Pan which is one of the designs in the book which also uses that clever decrease. These are made from Heritage 150 Paints by Cascade Yarns. It's a 75% merino superwash with 25% nylon. The booties are knit flat, and seamed up the back of the heel, but next time, I'm going to knit them in the round, once I've finished the sole. I also have some ideas for variations on the felt booties, so I guess I'm riding a baby bootie wave for a while.

Reptilian delights

Generally, I'm not a big fan of reptiles, and I never really thought I'd be making them the subject of a cookie. However, life's road is full of twists and turns, isn't it?

I got the opportunity, and the enormous honour, to make cookies for the 10th anniversary of The Green Gecko which is a local shop full of amazing and surprising offerings.

Turns out, geckos are fun!

More cats

I've been playing with painting cat faces. These don't have the extra dimension of icing. I hope they'll seem simpler (they are!) and therefore not so precious. I think there's a sweet spot just shy of 'too fancy' where people won't find them 'too pretty to eat'. They're cookies. They're meant to be eaten.

And here's a puppy dog, I forgot to put on the blog.