Going on Holiday

Spring is in the air in New Zealand. The weather is generally pretty mild year round here in Auckland, and as a girl originally from Wisconsin, I'll never complain about it being too cold here!

My husband and I are about to leave on a month-long trip to visit our families back in the States and in the Netherlands. Our little girl, Holland, is nearly 6 months old now and will be a delight to her grandparents.

Needless to say, we're going to really enjoy this trip, especially since we don't know when we'll be able to make such a trip again.

In the above photo, Holland is wearing a cable stitch crocheted 3/4 length one-button sweater which I made for her a few months ago...she has finally grown into it. It should fit her during our trip and keep her warm (and stylish!) as we travel to areas where it will be autumn.

Cable stitch done in crochet looks so nice...and is so quick and easy. I have a cable stitch baby beanie pattern listed in my shop which might be a good project if you want to learn how to do this stitch.

Or you might try my free cable stitch baby mitten pattern listed on my next post.

My shop will be inactive during the month of October. I look forward to re-opening shop again around Nov 5th. See you all then!

3-Stripe Baby Tennis Shoes

This is really how I design something...

Monday night while my husband was doing a little work from home, I sat on our bed with my crochet hook and 2 colors of yarn and started to make what turned out to be my latest design, baby tennis shoes made to look just like the real thing.
I didn't write the pattern down until the next day because it was all in my head.

I made the sole, then made the 3-stripe sides and didn't have any idea how I was going to turn it into a shoe...but as I looked at it and moved the pieces around, the design just came together. It's rather like playing Scrabble...you have these letters on your tray and you don't know what words they can form until you begin to shuffle them around...and then you can just see the words taking shape.

My husband thinks these little shoes turned out "really awesome." I'd love to hear your comments also!