Hoodies and all that

I have taken five months to finish Tish's hoodie, not that it was particularly difficult, the lacy pattern was quite simple once I got the hang of it, I just got waylaid by other projects. The hood came out a little baggy but she looks great in it. Here she is with her young man, Lee.

The other much smaller hoodie that has taken a mere two days is for Thomas Arthur Glyn, the newly arrived baby of one of my many cousins. I decided to make something a bit bigger rather than a tiny newborn jumper and this was the only yarn I could find in my stash that was machine washable (nobody wants to have to hand wash baby clothes). It is a modified version of this toddler hoodie pattern that I sized down a bit and knit in the round to save the sewing up.
I had a crisis of confidence that the hood opening was too tight so I went back and undid the cast off and used this instruction to do an extra stretchy bind-off around the hood, and then around the sleeve ends too. There is nothing worse than struggling a small baby into clothes too tight.

I have mum and dad here for the weekend and we went up to the Manchester Art Gallery today and saw the Ford Maddox Brown exhibition, which was most interesting, and packed out with people who were prepared to pay real money just to look at paintings. The one that struck me most visually, though it was only about 8 by 7 inches or so, tiny compared to some of the paintings (and had been used on the poster by the museum) is this lovely image of a girl; the reds of her shawl, her hair and the background make it most vivid. Well worth the trip but unfortunately finishes tomorrow.