Knitting myself out of a slump or "What I did last September"

In February of this year I had my first miscarriage. In July I had my second. Three days before my first due date, my sister had twins. I don't say this for pity, just to tell you what sort of slump I've been in of late. It's a deep dark hole and it felt impossible to climb out of. While lamenting my *not* having a child, I never thought that knitting for newborns would snap me out of my self-pity. Of course I wasn't really blogging my knits in September, so I don't have record of my nephews' beautiful hats (though I will. I'll update when I see those boys in a few weeks) and mittens. I used these patterns: http://www.greatwhitewong.com/sassystitchess/patterns/babymittens/ and http://survivingsantafe.blogspot.com/2009/01/twin-hat-pattern.html. I used Dark Horse Fantasy Yarn in light blue and brown. The hats were solid with a 1" strip of the other color (per the pattern). For the mittens, I used the sassystitches pattern, but doubled the length of the ribbing because mittens do SO LOVE to fall off. :) At the end of the rubbing I put an 8 row stripe of the alternate color. They were REALLY beautiful, if I do say so myself.

My next baby project for September was the top down bonnet from Hello Yarn http://www.helloyarn.com/topdownbonnethtml.htm).

The cast on was pretty difficult and my first hat definitely shows itself as first-hat-status, but it was still quite beautiful. I went back inside and pulled the stitches back to cover the poor cast-on. From the outside it was perfect. Rather than adding the anime face, I used this pattern http://littlecottonrabbits.typepad.co.uk/free_knitting_patterns/2007/06/knitted_flower_.html to make a four petal flower for each ear on the hat. I used a verigated version of the Dark Horse Fantasy again -- it's a super soft polyester so it's washable but babysoft. I *adore* this hat pattern with the flowers. I made it for a beautiful girl with a classic name - Amelie - and it looks almost as beautiful and classic as she does!
Once I was done with Amelie's hat, I had one more to do. This is the same top-down pattern, but I put on eyes and a wee pink fuzzy nose.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this hat. Honestly, every time I got sad and sappy while I was knitting, I told myself that there will be a time soon that I can knit this bonnet for my own wee one. I can't wait.

The second version of this top-down hat was from some soft and fuzzy stash yarn (it's angora, wool, and poly I think). I got it at Joann's long ago and made a few hats from it. It knits up into this REALLY thick fabric and I adore it. When I was done, I did the goofy eyes (my first crochet job. Not great, but it didn't matter, I don't think. They didn't have to match. . . then I sewed in a cute fuzzy pink nose. I really enjoyed this one - it's goofy. I tried to give it teeth, but the teeth were giving me trouble, so I gave up on them.

Every time I started to get down while knitting, I just told myself this is all practice. Soon I'll be able to knit the most beautiful hats and other baby things in the universe. Hopefully that's when the universe will bless me with someone to wear them.