Hello everyone and welcome to the second half of the year. In case you were wondering, it is still hotter than blue blazes here in Phoenix. The monsoon has brought us humidity and some very striking cumulonimbus clouds to look at, but no actual rain.  Our days start early, with a dog walk that must, must, must end by 7:15.  In the unfortunate event I need groceries or sundries, I am off to the store and back by midmorning.  Dinners are cooked on the stovetop and we wait until the sun has set to walk the dog again.  All times in between are spent inside, which makes for a lot of knitting time.  My progress hasn’t been great, but I have found myself with a nice stack of knits for others.

First up, the Jonesy cat.  The same friends that received the Baby Facehugger recently welcomed their second.  I had a bit of trouble coming up with a theme for the little one’s gift, but once again, Alien provided the winning inspiration:

Sara Elizabeth Kellner’s Parlor Cat, knitted as a tabby, becomes Jonesy the cat.  Working jogless stripes in addition to all the increases and decreases made for a very fiddly project, but I forgave every annoyance when I finally had the finished project.

Of course, what does a little baby wear while playing with her Jonesy cat but a Ripley coverall?

For those of you interested in getting your unsuspecting babies into some Alien cosplay, I ordered the patches off eBay and the romper from Gap and sewed the former on the latter using the applique setting on my little Janome.  The romper is a 12-month size and as you can see, I had to get a bit creative with patch placement.  If you are hung up on accuracy, definitely go for an 18-to-24 month size romper and be prepared to handsew patches into tight spots a sewing machine can’t handle.

Back in Kansas, a friend and a colleague who welcomed babies this spring received Star Wars-inspired bonnets:

Clearly, we are very specific in the sorts of people we associate with.

Both bonnets are a riff on Adrian Bizilia’s Top-Down Bonnet with Anime Character, a perennial favorite knit of mine.  The Yoda ears are my own creation, but for Leia I knitted two Nautie shells and sewed them over the ear area.

Last but not least, my mother recently celebrated her birthday and I was very happy to have the time to knit her a birthday gift.  She doesn’t like Star Wars or Alien, but she works in a cold office, so I made her a shawl.

I dipped into a sweater’s worth of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool I’d bought on sale a while back and whipped up a little Sixth Degree Shawl.  In my haste to get it to her so she could take it on vacation, I ran out of time to do a proper photo shoot.  Oops.  Consider this a little trip down memory lane to the days when we all took our FO photos in the bathroom mirror.

After this flurry of gift knitting I have surveyed the remaining projects on my needles and discovered they are all big-yardage projects for me–think shawls and sweaters.  As a general rule, I work most slowly on projects for myself (and drop them quickly for the opportunity to knit for others).  This weather is going to get much worse before it gets better, though, so who knows–maybe I’ll have a whole new wardrobe of shawls by the time fall rolls around!