A Tropical Baby

Our family is celebrating this week.  Our clan has a new member.  Little Felix Ali has been welcomed to the world, first child of Emma and Chris and nephew to yours truly.

I've been ohhing and ahhing over photos of our gorgeous brown-eyed boy, but I am still waiting to meet him.  While I'm rugged up in my mountain home outside of Melbourne; Emma's job means that she, Chris and now Felix call Bangkok home.  Now the tyranny of distance has all sorts of implications on family life, but our extended family has always been tight knit despite being spread across the globe, so today I'm going to focus on just one important aspect: Its affect on my knitting.

Now, as you are all no doubt aware, knitting is an important part of welcoming any new baby, and here in chilly Melbourne there are plenty of things to choose from.  Like this blanket I knitted for baby Jordi-Lee:

But a baby in Bangkok isn't going to need woolly blankets, beanies, bootees or jumpers.  You see my dilemma.  Never fear though, brave reader, I found a knit-worthy solution: soft toys.

Now that I've started looking, there are some seriously cool knit toys around.  I'm very keen to knit a Henry Rollins doll from the pattern in Stitch and Bitch Nation, but I had to admit that that is more a gift Felix's dad Chris than for the bub himself.  I've also found patterns for knitted mobiles, vehicles, puppets, even stackable blocks... so much to choose from.

Just as I was sitting, confused and overwhelmed amid a huge pile of toy patterns, Nanna Olive came to the rescue by giving me a Patsie the Possum kit from Panda yarns.  Patsie is not only perfect for a new born (cuddly and easy to wash) but she's an Australian native, and will hopefully become a reminder that little Felix is an Aussie deep down. (Well a Thai-born Maldivian-Dutch-Aussie, but what's more Australian than that?)

So I embarked on knitting my first toy, hopefully the first of many.  It took a while to get my needles around the slippery, fluffy, synthetic yarn that would make Patsie so soft.  Everytime I had to do any shaping (and there is a lot of it) the needles would split the wool wildly.  Once I came to terms with that though, knitting Patsie was pretty easy.  The curly tail was particularly fun to make.  One warning though: it's not the best project to work on while knitting in public.  I spent much of the time looking like I had a squashed squirrel coming off my needles:

But after a long wait, little Felix has been born and Patsie is finished and ready for posting.  Here's a final look at her before she's shipped off to Thailand.  I must remember to poke a few breathing holes in the box.