Grace's Birthday

Grace had a wonderful birthday yesterday.  We called to see her in the evening, after she had got home from work, and so were able to share part of the day with her.  She received lots of lovely presents but I'll tell you about the ones that I made for her.

At last I can show you pictures of the sweater I knitted her.

The sweater has a beautiful cable pattern up the front but unfortunately the photos don't do it justice.

The pattern is by Martin Storey from the booklet Rowan Casual Classics.  You can see something of the pattern in this picture from the booklet.

Here she is on her birthday, modelling the sweater.

It looks lovely and snug.  Grace chose the yarn.  It's Sirdar click dk.  She loved the colouring - a lovely blend of blues and browns - she thought it reminded her of the seaside.  I've since discovered that the shade is actually called seashell.  Full details of the pattern and yarn can be found on my Ravelry page, here.

I made this card for Grace.

The parcel opens out and there is a pop up smiling robot inside.

Her blog is called The Smiling Robot, so very appropriate.

I also made a little booklet for her.  I found a picture of a robot on Google images and embroidered it on to some calico.

I covered some card with paper and added the robot embroidery together with some ribbon and a large brass button.

Inside I devoted a page to each year of her life.  I took photos of house numbers that I saw on my morning walks and coupled these with old photos of Grace.  Here are a couple of the pages.

This is the collage I made from all the numbers.

And the collage of all the photos of Grace.

It was lovely to look back and see how she has grown over the years.

I also crocheted her a flower corsage from my pattern, here.

Finally I wanted to give her 21 £1 coins.  Besides robots she likes owls, so I crocheted a tiny owl coin bag to put them in.

I'm so glad she enjoyed her day - but enough's enough - I can't allow her to get any older - the last 21 years have gone far too quickly.