Knitting

I finished the rose baby sweater last night:

I love how it came out! The seaming was kind of tricky, especially sewing in the sleeves, so I created something of a tutorial on how I did it. I hope it helps someone!

How long has it been since I posted any pictures of my knitting? I swear I knit. Honest! It’s just that the majority of what I’ve been knitting is secret knitting at the moment. (I have 3 and 3/4 Christmas gifts done already.)

But, I do have a new baby sweater project to show off!

Pattern and yarn details are on the project page.

I’m really enjoying how this project is turning out so far. I like the drape of the fabric, the heathery color of the yarn, and the flower motif. I’m going to make another one of these little sweaters in a bolder color for Carrie after this is done.

You go to the same yarn shop twice in an hour to buy enough yarn to make one tiny little sweater as a gift. I always try to buy something really easy-care when I knit gifts for small children, but then I discovered that the Debbie Bliss yarns were 30% off, and the cotton cashmere came in such a perfect color and would work so wonderfully for the pattern I wanted to do. So I bought six skeins, enough for the smallest size. Halfway home, I realized that it was just cruel to give a sweater that required special care to a family who was about to have their second child. Cruel to the sweater, that is. What if they, in a sleep-deprived stupor, put it in the dryer?!? (Cue the scary music.)

But the yarn was on sale, and therefore couldn’t be returned. What to do? Then I realized that just one more skein would be enough for a Carrie-sized sweater, so I went back to the yarn shop to buy another skein of cotton cashmere and picked up a machine washable/dryable yarn (also very pretty) to knit the gift sweater in. Bonus? That yarn was also 30% off.

Never mind that I have more yarn, projects and kits than I could ever knit in my lifetime. No knitter in her right mind could possibly pass up cotton cashmere for $5.25 a skein, especially to make a lovely, lacy sweater for her baby girl. :)

I have no idea how I’ve never seen this site before! It’s hysterically funny. (Even if I’ve made a few things that could have ended up there…)

I’m pretty sure every other knitting blogger out there has joined the Knitting Olympics. Knowing that I was going to get my yarn for FLAK right about now and that the rehearsal schedule for Sound of Music was going to get more intense kept me from jumping in with all of them.

But the Olympics are definitely good for knitting – I already have 4 out of 6 repeats done on the leg of the first of my sockapalOOOza socks! Tomorrow I think I can get those last two repeats done, and maybe even start the saddles for FLAK.

Oh, and Carrie has a new little cousin who was born earlier today, and he’s going to need a sweater…so I’d better pick out a pattern and see if there’s anything appropriate in the stash to knit it with. Not that it would be the end of the world if I had to go yarn shopping, of course…

Want to know what happens when you leave a pile of knitting in front of a west-facing window for 18 months?

Those are four of the six squares I’ve made so far for my Aran afghan. Luckily, just the one square (of course it would be my favorite) got bleached by the sun. I’m trying to decide how bad it is – it’s actually a bit more obvious in real life than the picture. Is it worth re-knitting the square – assuming I have enough extra yarn? Should I knit a number of the remaining squares in a different color and make a checkered afghan so the cream squares aren’t next to each other? Should I just leave it and put the whole finished blanket in front of a window for a few months? Should I try dyeing it?

I suppose for now I’ll just ignore the problem, knit another square or two, and then decide…that will only be, what, another year or so?

OK. I’m insane. Can we just start there? Yesterday I signed up for sockapaloooza, where I’m going to knit a pair of socks for someone I don’t know, and some other person I don’t know is going to knit a pair of socks for me. Crazy, huh?

And then today I’ve been swatching for FLAK. I’m lusting after a heavily cabled cardigan – I don’t care if I already have too many sweaters! Except I’ve been poring over pattern books and such because I’m not in love with one of the cables so I’m going to change it out and, well, I’m obsessing. I can’t order the yarn until next month anyway, so I may as well play with swatches for a bit.

Not to mention the baby sweater I finished last week that still needs booties, the baby hat I’m halfway through, a comfort/prayer shawl I’m about a third into, the aran afghan I picked up again (that’s a whole blog post in itself, I have a problem) and the scarf I started last year at this time that would be mighty welcome as it just finally turned into winter here.

I need a bigger knitting bag.

Apparently, I really like socks. Which reminds me…I really need to knit myself another pair or two…

Wow! You would have been a pair of socks as long
as it’s possible for socks to be before they’re
tights – and all multi-coloured with pretty
patterns and detail all over the place – then
you could stand and admire your sock-self all
day!

What type of sock are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Remember the Jayne hat I made a couple of weeks ago? Well, I just finished knitting not only the second adult hat but also a baby-sized Jayne hat! How cute is this, I ask you? (Denis and I have decided that it definitely falls into the “really stinkin’ cute” category.) Click on Carrie (or here) to see more adorable pictures!

It was almost beyond my math and measuring skills to make this hat, because I basically knit the equivalent of three hats to get this one. The first time it was too small – I didn’t believe Carrie’s head could be 3/4 the circumference of mine, so I rounded down. The second time it was too short, because I really didn’t have enough gold yarn left but I was trying to make it work anyhow, so I ripped out all the way back to the orange and added a couple more rows. The third time I had used a different yellow to try to lengthen the top and it just looked awful, so I ripped out the top third again. And then I had the brilliant idea to finish it off in orange. And left it that way, because, well, it’s so stinkin’ cute!

There are quite a few things in the new fall Knitty that appeal to me. I think the only thing that I might knit soon, though, might be this scarf. (So many projects, so little time…)

Oh, and after sleeping on it, I’ve decided that Devan is fine as is. Now I’m trying to decide whether to block before assembling. I can go either way on this. Blocking makes things nicer to seam up, but it’s not as though I need to stretch the pieces to the measurements they’re supposed to be, so technically I could garment block. Or I could just sew it up and let Carrie wear it and not block it at all…

And in other knitting news, I just finished up a hat. Yeah, you know how I pretend to be normal and all? It’s all an act. I’m really a total geek at heart, and in a previous life I used to go to, um, Star Trek conventions and so I guess it’s not all that surprising that I had to knit myself a hat for the premiere of Serenity. If you haven’t seen it, Firefly (the sadly short-lived TV show that the movie is based on) is an absolutely fabulous show.