Five months late, but I finally spent my birthday yarn gift certificate at Stash today.
It’s been a very non-knitting sort of week due to the evil heat. I’ve spent most days in very little clothing with an electric fan wafting over me in an attempt to cool me down. So my Wimbledon knitting hasn’t progressed much further than the photos from last week. Fortunately, today was better and trekking into town wasn’t that bad and hopefully I can pick up the needles again now the temperature has dropped below 30 degrees, especially as I have new goodies!
I bought five squishy balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK in a lovely rich cranberry red colour which is earmarked for a Pea Pod Baby Sweater (Ravelry link). I also bought a Dale of Norway baby pattern book for some steeking fun . You can see all the patterns in the book here. There are hats with ears, so it was kind of calling out to me!
You might remember I posted a rather wibbly post a while ago about the Cabled Raglan Baby Jacket and whether it was too girly or not. Well, now that I know the bump is definitely girly, I can knit it without worrying. Except I can’t decide on a colour…
I’ve chosen to use Sirdar Balmoral. I was looking for a DK-weight alpaca yarn like the one used for the original (which is Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca DK; not particularly common round these parts!). I did consider Inca Cloud, but then after browsing for a while, I remembered Sirdar Balmoral. I rarely buy Sirdar yarns because in the past they’ve gone mad for novelty yarn, so I don’t usually think of them when choosing yarns. But recently they’ve had a few nicer yarns, such as Balmoral which has no synthetics and is really rather lovely. So Balmoral it is.
The problem is, I can’t decide on a shade. So for a bit of Friday fun, I’ve created a poll. I’ve listed the colours I like best, but if there’s another colour that I should clearly choose instead, then there’s an option to add that as well. I’ll use the most popular colour for the cardigan and it’ll save me poring over shadecards til all the colours blend into one.
Pattern: Baby Sweater on Two Needles (February) by Elizabeth Zimmermann from Knitter’s Almanac Yarn: Artesano Ltd Opulencia (discontinued, I think), 2 x 50g skeins in colour: Amethyst Needles: 3.75mm Addi circs
When I discovered that the bump was definitely a girl, I knew I had to knit one of these. And thanks to either the wonders of the postal system, the varying efficiency of eBay sellers or simply me being disorganised and not getting a zip, it ended up being my first finished non-hat-or-sock baby garment, despite the Tomten clearly having the moral right to be called so.
I do wonder if there’s much I can say about this pattern that hasn’t been said before, though. It’s such a quick and simple pattern, but the end result is so cute.
The pattern is written in EZ’s usual style, which I think you either love and go with the flow, or curse her name under your breath. It’s not hard to follow, but do remember to start making buttonholes at the neckline downwards. She fails to mention them at all ’til you’re on the lace pattern, by which time the yoke is done and buttonhole-free. Like a lot of people, I also adjusted the sleeve directions so that they were knitted in the round, instead of casting on the extra stitches on the sleeves and knitting them flat. Other than that, I just followed the pattern as written.
The yarn was lovely to knit with – I believe the base yarn is Inca Cloud, which is my favourite alpaca yarn – but the dye rubbed off onto my hands and needles something terrible: I had a nice purple stripe on my right index finger where I tension the yarn as well as blotches on the palms of my hands. I’m hoping that now it’s been blocked (when more colour leaked out) that it’s got over the urge to bleed everywhere and won’t turn the baby into Violet Beauregarde when she wears it. As far as I can tell,the yarn is no longer being made by Artesano, anyway, so I guess it’s a moot point, but I wouldn’t use it again.
I’m delighted/relieved the buttons match as well as they do. It’s hard when there’s nowhere close to me that sells buttons and I’m forced to rely on a photo on a website and just hope for the best, while being fully prepared to buy several different types until I find the right ones, but the little lilac hearts I bought from this eBay shop were the first I bought. They really go well with the yarn and are even the perfect size (it was a lot of fun debating whether to get 12mm or 15mm buttons… who’d have though that 3mm could make such a difference?).
Almost up to date with the FOs now! I shall never look this productive again.
It’s done! *does happy dance* The zip arrived in Tuesday’s post, so I literally ripped open the envelope, grabbed my pincushion and started attaching zip to jacket. I only wish I were small enough to fit into it, because it kind of needed a finishing flourish of actually being worn.
I really loved knitting this pattern. It’s changed my view of knitting endless rows of garter stitch, because beforehand I thought I’d never manage it without the urge to do myself in through sheer boredom. But combined with the variegated yarn, it looks really rather lovely.
The yarn choice was obviously an inspired moment of genius. I’d been musing about knitting a Tomten and had looked at the many finished ones on Ravelry and decided that the ones I liked best were knitted with handspun or subtly variegated yarns. I realised I wanted something like Noro Kureyon Sock but without the itch, which lead me to the Kauni. It’s very similar to a Shetland yarn in texture (which I guess is why the Spindrift works so well for the edging) and it softens up beautifully after washing. It doesn’t feel like it will be too harsh on a baby’s skin at all.
I followed the pattern directions as written in Knitting Without Tears, except for the sleeves. In The Opinionated Knitter, Meg Swansen adds a note about not casting off the armhole stitches, but knitting them together with the sleeve stitches, which saves sewing up a couple of seams. The only seaming was the rest of the sleeves: the hood is joined by grafting. The applied i-cord edging came from one of the two books; I don’t remember which one, but I suspect it’s in both of them anyway. I love how this finishes off the edges of the jacket and want to use it as much as possible now on everything!
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Just for anyone keeping score, I’ve now completed:
2 cardigans
1 pair of socks
5 hats
for the small person. More feet and leg stuff is needed!
So, lots of plain stocking stitch is needed for the next couple of weeks. But not so much that I go insane. I decided to raid my vintage baby knitting pattern stash for something completely different to all the modular EZ knitting I’ve been doing. I have several issues of the old Vogue Baby Knitting magazine which was published in the 1950s and 60s and aside from the knitting patterns, they’re just fascinating to read. The long-gone yarn companies, the adverts for baby layettes from department stores and prams for £4!
This pattern is originally from 1966 and takes up barely a column of space. It’s written in the “do this for one side and then mirror everything for the second” style and makes me wonder at the pages I use up just to write a sock pattern.
I’m using RYC Cashsoft 4ply in cream, which probably adds to the vintage look of the cardigan. I’ve lined myself up for lots of seaming, though I did amend the shoulder directions to a three-needle cast off instead as I can never get shoulder seams to look like they’re supposed to. Just the sleeves to knit now, and then the button hunt starts again!
To add to my baby pattern stash, I’ve also managed to get my paws on a copy of the out-of-print Jaeger 29, which is full of gorgeous designs. Mainly I bought it for the completely girly ballet wrap on the cover…
…but there is also a cardigan with bunnies on it!! They’re worked with the dreaded intarsia, but I could maybe get away with just one bunny.
Pattern: Cisco by Berroco Design Team Yarn: All Spun Up Superwash Merino/Alpaca DK, approx ½ a skein in colour: Blackberries, handspun by Kai Needles: 3.25mm Addi circs
Another noggin warmer! Definitely the last one for a while, else the poor bump will have a warm head and be freezing elsewhere!
The pattern only came in one size and didn’t state what age baby it would fit, but compared to others I’ve made, I think it will probably be for *next* winter, which is a shame, but it is pretty big. Unless I have a giant-headed baby…
It was an interesting knit. The back panel is knitted first, then the ears picked up along the top before the front is picked up along the sides and top of the back, across the ears, so there’s no seaming to do.
Other than the obvious change to knitting it all in one colour, I also changed the garter stitch edging and ties to my beloved i-cord; now that I’ve worked out how to do an applied i-cord edging, I want to use it as much as possible.
The yarn was a birthday gift from Kai – ready spun, of course. It’s the first handspun I’ve ever knitted with, though I have a few skeins in my stash because of having very clever spinning friends. It was lovely to knit with. The slight slubbyness of the yarn actually evened out after washing, and the colours are my favourites, naturally, and I love the subtle variegation. I hope that with enough purple clothing, the bump will choose it as her favourite colour as well. Plus the hat is incredibly soft after blocking.
Again, it only took a couple of evenings to knit and was actually finished over a week ago. Good thing it wasn’t needed urgently, really.
Definitely the girliest baby knit so far! After seeing this pattern in the Classic Elite Yarns weekly newsletter, I thought it was adorable, but not one for a baby boy. So I queued it until I knew for certain one way or the other. And then when I did..!
The pattern is very simple and the hat only took a couple of evenings to knit, but I was held up by blocking and then needing to find matching ribbon. I think I could have just worked an i-cord instead, but then I think a girly hat needs a girly ribbon, doesn’t it?
Obviously Classic Elite Cotton Bam Boo is pretty impossible to find round these parts, but Baby Cashmerino is the same weight and it will make a nice snug autumn hat. It’s getting to be a favourite yarn of mine, though I’ve only used it three times, all for hats. I think I really need to buy a baby cardigan’s-worth, just to see if I still like it…
The other knits are all dry now, so once I have buttons and zips, more FO posts will follow and I will look ultra-productive!
There’s a lot of it to do. Since Monday’s post I’ve added another finished cardigan and a boring but useful tension swatch and finally it’s all laying out to dry on copious carrier bags. I washed them all in a few sample sachets of Soak that I bought from The Little Knitting Company. Like Eucalan, it’s no-rinse, which I like as it appeals to my lazy side. I should have known not to try any of the scented versions, though, as I now have a headache from the aquae scent, and the citrus one smells like loo cleaner… I do like the unscented one, though, so will probably buy a large bottle of it, and it only needs a tiny amount each time, so it’ll be pretty economical.
Now to keep small people and cats away from it all ’til it’s dry!
I do maintain that I am trying to use only stash yarn at the moment to clear out some of the oddments that I have which are just right for baby-size knits. It makes good sense to save my yarn money for more important stuff like nappies and other useful baby paraphernalia, and I’d also like to be able to shut the lids on the plastic boxes which hold my stash… It’s not an ideal scheme: I still choose patterns according to what I want to knit rather than necessarily choosing them according to the yarn have in my stash, which means that I have bought the odd ball of yarn recently. But sometimes something that I did months ago will also cause my stash to increase…
Back in early February, I pre-ordered two skeins of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi from The Woolly Workshop. Not surprisingly, I’d half-forgotten about it over the following months but then it arrived on my doormat and I am smitten.
I chose the Neptune Rainbow colourway as I plan to use it for manly socks for Mr B’s spoilt feet. He approves of the colours, too, which means I can’t use that as a reason to knit socks for me instead, sadly. It’s a gorgeous blend of blues, greens and purples which are a lot brighter than the photo on the Crystal Palace website, and he so wouldn’t have chosen it for his socks until I started knitting them!
The yarn has a 20% nylon content which should mean it wears well and it feels wonderfully soft and is named after an actual cat which is just silly and I love it. It does seem to be slightly unevenly spun, but I like that. I know there are a lot of comments on Ravelry about it being prone to knots and splitty, but hopefully this being a new batch will mean my yarn is unaffected.
Once the Having Hope socks are done, these are the next manly socks in line. Though they’d make wonderful Wimbledon knitting in plain stocking stitch, which might mean a bit of queue jumping!
The Tomten Jacket has its second sleeve now, so I just need to block it before I can work out the length of zip that I need. In the meantime, I’ve completed a couple more hats, one of which needs a ribbon. It’s probably the girliest hat I’ve knitted so far.
I should really stop the hat knitting now, but my reasoning is that it’s good to have a selection of sizes and as it’s going to be October when she’s born, she’ll need plenty of headgear over her first few months. I do want to knit some more cardigans, though, and some legging things, so will have to curb my urges for now. From experience, lots of thinner layers are going to better than buying a big snowsuit. DS2 was an October baby as well, and trying to carry him in a sling while he was wearing a snowsuit was like trying to carry ten pounds of baby-shaped marshmallows.
I’m also trying to plan it so that I have something moderately mindless but big to work on so that I have perfect Wimbledon-watching knitting. Last year I was knitting the Peacock Feathers Shawl which meant that I only really paid attention to the tennis on the wrong-side rows. I’d like something a little less complicated this year!
So, after I finished the manly socks, I pulled out my sock yarn stash to see just what I have available. I have it all listed on Ravelry, but having the sock yarns together in front of me is a lot more helpful. I have actually got a fair bit of wool/nylon blend yarn, though not many manly colours. Some of the yarns I probably won’t ever use for socks as I know from experience it won’t wear well, such as the cotton blend sock yarns. I wonder whether 100g of 4ply yarn is enough to knit a baby garment instead..?
Anyway, I eventually found some very boring grey Sunbeam St. Ives 4 Ply Sock Wool, and decided to use it to make Mr B another pair of Having Hope socks, to make up for the feltedness of the first pair I knitted him.
So instead of knitting another orange sleeve on the Tomten while on holiday, I knitted a toe up sock. The yarn is so boring that it needs a good pattern and being twisted into dozens of cables really works. It’s a lovely pattern that I really enjoyed knitting the first time round so it’s also no hardship to knit it again.
I’m knitting a size smaller than before as the previous socks ended up being a little baggy on the feet. After a brief in-progress trying on session, these are proving to be a perfect fit and are perfect when I fancy an change from knitting tiny baby stuff.
…bigger blob than before, but very uncooperative. The head is on the right and facing downwards. But I do know whether it’s a pink or blue one. Let’s put it this way – I’ll not have to worry about whether a knitting pattern is too girly or not..!
Mr B and I have tentatively chosen a name, but it remains to be seen if she actually suits it when she arrives. DS2 was going to be Archie until he came out looking nothing like an Archie and ended up being nameless for about three days until he was given an name which suited him far better.
I’d say it was good to be back, but I was very unwilling to come away from the tiny cottage in Devon we’ve been hiding in for the past week. This coming week is far too busy, with hospital and midwife appointments and me being prodded and poked and generally not having much fun. I’d rather be having another cream tea (not a photo of the one I had while away, but you get the idea of the gluttony that’s been going on!) or go up on Dartmoor and look at the views and enjoy the peace and quiet.
Anyway, as there’s little I can do about being a medical specimen rather than eating clotted cream, I may as well get back to my knitting. I didn’t get much done while I was away. I have started a couple of new projects which I will share later, but the Tomten Jacket is still without a second sleeve, which I feel bad about because I deliberately ordered the yarn before I went away so that I could finish it on holiday and then just find a zip. Oh well, I shall distract you all with a photo of some manly feet instead.
Pattern: Sock-shaped Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL, 1 x 100g ball in shade: #147 Needles: 2.25mm Susan Bates Silvalume
I finished MrB’s manly socks just before we went away, and the first chance for a photo opportunity was when he wore them for the first time on holiday. They’re just the basic plain sock recipe from the free Regia booklet that I don’t even look at now: as long as I note down how many rows I knit for the heel flap and the stitches worked for the heel turn, the numbers are stuck in my head. At least I though they were…
I found the booklet at the weekend because I have had a sock request from my sister to knit a pair for my new brother-in-law and as he has smaller feet than MrB (which makes me happy in a not-having-to-knit-ultra-long-feet sort of way) I needed to check what length they needed to be. Turns out I had mis-remembered the length before the the toe for the largest size and had been short-changing MrB a whole half centimetre (about 0.2 inches) for years. Seeing as it doesn’t seem to have affected him in any way, I’m just going to carry on. Just don’t tell him.
Also, since the last time I used them (which according to my finished project page, could be as long ago as May 2008!), I have lost one of the 2.25mm Silvalume needles somewhere. I can knit small socks on 4 dpns, but it was tough going with large numbers of stitches. I used a 2.5mm bamboo needle as a stop-gap, but I hate the awkwardness of having a different texture interrupting the flow. So I’ve ordered a set of KnitPicks (or KnitPro or whatever they are currently called over here) metal needles from eBay to see if they’ll do as a substitute, or else it means expensive postage costs to get another set of needles. And I’d probably pay them, too. I’d do much stranger things just to get needles that I love to use.
Smallest person has a cake sale at school tomorrow so I spent today making cookie dough and then cutting out and baking about fifty Daleks. Of course now I have fifty Daleks to ice in various colours. It’s going to be a late night.
On the plus side, I have my extra ball of Kauni and can now knit the second sleeve! I’m off on holiday next week, so will take the Tomten Jacket with me, along with the manly socks (about half a sock left of the pair to finish) and something else, just on the off chance that the weather is crappy and I get to spend a lot of time indoors playing with yarn!
If I don’t post before I go, see you all in a week’s time.
The hood and one sleeve of the Tomten Jacket have been completed and I’m almost at the point where I have the “fun” of zip hunting.
Now, I’m not usually *that* anal about matching colours when using variegated yarns, but that’s usually because the yarn is for socks and no one really notices them when they’re very far away from your eyes. But having odd sleeves Bothered Me, so despite having plenty of yarn left to knit the other sleeve, I’ve ordered more yarn so I can match the colours.
So in the meantime I had to do something else and I decided to do the i-cord edging instead. I’d planned to knit the border in Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift because it has a similar texture to the Kauni and comes in about a million colours. I spent a long time looking at the shade card and deciding which colour went best with all the colours of the jacket, before choosing one of the reds. And then when I found out that it would cost as much as the price of the yarn itself in postage to get one tiny 25g ball of yarn sent to me I thought “sod that” and went to my stash.
I have a couple of colours of Spindrift that I bought two years ago and have been helping bulk out my stash ever since. The Foxglove colourway is a sort of mottled purple and though I wasn’t convinced it would work, I decided to give it a go, figuring I could always rip it out if it looked terrible.
Well, it didn’t. It blends with the reds and blues, and contrasts with the oranges, yellows and greens really well. Possibly better than the red would have, so being tight-fisted clearly has its advantages at times.
The Applied I-Cord Edging is one of those things that I think are just impossible to get my head around until I actually do them and then it becomes blindingly obvious. A bit like figure of eight cast on, or Magic Loop! You begin by picking up stitches all around the jacket with the contrast yarn. And I mean all around – along the bottom edge, up the front over the hood and down again back to the bottom edge. It took ages. Then simply cast on three stitches with a new needle and transfer them to the pick up needle, k2, sl1, k1 (picked up stitch), psso and return the three stitches to the pick up needle and start over again. After the first few rows, suddenly a strip of i-cord appears attached along the edge of the jacket and it Looks Good.
Now all I have to do to bide my time until the extra ball of yarn appears is to sew up the sleeve seam..!
Oh, Donna asked how I was finding the yarn. It’s true it’s not as soft as something like Baby Cashmerino, but I don’t find it rough at all. It’ll be worn over clothes rather than next to the skin, too, so there shouldn’t be any problem at all. Plus any baby of mine is not allowed to be sensitive to wool.
Also just wanted to share another baby knit. Not knitted by me, though. Kai and Diane came to visit yesterday and we spent a lot of time knitting. Me with the jacket and manly sock, and them with mysterious and identical miniature projects. In the afternoon, I was presented with this tiny pair of baby socks. Tinier than the Hugs and Kisses Socks I knitted. Absolutely minute and newborn sized. They make good finger puppets for the moment, too.
Whoever came up with the phrase “I knit so I do not kill people” had it right. I’ve spent most of today on the sofa in my pyjamas with the Tomten Jacket, calming myself down with every row that I knit and feeling much better by the time I reached the hood. It makes sense, really. Murder is messy and I bet you can’t get decent yarn in prison.
Getting the colours to match up on the fronts after the divide for the armholes wasn’t hard, fortunately. As each strip is only 14 stitches, I used very little yarn for each section, so there was plenty of the green left over for the second part. For the back, which you can’t really see, I did wind on the yarn until I got to the next green section, though. Hoping the sleeves will start from a purple section to be a nice contrast to the green, but I can always help that along if it doesn’t work out…
It’s such a simple but clever pattern. The fronts and back are joined together now and the hood will grow upwards. Then there’s just the sleeves, which are picked up and knitted down from the armholes. The reserved stitches are included at the end of each sleeve row so that there’s very little sewing up to do at the end, and it’s such a quick knit! It’s been said many times before, but Elizabeth Zimmerman was a genius.
It feels like AGES since I bought some yarn. I think it was probably back in January, when I bought the New Lanark DK for my Deep V Argyle Vest. I still have the gift certificate for Stash which I got for my birthday and I must go and spend it!
Since deciding to wait and see what colour bump I was having before I started the Cabled Raglan Sweater, I’ve been itching to cast on for a larger baby project. I briefly considered knitting a shawl, and got as far as casting on before I realised that I really wasn’t going to use it and it was a big undertaking to then be put away in a drawer for evermore. Plus my grandma has my baby blanket needs covered already (knitting it in green so it’s nice and unisex!) so I went back to looking at cardigans.
Browsing the baby cardigans on Ravelry, I found so many cute versions of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Modular Tomten Jacket that I was won over. I have three versions of the actual pattern, though it apparently appears in about seven different places. I have a reproduction of the original newsletter pattern in The Opinionated Knitter, an updated version in Knitting without Tears and yet another version in Knitting Workshop. The pattern in TOK has the advantage of including notes by Meg Swansen. So the three combined are pretty much the “definitive” jacket!
The beauty of this jacket is that just using a different weight yarn and needles makes it come out to fit different people without changing stitch counts. In KWOT, EZ suggests using baby yarn for a newborn size, and looking through the finished ones, fingering/4ply seemed the way to go. I knew I wanted to knit one using a variegated yarn as the garter stitch is quite plain, and eventually after much umming and ahhing, I chose some yarn!
Kauni Effektgarn in the Rainbow (EQ) colourway. The swatch shows the colour variegation better than the photo of the actual ball; all the greens and blues are hidden inside. I got a whopping 160g ball, which should be plenty. I now need to find a nice coordinating yarn for the i-cord edging. Still debating whether to add buttons or a zip. Zips don’t scare me, but it’s such a hassle getting one as my local department store only stocks dress (closed end) zips – lovely range of colours and lengths, but all totally useless!
Either way, I won’t have to worry about that for a while. I’m just really looking forward to starting my first non-hat or sock baby knitting.
Poor Mr B. Not so long ago, he had half a dozen pairs of handknitted socks and was pretty much wearing them all the time (depending on the efficiency of the laundress… ). Then I swear they all got holes in at precisely the same time. Some were worse than others; I made him throw away both the pair knitted with Opal Rodeo Cotton and the Jules socks, as they were just more hole than sock, and tragically, the Having Hope socks had felted, which is the first time I’ve ever heard of a sock yarn with nylon felting, so perhaps it was the BFL content. Still gutting, though, when they’re the fanciest manly socks I’ve ever knitted.
So I promised I’d knit a few pairs this year to help build up his collection again, but then you all know what happened to my knitting mojo. I felt so guilty about his lack of socks that I even went out and bought a cheap pack of 7 pairs of plain black socks. Which means his feet are warm but not fetchingly attired and obviously I need to cast on something that isn’t a baby hat…
The yarn is the only skein of remotely manly yarn I have left in my stash that I know won’t felt or wear out in a matter of days. My old friend Trekking XXL comes to the rescue again! I’m planning to keep these for odd moments and travelling as they’re fairly mindless, though I also got a lot done this morning while sitting at my pc for two hours getting an antivirus problem sorted out.
I suppose the question now is whether the socks or the baby will arrive first..!
Pattern: Cupcake from Wee Woolly Toppers by Woolly Wormhead Yarn: Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK, 1 x 50g skein in colour: 27006 Needles: 4mm circs and dpns
For me, this is the epitome of a spoilt baby hat. The other small people were lucky to get a couple of acrylic baby knits each (sorry boys; but I’m making it up to you now, aren’t I?!) and already this wee one has Wollmeise, cashmere and now silk for their noggin warmers. I’ve had this one lone skein of DB Pure Silk in my stash since 2006 when I bought it on a whim because it was new and lovely and expensive (hence one skein). Ever since I’ve been trying to find a suitable project for it and then last week I realised that all these baby hats I was knitting used small amounts of yarn and wouldn’t it be nice to use it for something that is very unlikely to get drool (or worse) on it…
Cupcake is the first design from the book that I’ve knit, but I think I’ll probably knit most of them. They’re perfect for using up small amounts of stash yarn and the patterns are just right for my urge to knit “funny” hats. I love the bobble on top, which is knitted and then stuffed before sewing shut, as it really does make the hat look like a cupcake!
The pattern warns that the hat will need severe blocking because of the cables pulling inwards, but the silk helps the cables to stay floppy, and the hat ended up a little bigger than I expected, but as I said before, who knows what size head this little one will have?!
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Thank you all for the suggestions and advice (and lack of name calling!) about the Cabled Raglan Baby Sweater. I think you pretty much confirmed what I’d suspected: it will look fine for either a boy or a girl, but will need tweaking to make it more “boyish”. I think this one will have to wait until I know for definite one way or another how many buttons I need to sew on.
Pattern: Hugs and Kisses Socks from the Better-Than-Booties Baby Socks collection by Ann Budd from Interweave Knits, Summer 2005, some designs also available free from Knitting Daily Yarn: Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in “Pacific”, approx. 25g Needles: 2mm Susan Bates Silvalume dpns
I think it’s a very good idea to start this little one off on the right foot (ha ha ha) with some handknitted socks. I’d liked this pattern ever since the magazine came out, but it was back when my sock knitting skills were fairly new, and the idea of a short row heel and toe made me wibble a bit. But now I am a confident sock knitter and can just whip up any old sock I fancy.
And I really like the short row toe. It avoids the fiddle of grafting if you hate that sort of thing, and the stitches are just bound off using a modified 3 needle cast off which makes a pretty ridge at the end of the foot.
The yarn is the last few grammes of the squishy Hazel Knits yarn I used for Birch Leaf socks, though I have a very tiny amount still left. I do love this yarn, though it’s pricey for everyday socks, it makes nice gift knitting!
I’ve only just started baby knitting, but I do want to progress beyond hats and footwear (more about those soon!) and knit sweaters and cardigans. The trouble is that I won’t know the sex of the baby for another month (and that’s assuming he/she plays along and poses legs akimbo for the scan!) and I don’t want to knit anything that’s definitely girly or boyish.
Then this cardigan popped up as a free pattern on Knitting Daily:
The Cabled Raglan Baby Sweater is knitted with alpaca (swoons!) and is so cute that I really want to knit one for The Bump. But is it too girly? Even if I knitted it in a fairly neutral colour? The photo has it knitted in cream and even that looks a bit feminine to me.
I wonder if I’m just bigoted when it comes to knitting baby clothes and should just knit what I like and not care if it looks like it should be on a baby of the opposite sex. People are unobservant anyway. DS2 was often mistaken for a girl when he was little because he had curly hair and long eyelashes, despite him being dressed top to toe in blue and green clothes with pictures of cars and tractors and other manly vehicles on them. If he was a curly haired girl, why would I not have dressed him her in something pink and frilly? Gah.
Anyway, all opinions welcomed. Even “you’re just being sexist”.
It pretty much coincided with the nausea vanishing and starting to feel less tired (though I can still fall asleep at 9.30pm without any problems!) Progress was slow at first, but when I managed to finish a whole hat over the past couple of days I knew I was feeling more like the knitting fiend I used to be.
Firstly I have finished a couple of baby hats. I love funny hats. And it’s best to get the funny hat knitting done when the small people are too small to protest or even care what’s on their head. I don’t knit for the bigger small people without having a list of strict demands requests for the design and colour of said knitwear. But babies just want to be warm and actually I think I’ve started off fairly conservatively..!
Pattern: Top Down Bonnet With Anime Character by Adrian Bizilia Yarn: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, ½ x 50g ball in shade: 203 Needles: 3mm 80cm long Prym circs for magic looping (not my favourites, but bearable for a small project)
I loved knitting this hat. It was the first time I’d used the figure of eight cast on since I knitted Mr B’s Having Hope socks and it just goes to show that Learning New Stuff is Useful. The hat is really just a very big toe-up sock toe with a bit of shaping, anyway. It was a straightforward knit and I didn’t change a thing other than the eyes. The pattern suggests crocheting onto the knitting, but I tried this and it looked terrible so I gave up and went with a simpler option. I think my bunny looks sleepy and this will encourage the wearer to behave in a similar fashion (well, I can dream!).
The yarn was squidgy and lovely to knit with. Pleased that I managed to find a use for the odd ball of Baby Cashmerino I’d had floating about for a couple of years in my stash.
I didn’t like the needles, but for a small project, I could bear them rather than resorting to buying more KnitPicks circs for the kink-free tips.
This hat I actually finished first and I won’t say how long it took me, but it’s quite embarrassing for a tiny baby hat. *blushes* I had a good chunk of Wollmeise left over from the Swallowtail Shawl I knitted for my MIL, but not enough to make anything adult-sized, so this pattern was perfect. This probably makes this a very exclusive baby hat and I’m just asking for trouble with a fussy baby who will want cashmere for their first cardigan, but it’s too nice a yarn not to use!
The pattern was again very simple, which is what I needed to ease me back in to knitting. It’s bigger than the bunny hat, but as I’ve no idea how big the baby will actually be, I figured that knitting hats in various sizes was a good idea. Though obviously I’m hoping that he/she has a small head when it comes to the actual birth. They can grow all they want afterwards!
After feeling really ill back in late February, I eventually decided that I should really drag myself to the doctor because whatever it was, it was more than just a nasty cold. Before I went, I did a test just to check I wasn’t pregnant because I had all the symptoms and knew that would be the first thing she asked. But I couldn’t possibly be pregnant, I thought.
Which leads me to Exhibit A:
First scan, taken this afternoon. So much for not being pregnant. My due date is 16th October, so I’m currently only 11 weeks.
I’ve been feeling really ill for the past month, unsurprisingly. And my knitting mojo really has disappeared, which is a nightmare when all I want to do is knit tiny clothes. I’m hoping that in a few weeks I’ll feel less bleurgh and can start nesting and blogging again!
I’m sorry for the complete lack of updates. It’s partly because I haven’t knitted for almost a fortnight, which doesn’t give me much to actually blog about. Hoping that it won’t be long before I can pick up the needles again, though, and start writing more interesting posts.
Anyway, last Thursday was my birthday, so I have some yarny present to share. Other than a gift voucher from my sister for Stash in Putney, which I’m really going to enjoy spending soon, Kai sent me this beautiful handspun yarn – Merino/Silk laceweight and DK weight Merino/Alpaca. The DK weight will be a hat for next winter, I think, and the laceweight something triangular and nuppy.
(Sorry, Kai, I pinched your photos because mine don’t show the yarn colours properly.)
Diane gave me a soft and squishy pair of No-Purl Monkey socks, knitted from Malabrigo sock weight:
I’m going to be GOOD and not over-wear these and handwash them in the hope that they will last more than five minutes.
Hoping there will be a knitting update to share on here soon, but if not, there will be results of my voucher spending and I think everyone can always appreciate a bit of yarn ogling.
Thanks for the replies on my last whiny post. I’m still feeling really weird, but I dragged myself outside today as I had to visit the sorting office, do various mumsy things and pick up a couple of books from the library.
The selection of knitting books in my library isn’t great, but there’s the facility on the librarys website to search through the entire borough for books and have them delivered to your local branch for the princely sum of £1 each. So it was that way that I managed to snaffle the only copy of any Alice Starmore book in the area and whilst I was at it, I added Fitted Knits to the list as I’ve never seen it in any bookshop and wanted to have a flip through.
The Celtic Collection is gorgeous, of course. The yarns are all Rowan and probably all discontinued, and the styles of the sweaters all a bit dated, but that doesn’t matter. The patterns are knit in the round and some are steeked and have given me a big knitting thrill. So many cables and colours!
Fitted Knits is completely different. The patterns are all fairly simple – from my point of view, anyway – and none use any stranded knitting but they’re all knitted mostly in the round (woo!) and I like the shapes.
I hope my knitting mojo returns soon, as I’d love to knit several of the designs from these books, but when every time I look at the needles I get a headache, I know I’m really not well enough to start anything that needs thinking about.
. You can see all the patterns in the book here. There are hats with ears, so it was kind of calling out to me!
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