Lighted Window

Because of the Buttons

I saw these little Peter Rabbit buttons in a store, at least a year before I even was pregnant, and of course they had to come home and be turned into a sweater at some point. This is that sweater.

 

As usual the baby grew a little faster than the sweater... (it was a little too small when he was 9 months old). But I love how it looks all the same. Garter stitch is very stretchy and forgiving.

And when I make the next one (which is inevitable -- it's a great sweater), I'll make sure to bind off the button band more loosely. I worked applied I-cord all the way round, which makes a very neat finish, and for the longest time I thought the I-cord was shrinking the hem. Nope. It was the bind-off underneath.

 Both this sweater and the BSJ for Nora were stashbusters, too. Yay!

BSJ, 3-season version

That's not a very clever title, but I'm a little rusty.

Raveled here, the classic Baby Surprise Jacket is interpreted in a soft spring palette and an even softer cotton/rayon blend (Berroco Touche). This was a new-baby gift for our littlest neighbor, Nora, born at the end of June. (Sweater delivered while it still fit. I just haven't written it up till now.) It came out considerably larger than the "newborn" BSJs I made for John this past winter, though the gauge was only larger by 1-2 stitches per 4 inches. I am kicking myself for not measuring gauge on the other 3 BSJs before they went out the door. (A common oversight.)

It was a treat to knit up something girly-looking for a change, though in all fairness most of the things I've knit John are very gender-neutral.

I did not work out the stripes very well ahead of time, just sort of jumped in and crossed my fingers. They came out all right but next time I will work the stripes out backwards from the button band, so that the buttons are centered on the band (oops).

Two Hoots (14 actually)

(Must post February knitting before April rolls in, arrrrghhh...)

This sweet little hat reminds me of a beloved children's book, Two Hoots in the Snow, in which two somewhat daft owls "corrected" each others' misunderstanding of that white stuff falling from the sky. (My favorite theory: the big white owl up in the sky was shedding.) I hope to meet this book again someday in a box from my parents' house...

And because 9 cabled owls weren't enough for one month, here are 5 more:

 

This was my Vestuary project, and for a while it lived next to the glider in John's room and I would knit on it while he snoozed in my arms. The pattern is the Owl Baby Vest by Jodi Haraldson. I did have to tweak it a bit (the pattern seems to be off-center, changes are in my project notes on Ravelry. It does seem to correspond well to a "standard" 6-9 month baby sweater, so that's good. (Mind, most babies wear these around age 3 months... John is no exception.)

The hat uses an almost identical cable pattern for the owls; it's written up as Who? by Sarah Amoroso. It is now (I hope) warming the head of a coworker's little boy, Collin.

As soon as the vest was done I cast on for a little blue sweater, also for John, for my March project. I don't think that will get done by tomorrow evening as there are two sleeves and a few more rows on the body to do. (Those few rows are bona fide "black hole" knitting as I knit on the body all evening yesterday and every time I measure it there is half an inch to go.) It's a tidy little sweater though, all logic and smooth sailing, and I'm looking forward to posting (and using!) it.

Blink and You'll Miss It

"It" being the magical, tiny window of time in which your child fits into something you really want to see him or her wearing.

My fault for wanting to add a hood to the BSJ, really. The sweater was done (ignoring a few loose ends and missing buttons) and too large when John was born -- and then the finished hood is nearly as large as the sweater itself -- and boom, outgrown well past getting away with a few rows added to the cuffs and hem. Guess this is destined for a sibling.

I'll be finishing it up before February 1, anyway, without further moping. I've been inspired by a handful of things: NaKniSweMo'09; Vestuary; the silly amount of yarn and an equally silly number of patterns I've acquired, all with good intentions; the cute little guy in my lap who still doesn't have any handknits from his own ma. So I will attempt to complete 12 knitted tops in the year 2009. True to form, though, I'm bending the rules to include baby sweaters, vests, and the BSJ I cast on last August (hell, I'm starting this thing with two days left in January, why not).

Fortunately this won't require much money as I've already purchased yarn for, or have stash yarn that would suit, these patterns: (heck some even have swatches already)

• Isabella
• Cardigan For Merry
• EZ's RibWarmer
• Sunrise Circle Jacket
• Ultimate Gift (hell no I didn't buy cashmere -- and I probably won't do this one)

and I have enough Falk for a stripey baby sweater, and enough Cascade Cotton Rich DK for a little cabled vest.

Wish me luck! :) If nothing else it'll be a chance to try some new things and learn a bit more.

Icebound

Ice isn't the only reason I've been virtually silent the last month... but that's for another post (observing chronological order)!

We had our first good snow when I finished up this Christmas gift, just in time for its photo shoot. Just a couple of inches. I guess that would be around December 15. (Why is the snow pink? I don't know. It was 10 AM.)

This is the Ice Queen cowl from last winter's Knitty. The minute I saw the pattern, I knew how well it would suit my mother-in-law. I finished it just in time to ship out for Christmas (and only because I took the week before baby's due date off from work).

Here's a detail -- I love the beading pattern:

To me, Kid Silk Haze is not the crack some people make it out to be, but it was pleasant slipping through my fingers. I don't recommend knitting it on Denise circulars, though. Actually I don't recommend knitting anything on a Denise circular shorter than 18", as the needle tips don't want to meet at a comfortable angle. So it probably has very little to do with the yarn.

On the 19th, we settled in for three days of snowstorm. Since then it's snowed every week, and frozen hard. When I went to take out the compost the other day, I slipped on the crust -- too thick for my weight to break through -- and fell pretty hard. So in a sense we are a bit icebound until the weather warms up (no sign of that happening this week!)

BSJ Bonanza

BSJ = Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman

What can I say about the BSJ that hasn't been said already?

First you knit up a weird hexagon, akin to nothing encountered in high school geometry... then you fold it a particular way, and poof!

Add a couple of seams along the shoulders, and a few buttons, and you have a very cosy and addictive baby jacket.

These were my "traveling knitting" from August through October -- well, alright, they were my only knitting except for a few desultory sock rows. They went to Alaska, Buffalo, hockey, Girl Scout meetings, friends' houses, everywhere but work and church. They are surprisingly quick to knit, in addition to their surprising topologies.

Made for, from top to bottom, Tara Shriram Fisler, our baby-still-to-come (that jacket is waiting for a hood), Liam Johnston-Worthen, and Landon Halcomb.

That concludes the baby-knitting for a bit :) Unfortunately all the WIP are Christmas gifts, so I can't post those just yet! And the main WIP, though not strictly for Christmas, isn't in a photographable location ;)

He and She Hats

The third (I think) Marsan Watchcap I've knitted, and just as satisfying as the first.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight - Midsummer Night
+ size 2 DPNs
+ the adult pattern (89 st cast on)
-------------------------------------------------
one very cozy and stretchy baby cap.

Leafy Baby Hat, using Lion Brand Baby Soft, which feels very un-soft now that I've gotten used to merino wool!

This was somewhat less satisfying -- the brim absolutely refuses to stay folded where it's supposed to. I blame the reverse stockinette section (is this an appropriate place to lay blame?) ...it's extremely rolly. The leaf edging is pretty cute, though.

These hats were knit for coworker's babies, Owen and Ava, this summer. Odd fact about the leafy hat is that I cast on for it in St. Louis, and finished it in Seattle a few hours before I arrived in Anchorage. (Not odd at all that there were a couple of months in Massachusetts in between the cast-on and bind-off.) So this hat saw the East Coast, the Midwest, California, the Pacific Northwest, and various bits of Alaska (from inside my suitcase anyway), before it ever saw a baby.

And now, there are pies to be baked and that sort of thing. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Tap tap...

Is this thing still on?

There's a bumper crop of babies this year! Ours is due to arrive sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and he or she has been preceded by approximately one a month starting back in May. Here's a a big hearty welcome to Quintin, Owen, Ava, Liam, Landon, and Tara!

A warm welcome, too. The onslaught of babies has meant a lot of knitting -- at least in fits and starts (there's been a lot of bedroom-painting, gardening, and general home improvement going on around here too). In chronological order, then:

 
Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap (sorry about the hideous lighting)

This was a fun knit, although the smallest size came out a bit too small for a newborn. (No I didn't check gauge, it's a baby hat... but I will definitely knit it again in a larger size.)

To go with the hat:

 
High Energy Baby Socks -- also fun, simple, and destined to reappear. They have a knitted-in hem at the top, which I had heard of before but not yet implemented. Straightforward in both concept and execution.

I'll be posting more finished projects, and a few unfinished ones, this week. If TypePad's new (to me) editor doesn't drive me absolutely batty first. All this autosaving is slowing it way the hell down, worse than typing on a Commodore64.

Yarn Science (or Engineering)

Here I am at work, reading the technical program for the IEEE Sensors 2008 conference, when one of the papers jumps out at me:

Automatic Yarn Characterization System

Surely my eyes deceive me, "Yarn" should be "YARN", an acronym or something. But no:

"This paper presents an innovative, low cost, portable and high-precision yarn evaluation tester, entitled YSQ (Yarn System Quality), for quality control of yarn characteristics under laboratory conditions. It presents a modular format, which can integrate simultaneously yarn hairiness, mass, regularity and diameter measurements. The quantification of yarn hairiness and diameter variation (with a sampling resolution length of 1 mm), is carried out using photodiodes; the diameter characterization, based on samples with of 0.5 mm width, uses a linear photodiode array; the measurements of mass variation, based on samples of 1 mm, employs a parallel plates capacitive sensor. In the YSQ measurement parameters based on optical sensors, a coherent signal processing technique with Fourier analysis is used, to obtain a linear and consistent output signal variations. A comparison between results of the YSQ and a commercially available solution is presented."

Apparently Vitor Carvalho of Universidade do Minho, Portugal, and his colleagues have been working on this problem for a few years. There's a 2006 paper up on IEEE Xplore if you have access.

Keep Those Babies Warm

Booties for Miss Gracie Dow, born towards the end of February. While I love the look of the booties, I have some serious beef with the construction. Something so small and knit-in-the-round-able shouldn't require so many seams. I reduced the number of seams from the pattern, but still. If I do them again, I'll probably knit the strap-band first and then pick up stitches from it to knit the rest of the shoe.

This, while a much longer do, was inherently more satisfying.

It's a large baby afghan, crocheted in Lion Brand Baby Soft, begun last January and finished last month. (There was a 10-month hiatus in there.) That photo shows it folded in half. I think I will leave out the bobbles in the future, but overall the ripple pattern was very relaxing.

Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern. The picture doesn't show it well, but for half of the white sections, I used glitzy (pompadour?) Baby Soft, and for the other half, I used plain white. Just to mix things up a little.

This will probably be donated to the Lowell Wish Project or to Project Linus. While everyone I know seems to be pregnant right now, the combination of probable girls, "please no pink or blue", possible twins, likely deluge of afghans from other relatives, etc. means I'll be making something else for each of the babies.