Ruthless Knitting

Last month, rather than tackle any of the numerous projects lurking around the house that need to be completed–a post for another day–I began the Hemlock Ring Blanket (chart on the Rainey Sisters blog). I’ve been attracted to this lovely blanket since I first saw Jared Flood’s version back in 2007, but not being a big blanket knitter, I needed a suitable excuse to make it. When my brother and his partner of many years got married last September, it came to mind as the perfect wedding gift.

Though I’m not doing anything original here–just following the pattern, using the specified Cascade Eco Wool–I am finding the process of making the blanket very satisfying. It was fun to zoom through the central motif, watching the leaves take shape. Once you get through that part of the pattern, you just alternate four rows of knitting round and round and round with one row with clusters of decreases and bunches of yarnovers. Easy peasy, and the result is beautiful. I’m only managing a row or so a day, but given how little I’ve been able to knit this past year, any progress is welcome.

The only trouble I have run into is with the needles. I was using Denise interchangeables, since I happen to have a 52-inch cord for those, but I was really loathing having to keep scootching the stitches around the cable several times per row in order to get them onto the needle to knit. Not only do I dislike the act of pausing to scootch and the scootching itself, but if I don’t scootch carefully, sometimes the needle detaches from the cable, dropping a whole bunch of stitches and making me batty. I decided to abandon the Denise needles and buy some longer cables for my KnitPicks Harmony needles, which have a much skinnier cable and don’t generally require scootching. I made the switch last night. Here’s hoping that the amount of scootching I have to do is dramatically reduced.

Well, hello there. It’s been a while. Some people seem to be easily able to manage wrangling a baby, working, and continuing to knit, but apparently I am not one of them. No matter. James is thirteen months old now, and I’m finding a little bit of time here and there to knit. And for almost the first time since he was born, this morning I am finding a little bit of time to blog about knitting. Let’s resume, shall we?

Over the past thirteen months, I’ve had an opportunity to make some first-hand observations about baby knitting–which baby knits are worth the effort and which aren’t, what comes in handy and what doesn’t. Here’s my list.

(1) Hats are great. A newborn, particularly one born in the winter, needs quite a few hats (at about 14-15″ circumference), and they are quick to knit and adorable to behold. I made half a dozen before James was born, used and enjoyed them all, and then handed them down to a friend. These two were my favorites.

For an older baby, hats are still awesome. If you make them big enough (say, 16-17 inches around), they’ll fit for a large part of the first year. Lightweight, machine-washable hats come in handy for spring, fall, and winter. I got a lot of use out of these two, the first of which I actually knit for my nephew but got back as a hand-me-down.

(2) Blankets are barely worth the effort. I used the Carseat Blankets that I made for James quite a bit, both to wrap him up as a newborn and to tuck around him in the carseat, but I found that if I wanted a full-size blanket, I wanted one made of washable fabric, usually to lay down on the floor underneath him. I think in the future I’ll stick to teensy blankets for new moms.

(3) If you’re going to make a sweater, make a V-neck cardigan or a vest out of lightweight yarn. The sweater that I’ve put on him the most is one that I knit out of wool sock yarn. Not only does it make him look like an adorable old man, but it’s also very functional. It makes a good second layer, and the V-neck and short, wide sleeves keep the sweater out of his way. It doubles as a jacket in the spring and fall.

I haven’t actually knit James any sweater vests, but I did recently buy one to use for layering. We keep our house at 65 degrees during the day, and he usually needs something on over his long sleeves and pants to keep his hands warm. A full-size sweater or hoodie sometimes seems like too much, and that’s when I want the vest.

(4) Pants are adorable and warm. My mom knit James some brown wool pants in a pretty heavy yarn (worsted, I think, but maybe DK), and I put them on him a lot. They’re warm, soft, and seem comfortable. I wouldn’t want a whole wardrobe of wool pants for him, but I like having the option. I think the pattern she used is from Chic Knits for Stylish Babies.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Your mileage may vary. Hope to be back soon, posting about one of my works in progress!

. . . but at least the baby is making the most of his knitwear. See?

This top was a long, long time in the making. You may not recognize it, because it used to be orange. I won’t revisit the entire tale of its genesis, since it is already well-documented, and my memory is pretty fuzzy at any rate. The short version is that this garment started out as a copy of an Anthropologie sweater, veered off into disaster when I (a) ran out of yarn and (b) couldn’t figure out how to get the bottom portion right, and (c) sat in my unfinished pile for almost a year while I refused to contemplate it.

Luckily, all that time off took the sting out of my disappointment, and I was recently able to unearth the project, unravel the hideous bottom portion, wash and reskein the yarn, and figure out a new plan for finishing. I ditched the flowy part altogether in favor of a fitted look. Whereas the bodice portion was knit flat from side to side with purled ridges every inch or so, the bottom is picked up and knit straight down in a wide ribbing that lines up with the ridges. After futzing around with how to finish off the bottom edge, I finally settled on a purled ridge that curls under.

The result is far from perfect, but it is at least better. And it would be wearable, too, if I didn’t spend my days caring for the sort of baby who will spit up on it at the first opportunity. I think I’ll put it away until next spring.

James is ten weeks old as of yesterday, and I have in fact managed to knit a few times in the last several weeks — with him sleeping in a wrap on my chest, naturally, as he is a Baby Who Does Not Like To Be Put Down. And that is okay. He is a little baby, so he gets to dictate the terms. At any rate, the Derivative Top (see teensy picture in the sidebar) is finished except for weaving in the ends and blocking, both of which are on my to-do list. Expect a finished object post sometime in the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, I have acquired another vintage Bernat Christmas stocking pattern, this one with candles, trees, and wreaths on it. I got permission from Bernat to post it on my site, so I have added pattern, charts, and tips, all accessible via the Vintage Stocking Patterns link in my sidebar. Enjoy!

Though I haven’t knit a stitch since James was born, I do have something to share with all my blog friends this Christmas — a finished pattern for the Carseat Blanket, offered free for your knitting pleasure. You can access it via this link or through the Designs link in the sidebar. It’s offered as a downloadable PDF. Enjoy!

This year, I’m profoundly thankful for my son, James Cormac, who was born at home on Monday, November 24, 2008. He weighed 7 pounds, 14 ounces at birth and is 19.5 inches long.

He already makes an excellent knitwear model. We couldn’t be more delighted with him.

After I finished the February Lady Sweater, I got it into my head that it would be fun to knit a baby hat. So I pulled out a bag of miscellaneous partial balls of DK-weight superwash wool and got to work.

Next thing I knew, the bag of leftover yarn was empty, and I had four baby hats. Turns out the suckers are kind of addictive.

Oh, and I also made a pair of socks to match the blue and green striped hat before deciding that the DK-weight socks were bigger than I wanted.

These are all the handknit hats and socks I have made for the baby to date.

Oh, and I also knit those three baby sweaters . . .

And my mom knit this Baby Surprise Jacket and two matching hats (which I think of as the Sherpa Outfit) . . .

Bringing the grand total of Baby Surprise Jackets to three, as I received this beautiful multicolored and red one from my knitting friend / textile artist Alison . . .

I think the Knitting Trousseau is complete, don’t you?

Pattern: February Lady Sweater (an adaptation by Pamela Wynne of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s February Baby Sweater)

Size: 37″ bust, 16″ length and 13″ sleeves to armhole, about 9″ raglan seam

Yarn: Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted (100 percent wool; 245 yds per 100 g skein), color 133 (blue fog)

Yardage: About 800 yards (3.25 skeins)

Source: Yarnzilla

Needles: US 8 (5.0 mm) circular needles

Gauge: 16.5 stitches and 32 rows = 4″ in garter stitch, blocked; lace repeats are about 1.75″ wide and .75″ tall

Notes: This sweater took me six weeks to complete. Given that I spent much of my free time in those six weeks lying on the couch reading detective novels and vampire books, I think I can safely say that in normal circumstances it would have been a quick knit.

I ended up modifying the pattern a bit to suit the yarn I chose, which knit to a slightly larger gauge for me than the 18 stitches over 4″ called for in the pattern. I cast on 83 stitches for the 35″ size and then just kept going with the garter stitch raglan increases until I had 168 stitches at the armholes, omitting the eyelet row altogether. The sweater looked awfully small while I was knitting it, but it blocked to more or less the size I wanted (whew).

I used some vintage mother-of-pearl buttons on the yoke, and I’m quite pleased with them. I may need to reinforce the buttonholes, which gap a bit, particularly at the bottom. But that’s easily done if it turns out to be necessary.

I enjoyed working with Nature Spun Worsted, which is a dirt-cheap workhorse yarn that comes in a huge number of colors. I think I spent about $15.00 on this sweater. Can’t beat that! The only drawback was that the yarn was rather smelly before I washed it. I suspect that’s not the fault of the online seller but rather a consequence of the fact that Brown Sheep mothproofs this yarn. I would rather not have my yarn dipped in mothproofing chemicals before I knit with it, but at least the smell went away with one washing.

I picked this pattern because I thought it would make an attractive maternity sweater that I will still be able to wear after the baby is born. And indeed, it is a nice maternity style, but it turns out that after 37 weeks of pregnancy I am somewhat weary of wearing things that button only over the chest and then drape fetchingly over the gigantic baby bump. Not that there are a lot of other style options to choose from — one may as well highlight the bump, since concealing it is a lost cause.

Still, as much as I enjoy the baby’s exploratory nudging from the inside, I look forward with pleasure to having a non-globular stomach again, even if it’s a bit worse for the wear. Last week I thought of a favorite pair of pre-pregnancy pants and was swept with a wave of nostalgia. Likewise, it is with pleasant anticipation that I look forward to wearing this sweater in the more standard, non-pregnant fashion. Meanwhile, it’s doing a nice job of pinch-hitting as maternity wear.

Is anyone out there interested in knitting Santa Claus Santa stockings like these for hire?

These stockings are made following the vintage Bernat pattern that I have on my website. Throughout most of the year, I get an inquiry every few weeks regarding whether I’d be willing to knit one of these stockings for pay. Now that Christmas is approaching, I’m getting a couple requests a week.

Knitting for money is not really my cup of tea, but I’m sure it’s somebody’s. If you’re interested in knitting stockings for hire, leave a comment to that effect and I will add you to the list of names that I give out to people who e-mail me. Then, if you’re contacted by a stranger about knitting a stocking, you can decide if you’d like to do it and can set your own schedule and prices. I encourage you to charge prices that value your time and skill appropriately!

In other news, I’m (gasp) almost finished with the February Lady Sweater. I’m hoping to wrap up the second sleeve soon and block the sweater tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to having my first finished object in a long time!