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!
Remember back when I told you that I was working on a Secret Design Project, and I hinted that it had something to do with this picture?
I can finally tell you what I was going on about. Way back in the spring, I was commissioned by Knit Picks to develop a set of special “shells” for Sheldon that they could sell on their website. They also asked me to rework the pattern so that it could be knit in Shine Worsted as well as Shine Sport (which is the yarn I used for the original pattern). And so I did that, and Super Sheldon was born. He looks just like Sheldon, only bigger.
Okay, this is where the pig comes in. In my middle school art class, we were required to make these clay pigs. Everyone’s pig followed essentially the same template, but we were supposed to customize our pigs so that every pig had a different outfit reflecting its unique character. There were basketball-playing pigs, ballerina pigs, and so forth. My pig, for reasons that I don’t remember, was dressed up as the Easter Bunny. No, really — see its little bonnet with bunny ears? And the eggs? And the Easter basket?
I saw my bunny pig while visiting my mom’s house at Christmas, and it gave me the idea to dress Sheldon up as other animals. Voila!
Knit Picks is selling the patterns and yarn together as a kit here. They also have some interviews with me and a very adorable photo gallery of the various animals in their natural habitats.
Which one is your favorite? I am very fond of the bat.
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Update: Knit Picks informs me that they have sold out of all the kits and will not be producing more. They will be releasing the individual patterns as free patterns starting soon (Feb. 2009), and they’ll have all of them released by spring.
Pattern: Basic top-down V-neck raglan sweater, à la Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top
Size: Maybe 9-12 mo.? 21″ chest, 6″ length to underarm, 4.5″ sleeves to underarm, 3.5″ V-neck depth
Yarn: Harrisville Designs New England Shetland (100 percent wool; 197 yds per skein), poppy and white
Yardage: 1 skein poppy; two-thirds skein white
Source: Yarns by Design, Neenah, WI
Needles: US size 3 (3.25 mm) metal circular and bamboo double-pointed needles
Gauge: 26 sts and 40 rows = 4″ in Stockinette stitch
Notes: I think this may be the first time I’ve made a V-neck cardigan, and I am struck by how thoroughly the V-neck transforms a simple cardigan into a prepster’s dream garment. The whole time I was knitting it, I kept feeling as though it needed a varsity letter or some pockets, just to complete the look. So cute!
This Harrisville Designs yarn makes a nice rustic fabric that I think will work well for an outer layer. Their colors are really saturated and fabulous. The poppy I used here looks like a red with orange in it in the pictures, but in real life it looks much more like an orange with red in it. At some point, I’d like to make an adult sweater with the worsted-weight Harrisville yarn. Something simple, like Elizabeth Zimmerman’s modified saddle-shoulder design, would really show off the color and wear well forever.
I think this is the last of the baby sweaters for a while — I’ve got adult sweaters on the brain again! Before too long, I’ll post an update about my progress on Neiman, which I’m making for a friend of mine. I finally finished the body up to the armpits and am feeling fresh interest as I begin the sleeves.
Despite the fact that I seem to be posting a good deal less frequently than I would like, I hasten to assure you that I am still knitting. My productivity has slowed, to be sure, but then everything in the land of knit blogging seems to have slowed down of late. Though I’m not one for navel gazing (except that this week, the 27th of my pregnancy, my navel is starting the process of turning itself inside out, which does indeed prompt some curious gazing, plus a good bit of poking), I do wonder why it seems that I’m not the only one whose knitting productivity has slowed.
At any rate, I am managing to crank out the baby knits, which has the enjoyable advantage of allowing me to use up odd skeins of things from my stash. I finished the second Carseat Blanket a few weeks ago but had yet to post about it because I wanted to do a photoshoot that involved a real baby, possibly in an actual carseat. When I went to babysit for my friend Rebecca this week, however, I forgot my camera and missed my opportunity. Thus, this picture is the best I’ve managed so far:
It would be a lot more interesting with a baby in it, no?
Unlike the first Carseat Blanket, which is done in a bulky alpaca/merino blend, I knit this with Nature’s Palette Fingering by Hand Jive Knits, a sock-weight 100 percent wool yarn. I double-stranded walnut and chocolate, using two skeins of each color, and I threw in some leftover mallard to make one row in the border. I’m very pleased with the outcome, which strikes me as sort of antique-y and understated, as well as gender-neutral. I’m hoping to write up the pattern soon and to offer it for sale on Ravelry. I plan to include directions for both weights of yarn.
I’ve also been cranking out a little stripey baby cardigan using New England Shetland from Harrisville Designs in white and poppy. I picked up these two skeins at half-price in the spring, and I think I’ll have just enough to do a cardigan to fit a six-month-old baby. It will probably have a deep band of white at the bottom to match the orange at the top, plus white button bands and collar. If there’s enough yarn, I’d like to do a pocket, too. But since I only have the two skeins, it will be a bit of an adventure trying to figure out such details as when to stop knitting the body and start the sleeves, as well as how much yarn I’ll have to save out for the button bands.
Oh, and if you haven’t already heard, Mel of Pipe Dreams and Purling Plans will be participating again this year in the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk, which will entail her traveling to Washington, D.C., with her husband, Tad, and then walking sixty miles in three days to raise money for breast cancer research. You can read about her personal reasons for participating in the walk here. Anyone who donates to sponsor her walk gets a shot at some of the fabulous prizes in her contest, which you can see here and here, with more to come. I hope you’ll join me in supporting Mel and this important cause.
Leona would like you to know that she has a new hat.
I keep telling her that the hat is for the baby, but she counters with, "Only if the baby is a girl. If it’s a boy, I get to keep it."
I have to admit, she does look awfully fetching in it.
Pattern: My own (made up as I went along)
Size: Newborn-ish
Yarn: Froelich Wolle Special Blauband (80 percent wool, 20 percent nylon; 210 m per 50 g), 2021 (off-white); Interlacements Tiny Toes (100 percent superwash merino; 185 yds per 50 g), reds plus
Yardage: 1 skein Froelich Wolle; about half a skein of Tiny Toes
Source: Yarn swap with my friend Alison, who got it from a thrift shop; Interlacements
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) bamboo double-points
Gauge: About 6.5 stitches and 8 rows = 1"
Notes: This hat was one of those spur-of-the-moment projects that nonetheless had a long gestation. I’ve been thinking about ways to incorporate the Swedish Weave technique into projects for quite some time, but while I have produced a swatch and an inch and a half of an elaborate adult hat (temporarily abandoned), this is the first actual project I have knit that uses the stitch.
I encountered Swedish Weave in one of the first two Barbara Walker treasuries (can’t recall which one). It is actually not even a stitch so much as it’s a technique, and even calling it a technique is a bit of a stretch, since it is dead simple. To work Swedish Weave, you knit your background color in stockinette stitch, and you float your contrast color alternately in front of and behind the knit stitch, creating a dashed line across the front of the knit fabric (and across the back, too, for that matter). If you follow the same front-and-back sequence on every row, you can line the floats up in columns, but Walker suggests that you stagger them, which is what I’ve done here in sets of three rows.
My goal for this hat was to show off the pretty colors of my Interlacements yarn on a plain white backdrop, and I feel that I’ve succeeded: Swedish Weave is a great technique for making it look like you’ve done something complicated with a handpainted yarn when in fact all that you’ve done is flicked it back and forth in front of your working needle as you went around.
I achieved the somewhat puffy shape of the hat by knitting a garter-stitch band, increasing by about 10 percent in the first row above the band, increasing again a few rows later, and increasing a third time, at which point I thought I had enough stitches on the needles. Then I knit straight up for a while until I started to run out of white yarn, finally decreasing on the same stitch every other row until I had just a few stitches left to pull into the inside. To tell the truth, I put all those increases in because I was afraid the hat would be too small without them. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that the outcome would be a lovely onion-shaped hat with a vaguely Continental air about it.
I figure that even if the baby is a girl, she’ll only be able to wear this hat for a single winter, and then I will return it to Leona, who really deserves something rakish after all her years of faithful, bald service.
Where has August gone? Seriously, I have not even had time to update the Thelma’s Knitting sidebar yet, and the month is half over. Yikes.
I will remedy that, and soon. I have a finished object to write about this weekend.
Meanwhile, some of you may be interested to know that I’m heeding your call for a Carseat Blanket pattern. Version 2.0 is well underway, and it is awfully pretty, if I do say so myself.
Also, have you seen Sheldon’s new togs over at Knit Picks? Brooke Higgins designed a fabulous set of "career outfits" for him so that he can play dress-up as a police officer, a cowboy, a beach bum, a superhero, or a pirate. All the patterns can be purchased in a kit from Knit Picks. Brooke has some great pictures over at her blog, DrunkenMonkeyKnits.
I know that these outfits must have taken Brooke ages to design and write up for Knit Picks, because I designed some outfits of my own for him — but they won’t be released until late September or early October, so that’s all I’m going to say for now.
People seem to love to knit blankets for babies. I myself have knit one baby blanket, and I more or less enjoyed the process. But it is a long process, and it’s hard for me to imagine taking on another baby blanket any time soon, especially as a baby shower gift.
Perhaps others agree with me that the baby blanket is a rather large commitment for a gift, since knitters always seem to be looking for the next big thing in baby shower gifts.
I may have found it. I present to you the Carseat Blanket.
The idea for the Carseat Blanket came to me when my friend Rebecca was kind enough to tote her newborn infant to my house along with gobs of maternity clothes that she no longer needed and had carefully selected to suit my personal taste. (Thanks, Rebecca!) While her daughter Madelyn was lounging on the floor in her carseat –
(perhaps you wish to see a picture of Madelyn wearing the dress I knit for her? yes?)
– while this specimen of chubby baby cuteness was lounging in her carseat on the floor, I noticed how very small the infant carseat is, and I thought, "Man, you don’t really need much of a blanket to cover up such a little baby!" Indeed, the bigger the blanket is, the more you have to fold it and tuck it out of the way so it doesn’t drag on the floor while you carry that stupid behemoth carseat around.
What the parents of a newborn really need, I decided, is an itty-bitty blanket. A blanket just big enough, say, for Leona. A blanket about two feet square. Voila!
The Carseat Blanket is the perfect project for the overworked knitting enthusiast and/or slightly weary pregnant knitter, since it can be knocked out in four or five hours of knitting time, tops, on biggish needles. It is also a good project for the lazy knitter, since you can cast on as many stitches as it seems might be appropriate, knit the middle part, and then just keep cranking out that edging until you run out of yarn. If you cast on too few stitches, so what? Your edging will just be wider and therefore cuter. Too many stitches? You’ll have a narrower edging, but it won’t matter, because rose stitch doesn’t require a border to lay flat in any event.
Can you tell that I’m inordinately pleased with myself?
Pattern: My own.
Size: 22.5 x 23.5 inches
Yarn: Aslan Trends Guanaco (60 percent alpaca, 40 percent merino wool; 145 yds per 100 g skein) in blue jeans and papaya
Source: Loopy Yarns, Chicago, IL
Needles: US 11 (8.0 mm) circular needles
Gauge: About 11 stitches over 4" in both rose and garter stitch
Notes: Rose stitch is one of my very favorite stitches. It’s much simpler than it looks: on the front side, you knit one into the stitch below, then purl one, and repeat these two actions all the way across. On the back side, you knit all the stitches. Then on the next right-side row, you offset by one stitch. If you want striped rose stitch, you change colors every other row. Through some bit of knitting alchemy, it ends up looking like this. Easy peasy, and it spreads like all get-out. The body of this blanket only has 40 stitches across (for about 18 inches of the width) and is about 90 rows tall, so it didn’t take much longer to knit than a little 40-stitch swatch would have.
On a negative note, I feel obliged to say that I only sort of liked the Guanaco yarn that I used for this project. I really enjoyed the colors (which David picked out), but the texture is a little problematic. According to the Ravelry page for the yarn, it is billed as "snuggly bulky soft Alpaca wool." "Just touch it and you will love it forever," the company urges, since it is "specially designed for softness and comfort."
I hate to rain on Aslan Trends’ parade, but if you want alpaca/merino yarn to be soft, you have to remove the guard hairs from the alpaca. Otherwise, you will have a very soft base yarn that is bristling with, well, bristles. It’s acceptable for an outer layer, but I wouldn’t want it against my skin, and I sure as heck wouldn’t put it directly on a baby’s skin. Maybe I just got a bad batch?
At any rate, this was such a simple and fun project that I’m thinking of making another in a solid color. I have two skeins of red cotton yarn that need a purpose. Anyone interested in the pattern for this? I could probably refine it in the next go-round and write it up for public consumption without too much difficulty.
My friend Rebecca had her new baby, Madelyn, yesterday. She is perfect and adorable. The dress will hardly do her justice.
Pattern: My own
Size: 3-6 mo. (16" chest, meant to fit snugly)
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Skinny Dyed Cotton (100 percent cotton; 150 yds per 65 g skein) in mallard and maize
Yardage: 140 yds mallard, approx 100 yds maize
Source: Jimmy Beans Wool
Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) circular needles
Gauge: 5.5 sts and 8 rows = 4" in stockinette stitch
Notes: Since Maddy is a summer baby, I designed this with the image in my mind of her hanging out on a pretty summer’s day by the inflatable pool, watching while her big sister splashes around in the water. I think it turned out pretty cute, given that I pretty much made it up as I went along.
I cast on provisionally for this dress and ended up knitting in both directions, first upward until I had finished the tube for the top, then downward for the skirt, and then upward again to make the straps. This method allowed me to (a) cast on an almost random number of stitches and knit for a while before deciding how many I needed to decrease for the top and (b) use up as much yarn as possible for the skirt part without running out.
I like the Skinny Dyed cotton okay — the colors, in particular, are just lovely — but it’s sort of a strange yarn. It seems to be made up of about a million teensy strands of cotton plied together with very little twist, and this means that you have to be careful to catch them all on every stitch. If you miss even one strand, your fabric will show it. Nonetheless, with pointy needles and in stockinette, this was not a big deal. I’d use it again for a baby garment.
Onward to the next baby knit! I have a little sweater in the works to use up leftovers. Stay tuned.
New ideas are being hatched here at Ruthless Knitting. Maybe it’s because spring finally seems to have arrived, or maybe it’s just that my pesky Secret Design Project is nearly finished, but I have knitting excitement percolating in my brain for the first time in what seems like a long time!
To go with it, I present to you a new swatch:
I’m working on a design that will combine these two colors, with a patterned intarsia pattern inset between plain stockinette. The maize-colored part looks sort of interesting in the picture, as if I had come up with some sort of elaborate design featuring both lace and cables, but in fact I was just experimenting with different patterns. The bottom is a variation on feather and fan, but I didn’t think it was open enough to work for the project I have in mind. The top is supposed to be staghorn cables, but I messed up the pattern several times, producing both something that looks like a mean owl and one cable that sort of reboots partway through. No matter — I got the information I wanted from the exercise, which is that I like the cable and the needle size (US 5) and that the overall plan will probably work. Now I just need to figure out some measurements, and I can get moving on something new. Yay!
Tomorrow, I’m headed to Neenah for the Midwest Masters conference, where I will take an all-day socks class with Lucy Neatby. On Sunday, I’ll take an afternoon class on brioche stitches with Janet Szabo. While I’m looking forward more to the second class, I am definitely interested in finding out what Lucy’s class will be like. I’ve never actually taken a knitting class before, and I understand that she is an excellent teacher. I’m looking forward to learning new things and getting lots of great ideas.
When one has been working on a commissioned design project for several weeks and is thoroughly sick of it, it turns out that there’s nothing more thrilling than knitting a little bit on a plain old stockinette sock. The allure of the Shiny and New can be powerful, indeed.
I’m still not quite finished with my Secret Design Project, but having something different to knit a few rows on now and then is really taking the edge off. And I’m pleased to have a project on the needles that I can blog about!