Ruthless Knitting

. . . 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.

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!

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.

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.

—–

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.

Welcome to the new Ruthless Knitting! If all went as planned, it looks almost exactly like the old Ruthless Knitting, but at a new web address. This may be exciting only to me, but I’ll take it.

Okay, on to the good stuff. I have finished a baby kimono, and lo, it is cute. (Apologies for the rather sub-par pictures: I had to send my good camera in for repairs, and I didn’t have the skills to take non-blurry pictures with my brother’s camera, which I borrowed for these photos.)

Pattern: One-Piece Baby Kimono by Cristina Shiffman for Mason-Dixon Knitting

Size: Newborn-ish (16″ chest, 4″ to underarm, 5″ sleeve to underarm)

Yarn: Blackberry Ridge Wool/Silk Laceweight (25 percent silk, 75 percent wool; 350 yds per 2 oz. skein) in Deep Red for body, held double; leftover Kona Superwash sock yarn for I-cord

Yardage: 1 skein, slightly over 2 oz.

Source: Yarns by Design, Neenah, WI

Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) bamboo straights for body, US 3 (3.25 mm) bamboo double-points for I-cord

Gauge: About 21 sts and 26 rows = 4″ in St st

Notes: When I had about two inches left of knitting to do on the teensy sleeve of the orange-and-white-striped baby cardigan, I was struck by a strong urge to knit something — anything — else. So I whipped up this little baby kimono as a gift for my friend Martha’s baby, who was born preterm and therefore can be expected to be small enough to wear it for much of the winter.

I modified the pattern slightly because I thought the garter-stitch version would be too thick for my taste. Instead, I used garter stitch only for an edging and kept the rest of the sweater in stockinette. I followed the directions for yarnover increases because I like the little line of holes this makes along the front, and I omitted sewing on two ribbons, choosing instead to do a single I-cord tie in a contrasting color.

It wasn’t until I had knit about two-thirds of the sweater that it occurred to me that one skein of laceweight yarn might not actually be enough to get the job done. As it happens, I had enough yarn to finish the body — just — but not enough to seam the sweater or to make the I-cord ties. Thankfully, I had some nice deep red leftover Kona yarn in my stash that I used for the ties, which I think gives the sweater a little something extra special.

(Interestingly, when I made a Baby Norgi sweater for Martha’s firstborn, I came so close to running out of yarn that I had to use the little leftover bits from weaving in the ends to finish the second sleeve. Something about knitting for Martha makes me improvident, it seems.)

All in all, this was a fun and simple pattern, and I can see why so many hundreds of these kimonos have been made.

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.