A former co-worker of Smokey's and former renter of our house had a baby over a year ago, and I promised her a sweater. While I knit it almost immediately, it sat... and sat... and sat... waiting for the arm seams to be sewn and a button added at the neck. I finally did that last little bit of finishing a couple weeks ago and mailed the sweater off to little Abby. Luckily for me, she is a tiny little peanut and will have plenty of room to grow into it.
Pattern:Baby Brights by Bev Galeska, heavily modified. Yarn:Valley Yarns Superwash DK (100% superwash merino): 25 light gray, 14 teal, 13 forest, 12 grass, 14 blue mist, 19 misty lilac, 09 wild rose, 06 burgundy. Colors are truest in the WIP photo, below left. Needles: Addi Turbo US#6. Mods:Asalways, I do the whole sweater in stockinette stripes, except for the edgings in garter stitch.
Progress continues smoothly on the baby sweater. I coerced En Esch into modeling it last weekend.
Clearly, En was entirely bored with my knitting and picture-taking. I told him to shut up and model or I would cut off the cat food supply.
He reluctantly and sullenly complied.
It is, of course, much further along now. I am done with the body and nearly done with the sleeves. Still need to find the perfect button. And perhaps a better model.
* * * * *
Smokey's knee replacement surgery that was scheduled for last Monday was rescheduled for March 3 because he had a URI that was not fully cleared up. I emailed the boys to let them know the status, which prompted the following email exchange.
Elder Son, the almost-doctor: Good. You don't want infected hardware. (He went on about how Smokey has several of the risk factors for post-surgical infection.)
Younger Son: I can provide my fridge for secure storage, if need be.
Elder Son: I also volunteer [Younger Son's] fridge.
It was surprisingly well-attended. All the tables were filled. I cannot tell you how many events of one kind or another that I have attended here in Polk Count where, counting me, there were fewer people than you have fingers.
My team was poised and alert and ready with answers.
Example of a question in the presidential trivia category: Which president was featured on the $500 bill from 1928 to 1934? (Click and drag to see the answer.)McKinley. Smokey knew that one.
Musical trivia: What two-person French musical group had a hit in 2013 with Random Access Memories? Daft Punk. Younger Son knew that one.
Science and nature trivia: What bird is this? (audio of a bird song) Cardinal. I knew that one.
Sports trivia: What year was the first SuperBowl and who was the quarterback of the winning team? 1966 and Bart Starr. Smokey knew the quarterback but was off by one year.
Events in 2013: Name the musician who died in 2013 and opened Woodstock with a two-hour set. Richie Havens. Smokey had to think about it for awhile, but he knew that one, too.
It was a lot of fun. We were ahead most of the night but ended up in second place.
One of Smokey's former co-workers and former tenant of ours had a baby in November, and Smokey suggested that I knit something for the new arrival. I was deep into other projects right then, but I dug in the stash and came up with an idea. That idea is #3, below.
Smokey, however, thought I should give the new mom some yarn and color choices. More stash digging yielded four possibles.
Yarn is 500+ yards of some heavy fingering weight merino that I won a million years ago in Cara's give-away to raise money for Heifer International.
Yarn is all Lang Jawolle sock yarn, except for the green ball at back. I had a brainstorm to hold two strands together and blend the colors to create a rainbow.
Clearly, this is not a baby sweater, but I thought I could use the same idea, stripes of various shades and tints of red separated by narrow bands of black.
The new mom chose the sweater hiding behind door photo #2, saying she loved the mental image of Baby Abigail in those colors.
I will use Bev Galeska's Baby Brights pattern, which I have modified and used for two previous babysweaters. It is knit from the top down, all in one piece, with no finishing except to weave in the ends and sew on a button or three.
I have used that pattern for a couple of baby sweaters and have another one in the queue for a baby born last week. The first one above is done in DK and the second in light worsted. Math is my business.
Any of the patterns in Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns and A Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters. As you may have guessed, I prefer to start with a basic pattern and do my own thing.
Next, the yarns, in no particular order. Frankly, I have not used a ton of different yarns and I tend to gravitate towards less-expensive ones.
Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. I prefer this to Cascade 220 because the worsted weight is slightly thicker. Haven't used the sport weight nor the superwash.
Noro Silk Garden. I have made several scarves and hats and even a pair of mittens from this, plus I have a sweater's worth waiting in the stash. It is endlessly fascinating. (This is NOT one of the less-expensive ones.)
Valley Superwash DK from Webs. This is the yarn I used for my striped raglan in #1 at the top and the first baby sweater above. It really is completely machine washable and dryable, but it doesn't feel plasticky to my fingers. Lovely soft, sproingy merino that is easy care -- perfect for baby projects. The superwash is important to me because I cannot convince myself that giving a new mother a garment that has to be hand-washed is a gift that will be appreciated.
Filatura Lanarota Pure Washable Merino from Smiley's Yarns. This is an inexpensive yarn that is totally machine washable. I raved about in last week's post about the cabled fingerless gloves I made, so I won't go on about it here. I prefer to make gifts for non-family non-knitters from superwash yarn because I cannot know what kind of care they will receive. (I can browbeat my children into proper care of their hand-knits.)
Tanis Fiber Arts Yellow Label DK. I have only knit a hat from this, but I loved the yarn, about which I said on Ravelry, "I loved this yarn. Merino, so no itch factor, but it still has a bit of the bite of real wool. It made beautifully 3D ribbing." Also NOT an inexpensive yarn.
Yarn: Lily Sugar 'n' Creme and probably some Peaches 'n' Creme, too. Needle: Addi US#7. Pattern: The ever popular Baby Bib o' Love from Mason & Dixon. I modified it so the neck strap is long enough to button in front. A knittng friend came up with that because she thought it was probably easier to put it on a toddler this way. Good thinking.
I used up odds and ends of SnC to make some dishcloths for my kitchen (no photos), then started to get a bit creative. I sent these four as a housewarming gift to a blogging friend who moved recently.
My cotton knitting may be coming to a close, however. The coarse yarn eventually makes a groove in my left index finger that gets irritated. Another bib or two, then I'll have enough in case of a baby emergency.
Note: I found this post in my draft folder, waiting for a picture of the socks. Finally took one.
At the beginning of the summer I came upon a pattern that begged to be made in profusion and sold for benefit of the local humane society, on whose board I sit.
Doggie poo bag dispensers.
Pattern here. Great fun to make and a good use of leftover sock yarn. I made 29, gave one to Matthew and Alex for Ser Percival The Energetic, and we sold...one at the county fair booth. I have hopes for better results at the September dog walk, an annual fund-raiser for the shelter.
Last winter I made myself a Noro hat that I like so well I made a scarf to match. My old Noro scarf was dark, which was fine with my old red coat but too dull with my current dark brown one. This scarf is a bit livelier.
The hat and scarf are gone now. A few days ago I got an email asking for something for a silent auction fundraiser for a local candidate whom I support. Not much time to knit right now, so the hat and scarf set went to a good cause. Now I'm wondering if I should recreate them or if I should move on to another scarf and hat for which I have half the yarn I need.
I made a pair of socks.
Please ignore the funny-looking ears on the toes.
Yarn: Online Supersocke Nepal found on eBay. Pattern: Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Socks. Needles: Addi US#0 (feet) and US#1 (legs).
And earlier this month I made baby hats for The Purple Project (or whatever it is called).
Knit Picks Andean Silk (discontinued) in hyacinth;
Knit Picks Swish DK in clematis heather (color discontinued);
ditto.
Still have two different socks OTN, frogged the cowl and need to cast on a different (easier) one for Alex. And that is what I have been knitting. (I wrote this on September 3. Alex picked out an easier pattern and it is nearly done. Photos soon.)
I haven't done a work-in-progress Wednesday in a coon's age. The time has come. Nothing you have not seen here before, but this IS purportedly a knitting blog...
Starting with the oldest, the Tappan Zee cardigan:
Only a little progress made on this since you last saw it. I have divided for the armholes and knit one front nearly to the bottom of the arm scythe but had to put this aside for the 3 projects below, most of which have a due date.
See what a tight crescent shape it is making? That is the result of the edge shaping -- a 2-stitch garter edge followed immediately on both RS and WS by a double increase. The pattern cautions against knitting the edge stitches too tightly but doesn't bother to explain why. Now I know: imagine a crescent-shaped scarf with one edge so tight the entire thing looks like a ram's horn that has curved around so far it has endangered the ram's brain. I fear I shall need to frog this and reknit with much looser edge stitches. Just glad I figured that out when I had only knit about 4 inches.
Next, the sweater for Ser Percival The Energetic:
Nearly the same progress on this one as the Tappan Zee; I am at the point where I need to divide for the arm leg holes. I have done the necessary math for the placement of the holes (no pattern for this one, just winging it) but haven't actually done the dividing. Given that Ser Percival has a very narrow waist that swells quickly to his impressively massive rib cage, I decided to do the increasing exactly like a top-down raglan seam, i.e., all in one place rather than evenly around the sweater.
You cannot tell from the photo, but the increases in the first couple stripes were done with lifted increases, and that caused the fabric to pucker slightly along the "seam". Then I switched to doing a YO in the non-increase rows and twisting that YO when I came to increase into it in the next row. This resulted in a much smoother fabric. (Duh. Of course it did; a lifted increase gives you no extra yarn for that increase, thus, it pulls in the stitch on either side and causes puckering. (I may have just discovered how to make this long-neglected WIP/UFO hang properly instead of drooping on either side of the line of increases at center front and back.) Percy's sweater is superwash so I was not sure if I could count on blocking to rectify the pucker; in a regular wool yarn it might not have been a problem in the end.)
Last is this little baby sweater for a co-worker's baby shower at the end of the month:
I am using the same pattern as I used for this baby sweater last year but rejiggered for DK weight. The yarn is Valley Superwash DK that I had left over from my own sweater plus the other colors in the same yarn that I bought and rejected. I love the Valley yarn; it is soft and squishy and sproingy and comes out of the washer and dryer looking exactly as it did going in (except, you know, clean). Machine launder-able is important to a new mom, imnsho...
The photo in the photo is the highly adorable Tulip sweater, much beloved of La Harlot; I am doing a similar stripe pattern but without the jigged edge between the stripes. The Tulip is a kit put together by Lettuce Knit in Toronto using Dream in Color worsted weight, a kit not available to me unless I drive to Toronto. (Hint: not gonna happen.) (Oops. I just checked Rav. The pattern isavailable.) I think my DK superwash sweater will be adorable, too. The stripe in progress is actually a dusty rose almost the same as the color in the rayon scarf visible at the left edge of the photo. My camera was not cooperating as well as I thought it should; it absolutely refused to flash for this one, and iPhoto could not correct the color well enough to make it accurate. Use your imagination, please.
btw, if you thought this post was actually a way for me to show off my knitting bags, you are absolutely right :-)
Big deal, you say. We all knit baby sweaters for our friends and relatives and colleagues, you say. It is just another opportunity to practice more of our favorite hobby, you say.
Yeah, but look at the invitation!
Kemoh, the proud papa, is one of Smokey's co-workers at the hospital. He and his wife are both from Liberia, and Kemoh is apparently a Big Man in the Twin Cities Liberian community. There is a Liberian community in the Twin Cities? Who knew? Not me...
A Liberian baby shower is not like the stereotypical American baby shower. Rather than a cute little afternoon get-together with games and cake and a bunch of women repeatedly saying, "Oh, cute!", it is a big, noisy, co-ed party to celebrate and welcome the new life. Kemoh had rented a hall and there were several hundred guests. Also please note that the party started at 9 pm and continued until 4 in the morning. Not that we were there until 4. We are too old for that stuff any more.
Kemoh had told Smokey that we might be the only white people there (we weren't), but that he would assign one of his friends with really good English to be our guide and explain the Liberian foods to us and translate anything that needs to be translated.
Kemoh was also a little surprised that we were coming at all. We say, What an experience! We wouldn't miss it for the world!
A little background: Smokey has helped Kemoh navigate the American system of commerce and save money a number of times -- where to have his car fixed, where to buy the necessary parts at far less than he might have paid elsewhere, what camera to buy (thank you, Consumer Reports) and where to buy it (thank you, Amazon). Kemoh was appropriately grateful, but even more, had told his friends about Smokey's help. Said friends were curious to meet This Strange American who had helped their friend, and on occasion had helped them as well through Kemoh, but who had no interest in profiting from the transactions himself. Thus, the invitation. (Smokey said to tell you that if he is ever in the Third World he hopes someone there will help him find the best place to buy yams and mangos and fresh fish.)
* * * * *
And now, the photos from the actual event. (Many are blurry because I didn't want to use the flash -- too intrusive. I think the blur enhances the festive feeling and shows how much movement and energy and excitement there was in that hall. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.)
The shower was held in the gymnasium of a neighborhood community center. The decorations were lavish.
Besides the tables shown above, there was another table seating about 20 people, all fellow hospital employees and their dates, plus another 50 or so decorated chairs around two sides of the edge of the room, plus the head table.
There was a DJ, but he was blurry.
His speakers were very large and his amplifiers very powerful. The music was very, very loud. We are getting very, very old.
Kemoh and Smokey:*
After a large number of guests had arrived, there were Christian and Muslim prayers and the MC (yes, there was an MC) introduced those who would sit at the head table. After each person was named and described, the DJ would crank up the music and the honored guest would dance his or her way from the entry to the head table.
They were often joined by others to dance them across the floor. The women in the blue t-shirts were the ones who organized the shower and cooked the food and served it and who probably cleaned up afterward, but like I said, we are too old for 4 am so I didn't actually witness that part.
Kemoh and his wife at the head table.
The food and drink were unfamiliar to us but delicious.
Vimto is very fruity and very, very, very sweet. Malta is not sweet, and very, very, very odd to our American palates. Some of the foods were hot and spicy (yum!) and some were not, but all were things I would love to eat again. Especially that triangular meat pie at the top right of my plate. That was my favorite.
There was a circle dance celebrating the new father and mother.
Our favorite moment, when Kemoh *listened* to his son.
* * * * *
That was the night of the ice storm that I told you about last week. Here is a photo taken on the freeway on our way home that night. I had plenty of time to take the photo, since we were moving at about 1 mph, max.
A school bus, apparently chartered by a men's group, had decided it wanted to be on a different but parallel freeway and attempted to cross the median. Didn't work; rear end got hung up. There were men wandering around the bus and looking confused. Duh.
A
* When I looked at the photos later on my computer, I found that I had captured some hijinks among the younger set. I cropped them out for the *official* portrait, above, but here is the original:
I put up yesterday's post, then realized I had forgotten the biggest project that I had just finished. Tonight Smokey and I are going to a baby shower, and this is what I knit for the baby boy who will emerge next month.
Yarn: Berrocco Vintage leftovers from the multicolored socks I made last winter. Colors are Douglas Fir, Chana Dai, Tidepool, and Black Cherry. The yarn is 50% superwash wool / 50% acrylic, so it is warm AND machine washable, not to mention fuzzy and soft. All that seemed important to me in a baby garment. Needle: Addi Turbo US#6. Pattern:Baby Brights, 12 month size.
This is a great pattern for a top-down raglan; I quite like the way she used short rows at the neck. The pattern has a pattern stitch on the lower part of the sweater, but I thought the stripes were busy enough so I did it all in stockinette.
Did I knit while we were on vacation? Why, yes! Yes, I did. Thanks for asking.
You may remember I planned to knit a Norostripedsweater during the month we were gone.
Didn't happen. Never even took that particular knitting bag out of its cubby in the van. Starting that sweater was contingent upon finishing the multicolor striped raglan that I had been working on since February. When we left home, that (top-down) sweater had a yoke, both sleeves, and three or four inches of the body. I kept sloggingplugging knitting on it all during our trip. Here it is today, rather rumpled from having been stuffed into a traveling knitting bag for the month of June and most of July.
It's nearly done, isn't it? Maybe getting it out of its bag and seeing how close I am will inspire me...
I had started a pair of socks as my carry-along knitting before we left, but I was not enjoying them. The Knit Picks Felici sock yarn, while lovely soft and in nice colors, was also loosely plied and therefore splitty. There was progress made on the socks, but it was s-l-o-w.
They are now [finally!] finished, however.
Somehow, even though I knit them on the same number of stitches (60) and the same size needle (US#0) as always, they don't fit well. See how the end of the toes sticks out from the end of my foot? That is because it is too narrow. Such nonsense is probably the result of my not liking the yarn; disgust made me knit tighter.
So.
If I didn't knit the Noro sweater, and I didn't finish the socks, and I worked on but didn't finish the raglan, what DID I knit?
Baby hats for the PIH hospital in Rwanda! At the last minute I threw my baby hat knitting bag (it's where I keep all the yarn that is good for baby hats) into the van. Good thing I did; otherwise I might have had to finish the sweater and socks. As Dale-Harriet once said, Baby hats are like potato chips. You can't do just one.
My soon-to-be-fifth-grade neighbor helped me do the photo shoot.
She was so cute.
Then I showed her my iTouch and the knitting was forgotten.
Let's examine those hats in detail, shall we? They are being modeled by my trusty ostrich egg sitting in its base of brass and wart hog tusks. (How fitting for hats that will travel to Africa!)
This first five were all done on a US#3 circ from one skein of Socks That Rock heavyweight, colorway Gay Pride. The striping and pooling are different because the hats are worked on different numbers of stitches, from 56 to 68. Babies come in different sizes, so I figured their heads do, too.
I had a few yards of the STR leftover so I combined it with some green Valley Superwash DK for the hat at the left, once again on a US#3 circ.
I decided before I started the hats that I would not put a cuff on any of the wool ones, hoping to stretch this skein of STR to seven or eight hats. Didn't work. .
.
. .
.
This next group were all knit from Knit Picks Shine Sport in River (blue) and Cherry (red, discontinued) on a US#3 circ.
The second photo shows the slanting jog that results from a new-to-me way of changing colors. (The jog looks a lot better in the socks in the link than in my hat; I don't think there is ANY way to make jogless two-row stripes.) The fourth and fifth photos are of a hat I made to experiment with the knit-one-below stitch (more on that in another post).
Next, three hats from Knit Picks Shine Worsted, knitted on a US#5. Yup, I was using up the last of that particular yarn in the last hat. How can you tell?
The last few.
The first is more KP Shine Sport, this time in Willow and with some one-row stripes of a fuzzy novelty yarn. I got from lisa. The second is Cleckheaton 8-ply County Check superwash wool worsted (discontinued) left over from knitting mittens a couple years ago. Third is KP Comfy in Honeydew, combined with KP Shine worsted in the fourth. That last hat is my favorite of them all.
A second chemo cap for my sister-in-law. It went into the mailbox earlier this week.
Yarn: Rowan Calmer, a bit less than one skein. Needles: Addi Turbo US#6. Pattern: Cast on 90 st, do a picot knitted-in .75" hem, work even for 5.75", decrease 6 st evenly every other round for a while, then decrease 6 st evenly around every round until there are 6 st left. Break yarn and draw through remaining st.
Cuffs for #1 son's mittens:
These are Cascade Heritage sock yarn, color 5604, 1x1 rib on US#0, 76 st.
I got the charts and instructions for the caduceus today from Colleen, the designer, plus photos of the actual thing.
It.Is.Teh.Awesome.
It occurred to me that I could tell #1 son I am knitting his mittens but not tell him about the caduceus and DNA designs. So I did and got hand measurements from him. Oh, the relief! His hand circumference is 8", exactly what I guessed after measuring my own hand at 7" around. This means that the mittens I am knitting should fit perfectly; I am planning on 1" of positive ease at the knuckles, mittens needing to have a bit of air space for insulation. The cuffs are just the tiniest bit too big for my 7" wrists, so should be perfect for his 8" ones.
The reason I knit both cuffs is because I reached the end of the first cuff at about 10 pm one night earlier this week. I didn't want to quit knitting but I knew it would be pure folly to start a new-to-me and potentially complicated design that late in the day. I knit one round of stockinette on the first mitten, using a US#1 needles and thereby freeing up the US#0 for the second cuff. I reached the end of the second cuff at about that same time of day later in the week, once again knowing enough not to start the design when my brain was not sharp.
Instead, I cast on for a baby hat for Rwanda.
The teal -- which is more saturated in real life -- is Knit Picks Main Line in Harbor. Main Line may be discontinued; I don't see it on their website any more. It is worsted weight, 75/25 cotton/merino blend. Of course it is discontinued -- after knitting with it for a bit I decided it was perfect for a February Lady sweater. Damn. The colorful yarn is a bonus that knitnzu threw into the package when I won her contest last spring. It is perfect for this project, having exactly the same color of deep teal as the main color.
And now it is time to attack the mittens for realz. Do I do the DNA helix or the caduceus first? Decisions, decisions...
In the chilly mountains of rural Rwanda, where last year PIH's partner organization began working with the Burera District Hospital, resources are very limited and the temperature often drops into the 50s. Newborn babies, particularly those born prematurely, often struggle to keep warm. In a country where one in 10 babies dies before her first birthday, hypothermia is a serious threat.
A simple solution that can help save some of these little ones is to provide them all with beanies to keep them warm.
We are looking for knitters to help us put a warm beanie cap on every baby born in Burer--as is done in American hospitals. The Burera District Hospital welcomes about 100 new babies into the world each month, so our current goal is to provide 100 caps per month.
All beanie styles and colors are welcome. Hats can be made to fit either premature babies (head about the size of an orange) or full-term babies (head about the size of a grapefruit). We will arrange shipping from Boston to northern Rwanda.
Hats and donations may be sent to: Jesse Greenspan Partners In Health, Attn: Baby hats 888 Commonwealth Ave, 3rd floor Boston, MA 02215
I first heard of Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health, when I listened to the audiobook of Mountains Beyond Mountains:The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, the Man Who Would Save the World by Tracy Kidder. From www.bookbrowse.com:
At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer—brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti—blasts through convention to get results.
Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity" - a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.
One of Dr. Farmer's major contributions is to have figured out ways to deliver quality health care at a cost affordable in the Third World. People, that is HUGE.
To summarize, PiH is a great organization that does excellent work. When I got their email about needing knitted or crocheted baby hats, I knew what I had to do: get the knitters on board!
This project is a little different than many I see in blogland. Instead of needed X number of items by Y date, they need 100 hats every month.
Can we do it? Of course. We can do ANYTHING!
And that is why I won't be donating as many hats to the preemie project this January. There are some babies in Rwanda that need them even more.
I just finished a hat for the new baby girl of one of Smokey's co-workers. He had asked me to knit a baby gift for them, then later said they asked for a pink hat. Easy peasey!
I knew I wanted a hat that tied under the chin because babies have a hard time keeping their hats on. Then the weather got cold and I decided that ear flaps with strings were the way to go. After searching Ravelry (yay, Ravelry!) I decided on this baby chullo (photo stolen from Ravelry):
Isn't that just the cutest picture? Even though I am not big on babies, I want to snorgle that one.
So I got myself some pink and some white DK superwash merino -- because I wasn't sure if one skein would be enough and the store only had one skein of the pink -- and set out. But before I even cast on, I began to wonder whether anyone besides me would see a chullo as appropriate for a baby girl. So I punted and designed my own hat, based on the chullo and other stocking caps and beanies I have made.
The result:
Yes, the ear flaps are a little too close together. I suspect the baby will end up wearing the hat *backwards* like this, with the jogs in the so-called jogless stripes in front:
Darn. I tried to frog one of the finished earflaps so I could re-position it, but I had buried the end so well into the i-cord that I couldn't find it.
A closeup of the Fabulous Fibonacci stripes, which I started a little too late:
Yarn: Ecco DK superwash merino, 32 grams/70 yards of pink and 14 grams/20 yards of white. The yarn comes in 50 gram skeins. Gauge: 26 st / 4 inches. If your gauge were 24 st / 4 inches -- which is what I was shooting for -- the hat would probably be the correct 16" size (see below). Size: The model I used -- an ostrich egg -- is about 15" around. According the text with the baby chullo hat, the average newborn head is 16". I think the hat will easily stretch to accomodate that extra inch if necessary. Needles: Susan Bates US#2 (2.75mm) circ, Magic Loop; Crystal Palace #2 dpns for the earflaps and the i-cord, just because that was easier than wrangling a 40" circ on the itty bitty parts. Pattern: my own design! If anyone is interested I can write it up without the stupid mistakes I made.
* * * * *
Now I am off to a three-day land conservation conference in Appleton, Wisconsin. If you know who lives near there, you will know who I am meeting for dinner and knitting tonight. Catch ya on the flip side!
To make amends for my little rant yesterday -- oh, and btw, thanks for all the bah-humbuggery appreciation y'all sent me, did my little heart good to know that humor still rules the world (I wish! It could do a better job than certain White (And Other-Colored) Men are doing at present, but that is a rant for another day) -- and did you see that Wendy commented (be still my heart, a celebrity comment! wOOt! (and did you read when Norma (yay! Norma!) blogged that "wOOt" is Webster's Word of the Year, except that they spelled it wrong, all the Kool Kids know it's spelled "w00t," not "wOOt") Thanks, Wendy!) -- I'm putting up this little YouTube number:*
Highlights to watch for:
The sweet knit hat -- intarsia? stranded? -- worn by one of the graffiti artists. Yeah, I later realized it is really a ski mask, but still, it is an objet d'knit, and we all loves us some objets d'knit, doncha know?
The awesomely perfect circles! drawn freehand! by that same artist;
The skyline of NYC looking like something is missing, and we all know what that is, and it saddens us.
That album -- or "alblum," as my dear MIL used to pronounce it, and so did my husband, who argued with me for an amazingly long time that "alblum" was a perfectly valid alternative to "album" and whom I only convinced otherwise when I dragged him, alblumming all the way, to the dictionary -- came to live in my iTunes a week or two ago and I have been listening to it and smearing the music and lyrics all over myself, it is so good.
[ascends soapbox] As much as I love that song, I keep disagreeing with the underlying sentiment, that his generation is waiting on the world to change. The counter-culturalists of the 1960s and 1970s didn't wait. They stormed the bastions of convention helter-skelter and willy-nilly and Nelly-bar-the-door, and nowadays many of those counter-cultural values are mainstream, although sadly not so much universally practiced as universally proclaimed: ecological awareness, recycling, organic food production, planet-friendly practices, multiculturalism, tolerance, diversity, social justice. One cannot simply wait for the world to change into something that better suits one; one must be the change one wishes to see™. [/descends from soapbox]
On the other hand, the sentiments in "Belief" seem to me to express a profound truth that the world would do well to grasp:
But, hey, I'm not all about the lyrics. Listening to his pre-song comments in this video of "I'm Gonna Find Another You" I realized that, Doh, of course I like that song, it's... blues.
Go on, knit her a couple. Quick, easy, stash-busters. You know you want to. Deadline is January 15.
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease (50% cotton/50% acrylic); Lake, Lime, and Berry. Needles: US#6 Pattern: Basic hat from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, preemie size.
I was a bit unhappy with the size and shape it turned out to be, thinking that it was too wide for its depth, but an emergency e-mail to Jeanne and I was tactfully informed that 1, babies come in all sizes and shapes (well, within limits), and b, even preemie babies grow and often continue to need little hats. Babies grow? Who knew?
The uneven stitches smoothed out nicely after a quick run through the washer and dryer with the other laundry.
Yesterday's knitting scene:
In the interests of full disclosure, I must tell you that the New York Public Library mug does not contain coffee, nor even Sleepy Rabbit tea, as it did yesterday. Nope, that is Worcestershire sauce-tinted tap water, concocted to re-create the scene more accurately. Do I have mad food stylist skillz or what?
To remove the taste of the forgoing awfulness, please fondle the virtual cuddliness of the knitting:
#2 son asked me to knit him a pair of socks. Listen! Hear that? Hell freezes over.
He has steadfastly refused any and all of my offers to for him. He's a fashionista in his own way, that boy, and his self-image brooks no mother-produced garments. Oh, except for that Dulaan-destined hat he swiped from me last winter. And that glow-in-the-dark scarf I so laboriously knitted him last year at his request and which he wore about twice. Grrrrr.
But I am A Knitting Mother -- ya know, the ones who want to wrap the world in hand knits? So I immediately agreed to make him a pair of socks.
No wool, he said, Wool is itchy.
Okay, no problem, I said, and showed him a recently-received color card of Knit Picks Shine Worsted (60% Pima cotton/40% Modal®). He picked out the terra cotta and cream shown above. One reason I was able to agree so readily was that I had discovered the extreme speediness with which worsted weight yarn knits up into socks. Wham! Bam! Socks!
He sent me a link to these socks to show how he wanted his to look.
Don't guys have silly-looking legs? Why do they pose like that, so their legs look even sillier than necessary? Why do I care?
