Vest Complete

Ciaran's sweater vest is all done and I love it. The color even passed muster with daddy and he declared it many enough. I'm happy with my choice to double strand the yarn. I think it would have been a little too light with the fingering (?) weight yarn I used. I'm not actually sure about the yarn weight because it didn't have any bands and I didn't wrap in on a ruler to check.

As soon as Ciaran wakes up I'll take a picture of him wearing it.

Give said the little stream.

Give oh, give, away!!!

Run to Made by Heidi and check out her awesome give away. Her tutorial for an adorable rosette headband is also being featured on Craftaholics Anonymous.

A Trendy Duo

(First of all I can't take credit for this awesome picture. This was actually the photo used on a website selling this item. Classy, eh?)

I am currently in the middle of making the vest from the set "A Trendy Duo" (the other half of the set is a not so trendy cardigan). It's from a booklet, Bernat 1201. I have no idea where I got this booklet from. Probably freecycle. Most of the patterns are typical out of date 80's ugos, but the sweater vest I'm making is a mock cable pattern and pretty cute. It's actually the vest on the cover. Yes, I realize it's probably a girl baby wearing it on the cover, but the instructions do have the option of sewing the center of the V neck right over left for girls, or left over right for boys. (Do people still care about which side things button on? Evidently knitters do. So much for pretending knitting is hip now and not just a bunch of old ladies. If I hadn't just read that in the pattern I'd have no idea which side is which.) To make it even more girly I'm making it out of some purple yarn I have kicking around. It had no bands on it and I got it free like 3 years ago at a church knitting night and I needed to use it up. I don't think it looks bad, but I do think I might put some manly buttons on the vest to butch it up when I'm done.

Preemie Hats

Preemie hats are close to my heart. Ciaran was by far the best dressed baby in the NICU because making hats and booties for him was very theraputic for me. I felt like I was doing something for him even if he wasn't home with me and having me care for him. A friend from my old book club just had a preemie who weighed a few ounces less that Ciaran at birth. So I had to whip her up some hats for her little guy. Here's a couple of them.

Barter

I am a member of a great knitting website called Ravelry. You have to sign up to join, but it's well worth it. They have several forums devoted to barter/trading/gifting your knitting supplies. I had my first barter ever this weekend and it went awesome. A while ago I was given a copy of this book:

Clearly I was NEVER going to use this book as I have no doggie and never, ever, EVER will.

So I offered it for barter and got this in return:

It just arrived in the mail today. It has a panda pattern that I have to make for Beckett. He's been obsessed since Grandma gave him a copy of "Beckett and the Panda-monium". Hooray for trading and hooray for ravelry!

Infants Rolled Neck Pullover

While making the sweater I was very frustrated with the yarn. However, now that I'm done, I love the look. The sweater just looks cozy to me.

I modified the pattern slightly and didn't knit as many rows on the neck as the pattern called for. Therefor mine is more of a mock turtleneck than a rolled neck, but I like how it looks.

I wish I had a baby to try it on, but it's for a small infant and my big head Ciaran can't get his head through the neck hole. Incidentally, that was a good lesson, I really need to learn to cast off loosely. I'm a tight knitter to begin with so I have to very consciously try to knit loose and cast off loose.

Sweater pics coming soon

I have finished all the knitting on the sweater. The arms are sewn on so all that's left is to sew the side seams and sleeve seams. I hope to have it finished tomorrow and post pictures. I am happy with how it looks. The yarn wasn't my favorite to work with, but it does look cute and fuzzy now that it's finished. It's nice and soft too so I think a baby will like to snuggle up with it. My only problem now is that I realized a lot of the new babies I know live in warm areas so even when summer ends they probably won't be in need of sweaters. I guess it's time to start some booties.

A knitting interlude

Since I don't actually own this book, but I did create a pattern from it a couple of weeks ago, (thank you public library system) I'll fill in the empty time while I make my current creation with pictures of the project I made from its pages.

This pattern came from One Skein Wonders 101 Yarn Shop Favorites. Not to be confused with the sequel 101 Designer One Skein Wonders that I am currently working from. (There is also a luxury version for really expensive yarns that most people can only afford one skein of.) The sweater is the little orange one in the bottom right corner. I tend to have a lot of single skeins because I'm cheap and buy stuff on clearance, and also because I've never made adult clothes or afghans and toys and kids clothes don't really require that much yarn. So these one skein books are right up my alley. You can check out the one skein website for some of their free patterns.

I was mostly pleased with the results, but I hated working with the boucle yarn I used. It was squeaky and fiddly to pick up. Because of all the bumps it was really easy to drop stitches and hard to notice the ladder until you had a lot to fix. I also had a little trouble with setting the sleeves. Something about the stepped bind off to make the armhole just didn't work for me. But it was definitely a fast knit and on a body the faults disappear and it looks very cute. I almost wish it was colder so I could have Ciaran wear it around. I'd give it away, but the sleeves really annoy me and I don't want someone to get a sub par present.

Cute on, right? An adorable model doesn't hurt.

I hope this picture gives you some idea of how crappy and bumpy that stupid boucle is. But I've got to use it and clean out my stash. It comes from the days when I had just learned to knit and would buy any yarn if it was cheap enough.

The arm doesn't point straight up like that. I just laid it out weird.

101 Designer One-Skein Wonders

Babies, babies, babies are in the air so I thought I'd start out with a quickie baby sweater. The "Infants Rolled Neck Pullover" is stop one in my project. I'll be working with Lion's Polarspun in Iced Blue. (All the babies seem to be of the boy persuasion.)

Mother's Day

In an effort to make my project more difficult I received a new knitting book for Mother's Day. It's The Big Book of Kids' Knits by Zoe Mellor. I am in love. So many cute patterns. I already love Zoe Mellor's Designs. I have her baby booties book and a toy book and they're both wonderful. Although I hear that some people really hate Zoe Mellor and her patterns have a lot of errors. I've been lucky enough that I've either had later editions of the books or I have picked easy projects that didn't have errors. Just in case I'll search for errata when I start my project from this book. Thank you Chris for a fun new present. I don't know what I'll pick to make, or when, but I'm loving all the new options.

The beginning

First of all, although the comparison may be tempting, please don't Julie/Julia me. Thanks to Christmas and taking surveys for money and a very surprising win at a March Madness pool I have recently come into a lot more knitting books. My library is growing and I take great comfort in that fact as I love books of all kinds. However, I worry that I will acquire these books and they will do nothing but adorn my shelf. This would make me sad and also give my husband the opportunity to tell me to stop buying books I'm not going to use. (Okay he's actually very forgiving and blissfully oblivious to the Amazon and Knitpicks packages that come rolling in.) So I have decided that I'm going to knit one project from every book I own. This will take more than a year. I don't know how long this will take and I fully intend to keep on adding books I love. I have no order other than desire. I will also try and use as much stash yarn as possible in order to minimize cost and clear out the old bins. I'll list my books in alphabetical order but I'll tackle them as I feel. I won't be knitting anything out of my stitch encyclopedias or help books because, well, they're not pattern books and I'm not going to start inventing patterns. Although I may be such an expert after this project that I could. As soon as the mother's day gifts are finished I am going to start. I was going to try and sneak in a couple of projects I made this month and count them. I'm not sure. I may still do that. I've been thinking about this concept for a while but perhaps a project that predates would be cheating.