A Bundle of Baby Things

One of my dear friends just had a baby, and of course he needed some woolies.

Let us pause for a moment to revel in the wonderfulness of babies in general and knitting for babies in general. The startling smallness of the little humans. The tiny little sweaters and hats. So many soft lovely things. Squee!

And this baby in particular is so adorable, just a little morsel of cuteness. But in the interest of privacy and good decisions, he won't be making his internet debut just yet, so it's just pictures of knitting today.

So much knitting!

I'm really happy with this layette. My friend has wonderful taste and is always dressed beautifully and fashionably. Which makes her a little intimidating to knit for, because my idea of high fashion is putting a necklace on with my t-shirt and jeans. But we cruised around the internet together and came up with a lineup that was simple and classic and also a touch sophisticated. Just a touch, because my friend and I decided that babies do not lend themselves to sophistication. Babies are about round and cuddly and not about standing tall and being sleek and elegant. But we tried, and I like it.

So here's what I did.

Title: a complete knock-off of this hat. It's a free pattern, so I don't know why I copied it instead of just following the pattern. 

Design: a garter stitch hat knit vertically, with a paper-bag top, gathered with a twisted rope of yarn, size small

Materials: Cascade 220 Superwash, in 1910 Summer Sky Heather (I think? I can't find any of my labels.)

Finished: October 2015

Title: a total knock-off of this hat. Again, no idea why I copied a pattern that was available for free. So much unnecessary effort.

Design: a toboggon-style hat with a garter stitch brim and ear-muffs. The body of the hat is ribs of stockinette with garter stitch in between, topped with a pom-pom. Size large (for a baby)

Materials: Berocco Vintage, in Dove

Finished: October 2015

A hat with a pom-pom on top is ideal for a baby that still is going to spend a lot of time lying on his back or in a car seat. And ear-muffs are both adorable and practical on a baby. 

Title: First Outing (designed by me!)

Design: a stockinette vest with garter stitch trim and buttons on the side and straps, size Newborn

Materials: Berocco Vintage, in Dove

Finished: October 2015

Title: baby pants in the method of Elizabeth Zimmermann

Design: stockinette pants with ribbed cuffs and waistband, gathered with an i-cord tie, size 0-3 months

Materials: Berocco Vintage, in Dove

Finished: October 2015

Title: On the Go-veralls, by Heidi Lehman

Design: stockinette overalls with garter stitch trim and buttoned straps, size 0-6

Materials: Cascade 220 Superwash, in 1926 Doeskin Heather

Finished: October 2015

This was a really fun knit, and I love the idea of knitted overalls. However if I make them for a older child in the future, I'll use a chunky wool instead of the worsted that the pattern calls for. The fabric that the worsted yarn makes is a little thin for something that a child would be crawling around in on their hands and knees. Also, the pattern calls for 200 yards for the smallest size, but it used all but a smidge of my 220 yards of Cascade 220.

Title: Pull Gaspard, by Christine Rouville

Design: a stockinette pullover with garter stitch cuffs, sailor collar and kangaroo pocket, size 0-6 months

Materials: Cascade 220 Superwash, in 1910 Summer Sky Heather

Finished: October 2015

I very rarely buy patterns because there are so many great free patterns on the internet, but I bought this one and I'm very glad I did. It's such a clever, stylish design, and it would not have been easy to reverse-engineer from the pictures. 

I finished off the layette with a wee little gnome. I'm slightly obsessed with gnomes, peg dolls and other simple dolls with blank faces. I think they lend themselves to imaginative play very well and they're so iconic. 

Title: garter stitch gnome. I used a pattern once but now it's just in my head and I have no idea whose pattern it was

Design: stuffed gnome with garter stitch body and stockinette face and hat, 6" tall 

Materials: Cascade 220 Superwash in 1910 Summer Sky, white cotton

Finished: October 2015

Ta-da! I hope you enjoy your woolies, little one; it's starting to get cold! 

While I was taking these pictures, Munchkin wanted me to take a picture of him digging ... 

Munchkin's favorite outdoor play right now is digging in his dirt hole.

And then Twinkle had to get in on the action, too ... 

That smile! The dimples!

Cutting Up Your Knitting

A few weeks ago, I was knitting what I thought was a tiny pair of pants. I was using the wonderful Elizabeth Zimmermann's pattern/method, which more or less starts by saying "Cast on enough stitches and start knitting." This is not as crazy as it sounds, because if you knit a swatch, and measure how many stitches per inch you are running (This varies depending on how tightly you knit, and the size of your yarn and needles.), and if you know how many inches wide you want your knitting to be, then you just multiply stitches times inches and that's how many you cast on. Accuracy is key.

Unfortunately accuracy is not always my strong point. (Clearly.)

I wanted these pants to be 0-3 months size, and the more I knit, the more that seemed unlikely. They were looking much more like 6-9 months or even 12 months. By the time I realized this, I had knit enough that I really really didn't want to rip it out and start over.

So I made a steek.

A steek is a crazy crazy thing where you cut your knitting and somehow everything works out. It's a technique most commonly used in two-color Norwegian sweaters to make cardigans and armholes and it can be re-purposed to make a piece knitting smaller.

The first thing that you do is sew a line of machine stitching just inside where you are going to put your seam in the knitting to make it smaller. I used very small stitches and went over it twice.

Can you see the lines? Unfortunately I used tan thread on gray knitting, which was a poor choice from a blogging standpoint.

You can see it slightly better on the wrong side.

Then you cut (yes, cut, as in, with scissors) in between the lines you've sewn, and then you sew the edges together with a darning needle and a piece of yarn, using mattress stitch.

Look how you can't see the seam at all! 

If I was knitting these pants for an older child who was going to wear them for a long time and who would be walking and crawling around in them, I would have knit a little rectangle and sewn it on to cover the raw edges. But these are for a baby and probably the most athletic thing he'll be doing in them is trying to touch his toes. I'm confident this seam will hold up well and that the machine stitches will keep the edges from fraying further. It's nice and soft for his little skin and doesn't add bulk the way covering the seam would.

Here's a little sneak peek of what they'll look like. More pictures coming soon! 

Abject Failure

There are times when the knitting gods are with me. When I'm inventing on the fly and it's like it was always meant to be. When I drift blissfully from one finishing high to another. (Actually this just recently happened to me and I have a bunch of stuff I'm excited about to photograph and show you.) But today ... was not that day.

Since Saturday, I've been working full blast on a new project, a top-down child's sweater with a round colorwork yoke. I've been doing this slightly complicated thing where I combine a picture of the colorwork I want (no actual pattern, but it's fairly straightforward and I can mostly count stitches to figure out what to do) and a computer-generated pattern. I entered my stitch gauge (stitches per inch) and row gauge (rows per inch) and the dimensions of the sweater I wanted to end up with, and the computer spat back a pattern.

Which I've been knitting, which has given me ... this.

Which bears no resemblance to how human beings are shaped. People (ideally) have these things called shoulders. Which is a good thing, I suppose. But less good for my very strange, shoulderless sweater. Short of a sleeve for a sumo wrestler, this sweater is pretty useless.

How did this happen?

Well ...

First of all, I think I'm going to be much more wary of computer generated patterns in the future. Having a human being at the design controls is maybe a good idea.

Second, I think I completely bombed measuring my gauge. I rushed over this part because I wanted to print out my pattern, and this was a terrible decision. PSA: you get a much more accurate gauge if you cast on enough stitches to make a 4" or 5" square, measure 4", then divide by 4 to get your gauge. Don't round up! Decimals and accuracy are your friends!

Third, I really (really really) should have figured out this sooner. I now have a heartbreaking 6" of of colorwork to unravel. My only explanation is that I was using the Magic Loop method, which allows you to knit with a longer circular than really fits your number of stitches, and it's not a method I love and it causes you to focus on a smaller section at a time. Lots of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Sigh. I guess I'll know better next time.

It's been an educational evening.

First Outing

This is a simple vest for a newborn baby. I designed it for a very young friend of mine. A great beginner project, strategically placed garter stitch gives the appearance of curves without the difficulty of curves. With buttons on the side and straps, it will be easy to put on. Based on the weather in October (in the American South), it should be an ideal layer over a little shirt and pants for his first outing.

First Outing

Materials:

Worsted weight yarn (less than 110 yards)

Size US 8 knitting needles

5 half-inch buttons

Darning needle and scissors

Needle and thread

Size: Newborn

Cast on 70 stitches.

Slip all first stitches. A slipped stitch counts as a knit stitch. 

Knit back and forth in garter stitch for 8 rows.

Row 9: K 5, P 60, K 5.

Row 10: K 2, YO, K2tog, K to end of row.

Row 11: K 5, P 60, K 5.

Row 12: K to end of row.

Repeat rows 11 and 12 four times.

Row 21: K 5, P 60, K 5.

Row 22: K 2, YO, K2tog, K to end of row.

Repeat rows 11 and 12 four times.

Row 31: K 9, P 18, K 15, P 18, K 10

Row 32: K to end of row.

Row 33: K 10, P 16, K 17, P 16, K 11

Row 34: K 2, YO, K2tog, K to end of row.

Row 35: K 11, P 14, K 19, P 14, K 12

Row 36: K to end of row.

Row 37: Bind off 7, K 5, P 12, K 5, bind off 12, K 5, P 12, K 5, bind off 7, break yarn and pull through.

                Begin knitting on left set of live stitches.

Row 1b: K to end of row.

Row 2b: K 5, P 12, K 5.

                Repeat rows 1b and 2b once.

Knit back and forth in garter stitch for 4 rows.

Row 9b: K 3, YO, K2tog, K 12, ssk, YO, K 3.

Knit back and forth in garter stitch for 2 rows.

Row 12b: Bind off all stitches, break yarn and pull through.

                Begin knitting on the right set of stitches.

Row 1c: K to end of row.

Row 2c: K 5, P 12, K 5.

                Repeat rows 1c and 2c twice.

Knit back and forth in garter stitch for 8 rows.

Row 15c: K 11

Row 16c: K2tog, K 9

Row 17c: K 10

Row 18c: K2tog, K 8

Row 19c: K 9

Row 20c: K2tog, K 7

Row 21c: K 8

Row 22c: K2tog, K6

Knit back in forth in garter stitch for 31 rows.

Bind off all stitches, break yarn and pull through.

Repeat for other strap, reversing the shaping so that the straps come down to a V in the middle. Weave in all ends. Block lightly. Sew on buttons. 

A Skein is Born

A few weeks ago, I stumbled on three bundles of roving at my new favorite yarn shop, Yvie's.

And was immediately convinced that they were meant to be together. These lovelies were made by David Simpson's Green Dragon Yarns, and they were each 50 grams and imaginatively labeled "Random Colors."

As I was spinning the singles I discovered that this fiber, the bluer roving, was Merino wool, and the sandier rovings were Corriedale wool. After some deliberation, I decided that this probably wasn't a problem, since you can buy all kinds of yarns that are blends of different types of wool, silk and other fibers. I was planning on spinning each of the rovings separately and then ply the singles together to make a three-ply yarn. Now it would just be a 33% Merino, 66% Corriedale three-ply yarn.

Spinning the singles was a very different experience, though. Merino wool is a very fine wool, silky smooth. (I may or may not have rubbed this roving all over my face at random intervals, just to glory in the remarkable softness. This behavior was looked on askance by 'Stache, who flatly declined to participate.) This smoothness makes for a glorious yarn, but the making of that yarn is a little tricky. Corriedale, which is a slightly scratchier, more work-a-day yarn, and it sticks to itself, just a little. This is an advantage when you're spinning it and helps you control the roving to make a smooth, even single. I found Merino to be quite slippery, and many times the roving slipped out of my hands and the single broke off.

But I managed, and the singles plied together to make a lovely yarn. 

And then I set the twist of the yarn (if I didn't, it would unwind) by winding it around my makeshift niddy-noddy (normally a niddy-noddy made with PVC looks like this, but I couldn't find any T-joints), poured steaming hot water over it, and let it dry.

And voila! A 160 yard skein of good, sturdy worsted yarn. The colors remind me of a turtle shell with a streak of blue in it. I'm pretty crazy about it, because 'Stache has approved it as being sufficiently neutral to make a hat or mittens for him or my brother or one of my three brothers-in-law. Masculine and yet non-boring yarns are wickedly hard to find, and now I've made one! 

I haven't decided exactly what its destiny is, and so right now it is beautifying the world by being a yarn-pet, which is another practice at which 'Stache looks askance. 

In case you're unduly impressed by my spinning yarn, go watch this video. It's the easiest magic you've ever seen! 

Different Could Be OK

Earlier this summer we got the news that T----, a wonderful little boy we wanted to adopt and had asked to be matched with, had been matched with another family.

I wept.

Munchkin and Twinkle were quite concerned, and immediately began a campaign to figure out where my “hurt” was. They sweetly offered me an ice pack, my Zyrtec medicine, a blanket.

I tried to find words to explain that they would understand. But (wisely, I could now see,) we had waited to tell them about their new big brother until we were matched. Which now, we weren’t going to be. So there were not really words that could describe my loss to a pair of anxious toddlers.  

After talking to some wonderfully kind friends and family, I can tell you that the loss is similar to that of a miscarriage. I will never get to meet, to hold this child that I loved, whom I was prepared to mother. Although I am so grateful that my loss is not caused by death, that T---- is going to grow up in a loving home, that does not make my separation from him less complete. Short of heaven, I will never be able to watch him grow, do all the things I hoped for him.

Hopes and plans are hard to lay down. Weeks after I felt like I had recovered from the emotional loss, I was still stumbling up against the plans that I had made for our life with T----.  We had 6 weeks between asking to be matched and finding out that we weren’t. And while I was deliberately not making overt preparations – painting his room, picking out bedding, etc., in my mind it was settled. The yellow room was “T----‘s room.” Life was going to be crazy and wild with three boys so close in age. ‘Stache and I talked about baby names, wondering if T---- was really his name or if it was just a screen name for the photo listing. I kept one of the tabs on my laptop open to his photo, the one with the big smile, and often I would click over to it, just to see his face and smile back.

It has been hard to fully realize that T---- is not supposed to be ours. It has been strange to realize that when we adopt, when we have that glorious “Gotcha Day” where we meet our child for the first time, that child will not be T----.  It has been difficult to accept that this news means we are set back in adoption process. Not that our (eventual) adoption is delayed, but that now we have longer to go than we thought we did.

When we found out about T----‘s match, there were no other children in our age range on the Hong Kong listing. This is a good thing. I’m glad I didn’t get off the phone with our social worker and immediately latch onto another child while I was still reeling and grieving. But now, still, there are no children on the list in our age range, and so we are waiting. And waiting and waiting for the list to be updated, which is not done on a consistent basis as different organizations update on different schedules. Which is hard, from this end.

I am not a graceful waiter. ‘Stache is the champ. Having set his feet on a path, he does not (hardly ever) waver, regardless of the length or rockiness of said path. The decision has been made, which renders discussion irrelevant. I (at least compared to ‘Stache) tend to waffle. To sift information, reevaluate whether we need to reevaluate. Has the situation changed? Is the HK program really the path God laid out for us, or are we continuing down this path out of habit? Is the fact that we have our funding mostly done a sign from God that this is the right plan, or am I limiting God by saying he couldn’t send the money needed for a different, probably more expensive progam? Gah. Living in my head is exhausting sometimes.

But knitting is something that often calms my brain down, and when I was freshly hurt and confused, knitting helped me through. I dug in my knitting basket for a project that I’ve been working on a long time, a little green knit dress, made of a soft, airy yarn. (I occasionally will do a project that is destined for the “someday” bin. I’m not particularly bothered that I don’t currently have a little girl to wear that yellow sundress, or a size 7 boy to wear that sweater that was a perfect use of a particular bag of yarn. It’ll all get used someday.)

And as I was knitting those long long rounds so the little toddler that wears this dress has a nice twirly skirt, I was able to exhale. Able to let go of my idea of what our family was going to look like. I could realize that it would be nice to have a little girl to wear this green dress. And that was obviously different from T----, which meant that different from T--- could be ok.

Whether we get a boy or a girl, big or small, it will be more than ok. It will be wonderful.

I want badly to know how long I have to wait. Trusting is hard.

But our future is known by God, and his plans are good. 

Randomly on Wednesday

1. Projects I'm actively working on right now: knitting a pair of socks, knitting a baby diaper cover, sewing a little lacy baby dress, sewing myself a blouse, sewing Sam a quilt, sewing scrappy quilt squares, making a drawer spice rack out of cardboard.

2. There is totally a part of my brain that looks at that ridiculous list and thinks that if I had one full day without the kids, (or maybe a weekend, worse case scenario), everything on the list would be done like dinner.

3. This list is not my to-do list, which is much longer. It's just the things I'm actually working on at the moment.

4. Children will eat things that you would never dream of. Today's unsupervised snack was 2 cups of Maruchan chicken noodles, softened slightly with cold water and then broken into a thousand pieces, at least 950 of which I had to pick up off the floor.

5. We recently put a chain lock on our front door and it has made life 1000% better. Both our kids but especially Twinkle have this terrible habit of waltzing out our front door without the slightest warning.

6. This was particularly terrifying when he would sneak out of his room at nap time, because the time your children are supposed to be in bed sound asleep is not the time you're actively patrolling the grounds. That's sort of the point of nap time.

7. Yes, of course we would lock the door, but both our boys have known how to lock and unlock our doors for months.

8. So the chain lock, if I didn't mention it, is AWESOME.