Knitting Through the Year - December

Christmas projects!

I love them. I dive into them with joy and abandon, only to realize, mid-way, that my project to-do list really isn't reasonable or particularly possible, not if the young ones continue to demand to be fed on a thrice-daily basis and the husband continues to hope after a non-destroyed house and an underwear and sock drawer with at least a few clean items in it.

EZ knows the dangers of ambition and vision at Christmas time:

Embarking on a sweater at this late date smacks of madness, but it can be done, and done without using up too much f your precious December-time. The main thing is to make it very thick. The thicker the knitting, the fewer the stitches; the fewer the stitches, the sooner finished, right? Not finished as soon as mathematics would tell you - the fingers are not quite as agile with thick wool as with thin - but still, finished with surprising speed. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Knitter's Almanac

And so it was. Finished with surprising speed, that is. One week of knitting in the evenings and during the occasional naptime and it was done. Just like that.

I know.

Crazy town.

I had to resist the urge to cast on additional sweaters for my father, husband and brother. (You get a sweater! And you get a sweater! And yes, you there in the back! You get a sweater, too!) As soon as I expressed this urge, fortunately, the madness of it penetrated, and I backed away from the ledge. Close call, though.

The secret of this sweater is the simple, stylish shaping and the large gauge. This sweater is knit at 2 1/2 stitches to the inch, with extra bulky yarn. This was a little hard to find. My brother-in-law, the recipient, lives in North Carolina, where winters are certainly cold, but don't warrant 1/2" thick, 100% wool sweaters. That amount of wool would be very warm indeed. Also, my sister put in her bid for a sweater that couldn't be accidentally shrunk in the wash. My initial goal was a bulky superwash wool, which is a wool-acrylic blend that can be gently machine washed without tragedy. However, this proved very difficult to find. Eventually, I ended up with Lion Brand Hometown USA, which is an all-acrylic yarn, in charcoal. I used just under 10 skeins, to make a men's size medium/large.

Done like dinner.

Eleventy-One Blessings

There is a wonderful tradition in northern China, where our daughter Mei-Mei lives. When a couple is expecting a baby, they invite their friends and relatives to contribute to a Bai Jia Bei quilt, or "One Hundred Good Wishes" quilt. Each contributor gives a piece of fabric, along with their good wishes for the baby. When assembled the quilt, containing all these good wishes, is considered a family heirloom and is passed down from generation to generation.

When I read about this I immediately knew I wanted to make one for Mei-Mei. Such a precious, tangible symbol of the love, care and prayers of the many, many people who are part of Mei-Mei's extended family.

I worried a bit over the desired 100 pieces. Did we even know that many people? Well, it turns out we did. We knew at least 111, in fact, because I had to make the quilt bigger than expected to contain the 111 pieces we received.

The Chinese characters mean "Beloved," or "Treasure." 

There are so many people who are a part of this quilt and a part of Mei-Mei's life. Taking these pictures, I was nearly brought to tears, thinking about the wonderful village of people that are going to surround this girl, this little girl who has been so alone in the world.

Thank you, all of you.

These pictures were taken at Treetop Hideaways, Chattanooga's only treehouse boutique hotel. To follow them on Facebook, go here. 

In case you're wondering, one box of these fruit treats is how this mama managed to get all these pictures without the pint-sized humans going stir crazy. One box of treats + one medium sized wilderness to explore = enough time to take lots of pictures! 

Works in Progress

So many projects going on! The number of WIP's (Works in Progress) around here is getting a little excessive.

1. The adoption! (Longest. WIP. Ever.) We're still waiting (waiting, waiting ...) to be matched with a child, but we have made a little progress recently. I sent off our I800-A packet today, which is a stack of forms and documentation that goes to U. S. Citizen and Immigration Services. The next thing on the to-do list is assembling the dossier. (DOSS-ee-ay) Many forms, much paperwork. Actually, there are 24 separate forms or documents that we have to fill out/acquire for the dossier. 2-4. 24. Some of which have to be notarized.

2.

These are 4 long-sleeve t-shirts for Munchkin and Twinkle that I've cut out but not sewn together yet. I cut these out from some hand-me-down t-shirts from my brother. I love making clothes out of clothes. Not only do I often get to reuse the hems (definitely not my favorite part of sewing), but it's an awesome way to recycle clothes that still have life in them. They are baseball style t-shirts, so all the shirts, so all the shirts except the white print t-shirt are two colors, with the sleeves and body cut from different t-shirts, so I'm actually reducing the number of t-shirts in the world!

3.

These are the fabrics for a project I'm super excited about. Ikat Bag, one of my favorite sewing blogs, has a fabulous stuffed animal pattern for sale. It's called Menagerie, and it is one pattern that lets you do many many different animals by switching out the ears, noses, tails, etc. The plan is to transform this little stack into a fox, a blue jay, a penguin, a cat, and a blue raccoon (Twinkle's request). I've cut out the many many paper pattern pieces, but that's as far as I've gotten.

4.

This is a sweater that I'm copy-catting. (I checked, there is a free pattern, but it's adult size and in Norwegian.) I'm aiming for a child's size 5. What's that? You in the back? Yes. Yes, the sleeves do not match. Let me explain. The vision for this sweater is that it is a dark gray sweater with a light blue round yoke that will be patterned in a way so that it seems to fade from blue to gray, even though you're only using two colors. I had 2 skeins of gray and one of blue, which seemed sufficient. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I knit the body and the first sleeve, and a wee prickle of concern began to make itself known. There was definitely not going to be enough gray. So, I went back to the drawing board, and designed a little cuff that would echo the idea of the yoke, and would take up some of the gray. A full cuff, plus several rows more. Surely that would be enough, yes? I would knit this sleeve, then I would take out a chunk of the bottom of the all-gray sleeve, and knit the blue pattern in reverse, (going top-down instead of cuff-up) and I would unravel the chunk and add it to my gray ball to knit the yoke.

Awesome plan. Except. I ran out of gray before I even finished the second sleeve. Which meant that one chunk of a sleeve was definitely not going to be long enough to finish the other sleeve and do the yoke. Which means I now have to find another ball of Cascade 220 Superwash 900 Charcoal dye lot 150158. Should be a walk in the park.

Easter Overalls

Several months ago, I happened upon a really cute fabric. The dinosaurs were friendly and bright and weren't licensed characters (I tend to be somewhat anti- licensed characters. If my child doesn't know who Barney is, why should he wear Barney pajamas? Anywhoo ....). Immediately a vision sprang into my mind. Dinosaur overalls! I hastily estimated how much fabric a pair of overalls would take, added a smidge for safety, and plopped down my money and forgot about the whole thing. The fabric languished on the "someday" dresser in my sewing room.

And would have continued to languish, long past Easter, had not a friend pinned a free overall pattern to her Pintrest board. It was by LiEr of ikatbag.com, whom I deeply admire and it was a size 3T - exactly what I needed. Also, did I mention, free. Clearly, this Easter overall thing was going to happen.

When I cut out the pattern and studied my fabric, I realized that I had enough fabric for TWO pairs of overalls, which was fabulous, because I happen to have two boys. (Twinkle is only 2, but he is a very sturdily built 2, and is currently straddling the fence between 2T and 3T. Besides, overalls are naturally adjustable.)

I very narrowly avoided making a terrible mistake, cutting out the overalls here. I was all set to cut and suddenly realized that this pattern has a right side up, and a wrong side up. If I had just doubled the fabric to cut out 2 sets (exactly what I was set to do), one of the sets of overalls' dinosaurs would have been upside down. So I cut off some of the fabric and layered it over the other fabric, so that the dinosaurs were right side up for both sets.

I did two things differently from the pattern.

1) I made the front chest piece separate from the bottom front pieces. You can see (maybe) from the pattern above that she has you cut out one big piece (twice) that you join by sewing them together down the center front and then that's your front piece, from the top of the bib to the pants legs. I wanted to be able to put in pockets (both my boys adore pockets, especially Twinkle) but I didn't want to have a sewn-on waistband, which is her solution for the top of the pockets needing to hide under another piece or in a seam. So I took the top straight dotted line as the top of my pants fronts, and then cut another piece for the chest, cutting it on the fold so that it was one piece. I then sewed my two front pants legs together, sewed on the pockets, and sewed the pants part to the chest part, thus "hiding" the top edge of the pockets in the seam between the pants and the chest piece. Capisce?

This was very simple to do and I'm very pleased how it turned out.

2) I made the overall straps several inches longer because they just looked short to me. The boys were sleeping, so I couldn't attempt to measure the straps against their shoulders to figure out if they were the right length, and they're fairly good sized boys. Munchkin has always been the tallest of his friends his age, and Twinkle earned the nickname "Tank" as an infant and has kept it ever since.

I should have trusted LiEr. They're now totally too long. This really doesn't matter, because the extra doesn't show, but I should have trusted LiEr.

A slightly tricky thing with LiEr's patterns is that, coming from a professional background, she doesn't put seam allowances on her patterns. You're supposed to add however much you prefer. 1/4, 1/2, 5/8, the world is your oyster. I comforted myself with the fact that I was making clothes for an active child, not assembling a nuclear warhead, and cut them out with a very approximate 5/8" seam allowance, measuring only occasionally to make sure that I had not strayed too far afield. This I did until ...

I did this. In case you can't tell the grievous nature of my error, that's the hem of the pants. Which I just cut out with a 5/8" seam allowance. Which is way too small. Notice that on most hems, the hem is at least half an inch wide? Sometimes more? That's because a wider hem is a) easier to work with and b) doesn't fold up as easily. A too narrow hem on pant legs is one of those rookie mistakes that just takes the shine off your otherwise well-made, professionally finished clothing item, which is certainly what I hoped that these overalls would be.

(For those of you who are confused and are saying "Isn't 5/8 more than half an inch? Wouldn't you still be ok?" I say: "No. You have to fold over the top edge of the fabric, and then fold it again so that you don't have a raw edge on the inside of your hem. If you just folded it once and sewed it down, it would fray. The making of well-made, professionally finished clothing is really just one long quest to eliminate all raw edges, ever.")

So what I did was this. I took a length of appropriately bright, wide bias tape and sewed it to the edge of the pants, folded it up, and sewed that edge down to make the hem. (Bias tape comes pre-made with folded edges.) This is what they used to do in the olden days when skirts or pants were let down as a person grew. When there wasn't enough fabric left to fold up to make a proper hem, they would use this exact technique, and in fact the reason that I happened to have neon orange bias tape on hand was because I had inherited it from my grandmother, who had bought it for just such a purpose. I think that's pretty cool.

At this point readers like my brother are rolling their eyes and saying "Enough with the technical crap, let's get to pictures of the boys!

OK, let's do.

Early morning selfie with Munchkin, looking pretty unthrilled with his awesome dinosaur overalls. Don't worry, he did cheer up later, especially when there were

BALLOONS.

This may not look like an excited face to you, but that's only because you cannot perceive the laser-like intensity with which he is holding that balloon.

(Yes! Our church gives out balloons to all the kids after the Easter service. Isn't that awesome?)

Again, the look is a little anxious, but trust me, Twinkle is having a good time here.

After church we went to the park and had a picnic with my parents and brother and sister. 'Stache bought the boys real soccer balls for their Easter gift, so most of what I saw of the boys for the rest of the afternoon was this.

Or this.

These are actually with zoom. It's a large park and they really love running.

Munchkin is sitting on Twinkle's ball here, and Twinkle is trying to steal it back. Despite 'Stache's buying IDENTICAL balls, they still knew whose were whose.

My sister and brother with the boys.

I was sneezing convulsively the whole afternoon and it still managed to be a pretty perfect day.

Serendipitous Froth

Until this morning I believed that there were three ways of making frothed milk, that precious commodity that adds that little soupcon of elegance that I so crave. 1) Purchase an espresso machine that includes a milk-steaming feature (cost = $$$), 2) purchase a milk-frothing gadget (cost = $), or heat milk in a saucepan until steaming but not boiling and hold a whisk between your palms and rub your hands back and forth to spin the whisk as rapidly as possible (cost = elbow grease)

But.

There is another way.

This morning there was no coffee in the house (and by coffee I actually mean espresso. ‘Stache and I do not have a coffee pot, which distresses and somehow surprises my parents every time they visit. Instead we have an espresso pot*, which takes up less space. Depending on our mood, we add hot water to the espresso to make americanos, which are essentially identical to regular coffee, or we add hot milk to make lattes.) However, I did have 6 ice cubes of espresso in the freezer. And I had a fairly snazzy KitchenAid food processor (made more perfect by the fact I paid only $2 for it). And I really love frappuccinos. The path before me was obvious.

6 ice cubes of espresso, 1 cup of milk, 1 tsp of sugar, a confident 15 seconds of pressing the “ON” button … did not produce a frappuccino. Apparently the ice to liquid ratio was too low. What it did produce, however, was more than 2 cups of coffee-flavored cold froth.

Now most of the time, frothed milk is a cup of steaming hot milk with a quarter to half inch of froth at the top. You pour in the espresso, and the milk underneath the froth mixes with it and you have a cappuccino or something similar, depending on your proportions. This was not that. This was solid froth from top to bottom and it was cold. It was fluffy and frothy and felt like a treat, even though it was very ordinary ingredients that I drink nearly every morning.

I did it again using plain milk with no ice to see if it would work, and it did. It made froth more than double the volume of the milk I put in. The boys were enchanted with this lovely treat and lobbied to have their turn drinking from my cup.   

This would be a great technique if you were trying to reduce the amount of coffee you drank in the morning, as you could continue to drink the same volume of coffee and milk, while stepping down your actual caffeine intake. I think we’re going to mostly use it to make a quick, extremely cheap treat for the boys. Milk + vanilla + sugar + 15 seconds = dessert!  

*Gratuitous pictures of the boys from when they were little and cute. Instead of huge and cute. More current pictures coming soon, I promise.* 

Not sure if Munchkin is hugging Twinkle or using him as a pillow.

*For the uninitiated, an espresso machine is different from an espresso pot. The latter is simple, fairly cheap, and you put it on a stove eye to use it. The former is usually quite complicated, offers all kinds of options, is about 10x more expensive, and is an appliance that you plug in. 

Randomly on ... Thursday. Ahem.

1. Christmastime as a mother of children is unutterably different from Christmastime as either a child or as a childless adult. The entire spirit of Christmas hinges upon the capricious good mood of a young person or persons who often fail to grasp the magic of the season.

2. I would like, at this time, to apologize to both my mother and my sister Molly, for the great impatience and lack of sympathy I exhibited when we were children and she had an ear ache at Christmas and delayed our Christmas Morning by an unpardonable half an hour. Being sick at Christmas is certainly no fun (sorry Molly) and being the mother of a sick child at Christmas is downright wretched (sorry Mama).

3. If you haven't been able to discern from the above, Twinkle was sick over Christmas and while I hope and believe that Christmas wasn't ruined for anyone, I know that a bit of the sparkle was a bit tarnished, what with the juggling and cajoling and worrying and should-we-put-him-back-to-bedding. But that's life, I suppose. Christmas is only ever perfect in retrospect.

4. He's fine now, though.

5. If you aren't sick of Christmas candy and cookies yet, it's an excellent time to buy both, perhaps to take to a New Year's Eve party. Ornament cookie kits are 99 cents at Aldi.

6. I am knitting a black hole. Possessing a rather shaky knowledge of physics (upon examination of transcripts, it appears I escaped the halls of education without ever taking it) I am unsure of the geological implications of opening a small, wool black hole in downtown Chattanooga, but judging from Star Trek, perhaps my neighbors and friends would do well to purchase a bit of property insurance.

7. Our beloved (by me) Fontanini nativity set is holding up well to the dual onslaught of cats and children. 'Stache, being raised using a very precious and delicate ceramic nativity set in his childhood, tends to spring out of his chair in alarm whenever he sees one of the children playing with it. The fact that it is plastic doesn't seem to have fully reached his hindbrain. However, due to children (or cats) it seems that Baby Jesus has gone missing. Hopefully he will be found before the end of the Christmas season.

8. We celebrate Christmas until and including January 6th, traditionally the Feast of Epiphany. This does wreak small havoc with New Year's resolutions, though. Five days of scrupulous observance to the new diet then a PARTY!!! And then on the 7th you have to climb back on the wagon again.

14 Days

14 days 'til Christmas.

Fourteen.

One-four.

The Christmas Knitting Season (so called because the Christmas Knitting Sewing Quilting And Crafting Season doesn't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue) officially begins after Thanksgiving, when I make knitting (/sewing/quilting/crafting) plans exactly as if the universe, my husband and my children are going to let me do nothing for the month of December except put meals on the table and knit (/sew/quilt/craft).

The beginning of the month is generally a light-hearted, carefree romp in the land of wool (/etc.). Of course I'm not knitting (/etc.) as much as I planned, but that's ok, because I have so much time left before Christmas. 

Right up until today, when reality steps in and settles down for a cup of tea and a chat.

The list is ... impressive. Maybe not as many items left as there have been in previous years, but the scope, the audacity of some of the items leave one a wee smidge breathless. In no particular order ...

1. The Sweater

Status: about 12" of the body is knit. An elaborate yoke involving 3 colors of yarn and snowflakes and stars is planned. Gulp.
Prospects: Middling. I am (*strong, bracing tone*) confident that I can get quite a bit more done on it, and this sweater is for a family member who will (hopefully) be understanding and happy to get a lovely, custom-designed sweater for, um, next Christmas.

2. The Quilt 

Shown here mid-quilting

Status: machine quilting is done. All it lacks is hand sewing on the binding and making and sewing on a label.
Prospects: Good. The hand sewing is simple and lends itself well to multi-tasking. On the other hand, it is 360 inches of hand sewing.

3. The Mittens

Status: unsure. I had a major size problem and I am not sure if these mittens just run small or if I knit the entire first mitten on the wrong size needles. So I could be 5/8s done or 1/8 done, I'm not sure which.
Prospects: Worrisome. The 5/8 vs 1/8 difference really is quite significant, and this present is due before Christmas. Stay tuned, I'm sensing more drama from these mittens on the horizon.

4. The Cross Stitch Ornament
(not pictured)
Status: 1/4 done. Gulp.
Prospects: Shaky but positive. This present is due after Christmas, so maybe it will be ok.

5. The Crafty Ornament 
(not pictured)
Status: This ornament has not been photographed because it has not been started yet.
Prospects: Flexible. This ornament has to meet certain parameters for an ornament exchange, and I really want to do something awesome. However, I could change the plan to something easier if the deadline looms unexpectedly.

6. The Other Quilt

Status: This is an on-going present, where each year I do a certain amount of work on it (This is what happens when you give your sister a quilt top and promise her you'll hand quilt it and then go and have 2 kids back-to-back.) I've done about 1/20 of the work I planned. You'll notice that the picture is of a wooden box, instead of a quilt. That's because it is difficult to cram back into the box for storage, so I didn't want to take it out to photograph it. This also might lend some insight on how I got so far behind on this gift.
Prospects: Grim. Very grim.

7. The Pajamas 

Status: Obviously still at the fabric stage. The brown flannel is supposed to be a pajama top for Twinkle and the blue print is for pajama pants for 'Stache.
Prospects: Waffling. I really want to finish Twinkle's top in particular, so he and Munchkin could have coordinating pajamas for Christmas morning. However, the world will continue to revolve if he doesn't. Red footies are always holiday-appropriate. The saving grace for both of these pajama projects might be that this year we'll be having 3 different Christmas mornings (his parents, my parents and our own), so I might shoot for finishing them in time for the last one (ours). On the other hand, with 3 different Christmas mornings, we're clearly going to be having a bustling Christmas season.

Which, if I'm honest, is exactly the way I like it. Cookies, stockings, parties, knitting (/etc.), family, hashbrown casserole, Christmas lights ... all with just a dollop of stress and anxiety to keep it real.

Finishing High

I really, really (really, really really) love finishing things. The laundry is a never-ending task, the dishes will be dirty again almost as soon as they're washed, meals must be prepared on a continual basis, but once a sweater is knitted, (with a few tragic exceptions) it stays knitted. It's a little thrill that I like to call a "finishing high." 'Stache tends to roll his eyes a bit when I say this, sort of like when I refer to knitting Fair Isle as being "so exciting!"

I finished a little Christmas cardigan twice recently. First I finished all the knitting, and then left it in the presents drawer for about six months.

I've never had a sweater that was put together this way, although it does make sense. You knit each of the pieces separately until you get to the collar, and then you join them together and knit the collar, so that the collar doesn't have any seams. 

Anyway, I finished the knitting and enjoyed finishing it. This, to me, is the perfect size for a fiddly cabled sweater: tiny, so you are still enjoying it by the time you're done. And then, when I got out the pieces and sewed them together and put on buttons, it was like I was finishing it all over again. 

Title: Baby Grandpa Sweater

Design: adapted heavily from Raglan Cables Set: Cardigan and Hat by Patons

Materials: almost all of 440 yards of Cascade 220 Superwash worsted, in 1946 silver gray

Finished: Dec 2014

I fiddled with the number of stitches so that I could use worsted weight yarn instead of the DK called for, and changed the neckline to be a crewneck instead of a V-neck. I also knit the button bands as part of the sweater fronts instead of knitting them separately and sewing them on. By the time I made all these changes, the main thing that was still the same was the stitch pattern, which I rather liked. 

I also finished another sweater recently, but that one has a rather more tragic past. 

I had knit the body, and one sleeve, and was working on the final sleeve when we went on a trip. I was particularly proud of this sweater, because it was made entirely of leftovers from another sweater. (This sweater is for Munchkin, and the original sweater was for my brother, who is over six feet tall.) Most of the time leftover sweaters are a never-ending cycle wherein one has yarn leftover, and so one buys another ball or two to make something with it, but then there's leftovers from that, so you buy more yarn ... But this one was going to work out perfectly, I was sure. 

And it did. Right up to the point where I left one of the sleeves in the hotel room. 

Unfortunately I didn't discover this until several days later, and when I called the hotel, the clerk was unable to find it. Also, a small dark sleeve is a bad thing to lose and a worse thing to ask a non-knitter to try to find. Very difficult to describe, sleeves. 

After a suitable period of mourning, I looked online for more yarn, but was unable to find the color I needed, so I ordered via sister express. My mother bought a skein from the original store, and after a while my sister Molly happened to be home for a visit and got the yarn from my mom and then came up at the tail end of a business trip for her and her husband's business, Youth Digital. (Check them out! They're pretty awesome, in my totally unbiased opinion.) 

And then, finally, the sleeve was knit again, and I sewed the pieces together. There's always a bit of a lag when you're knitting the final sleeve. However much you liked the pattern to start with, it's gotten a bit stale by the time you're knitting the last sleeve, and when the last sleeve is actually the third sleeve, it's gone past stale and right to dusty and unappetizing. 

But it's finished now, and a very cute little sweater it is too. 

Title: Candlestick, size 4 years

Design: Hilary Smith Callis

Materials: Berroco Vintage. I have lost the labels, so I can't identify the color beyond heather gray and navy.

Finished: November 2014

I followed the directions exactly except that I did 2x2 ribbing instead of knitted hems for the cuffs and neckline. Also I did 2 row stripes for the sleeve instead of the larger stripes in the pattern. I loved this pattern - it's such a great, classic sweater! 

There would be a picture of Munchkin modeling it, but it's for Christmas, so you'll have to wait! 

Where's Buttercup?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... 

My sister-in-law, my sister and myself were in the same carpool. We spent HOURS in the car together every week, shuttling between ballet lessons, art lessons, swimming lessons. When you have that much time hanging on your hands, you tend to turn to odd things for amusement. In between singing endless rounds of "His Cheeseburger," my sister and sister-in-law had a little performance piece they liked to tease me with. If it had a name (which it probably didn't), it would have been called "Where's Buttercup?"

At this time, one of my favorite movies was The Princess Bride. I adored it. Everything about it, and when I read the book I was crushed to find that it was written as a satire, and not the sweeping romance I believed it to be. My sister and sister-in-law, being less romantic or possessing better senses of humor (both equally possible, in that period of teenagerhood), immediately seized on the more satirical aspects. From the the (I thought) thrilling scene where Wesley wakes from being mostly dead and immediately his thoughts go to his lady love, they developed a little comedy routine wherein one of them would pretend to snore odiously and then suddenly pop awake with an Igor-like tilt of the head and demand to know "Where's Buttercup???" The other would laugh uproariously, and I (depending on the mood of the moment) would either roll my eyes or seethe inwardly at the outrage of such a desecration.

Fifteen years later, when I was knitting a very yellow little sleeper for my sister-in-law's first baby, I realized that there could be no other name for the pattern I was designing other than ....


Where's Buttercup? 

Note: When I designed this, I originally meant for it to be long enough to completely cover the feet and pull the drawstring closed. Unfortunately, not having a newborn handy at the time for reference purposes, I made it too short. I have corrected this in the pattern, but the pictures shown are of my own too-short version. Expect yours to be considerably longer.

Note #2: Due to fire hazards, I do not recommend using acrylic yarn for this project.

Size: 0-3 months

Materials: 

440 yards worsted weight yarn

Size 8 circular needles

Size 8 DPNs

Waste yarn or stitch markers 

Darning needle for weaving in ends

5 5/8" buttons 

Needle and thread

Neck

Cast on 52

Row 1: K5, (P2, K2) 10x, P2, K5, turn.

Row 2: Slipping this and all first stitches K5, (K2, P2) 10x, K2, K5, turn.

Row 3: Repeat row 1

Row 4: Repeat row 2

Row 5: K5, (P2, K2) 10x, P2, K1, K2tog, YO, K2, turn

Row 6: Repeat row 2

Row 7: Repeat row 1

Raglan Shaping

Row 8: K5, P6, pm, P1, pm, P5, pm, P1, pm, P17, pm, P1, pm, P5, pm, P1, pm P5, K5

Row 9: (K to marker, M1, pass marker, K1, pass marker, M1) 4x, k to end of the row, turn.

Row 10 passing markers as you go, K5, P to 5 st before end, K5, turn.

Rows 11-24: repeat rows 9 and 10

Row 25: (K to marker, M1, pass marker, K1, pass marker, M1) 4x, k to 4 st before end of row, K2tog, YO, K2.

Row 26: passing markers as you go, K5, P to 5 st before end, K5, turn.

Rows 27-32: repeat rows 9 and 10

Body

Row 33: (K to marker, transfer next 30 st onto scrap yarn, flip work over and using knitted on cast on, cast on 3 st. Flip work back over, remove marker) 2x, K to end. Total st on needles: 92.

Row 34: K to end, turn.

Row 35: K5, P to 5 st before end of row, K5.

Rows 37-44: repeat rows 34 and 35.

Row 45: K to 4 st before end of row, K2tog, YO, K2.

Row 46: K5, P to 5 st before end of row, K5.

Rows 47-64: repeat rows 34 and 35.

Row 65: K to 4 st before end of row, K2tog, YO, K2.

Row 66: K5, P to 5 st before end of row, K5.

Rows 67-84: repeat rows 34 and 35

Row 85: K to 4 st before end of row, K2tog, YO, K2.

Row 86: K5, P to 5 st before end of row, K5.

Row 87-94: repeat rows 34 and 35.

Row 95: K to 5 st before end, slip onto DPN. Knit together 1^st st from DPN and last st from beginning of the row. Knit together 2^nd st from DPN and next-to-last st from beginning of the row. Knit together 3^rd st from DPN and 3^rd from the last st from beginning of row. Knit together 4^th st from DPN and 4^th from the last st from beginning of row. Knit together 5^th st from DPN and 5^th from last st from beginning of row. From now on knitting will be in the round.

Rounds 96-142: K to end of round.

Round 143: K2tog, K1, (P3, K2) 8x, P3, K2tog, K1, (P3, K2) 8x, P3.

Rounds 144-145: (K2, P3) to end of round.

Round 146: K1, (SSK, YO, P1, YO, K2tog) to end of round.

Rounds 147-149: (K2, P3) to end of round.

Cast off in pattern. Finish off.

Sleeves

Transfer sleeve st from scrap yarn onto 3 DPNs. Using 3^rd DPN (the one to the right of the  underarm), join yarn and pick up and knit 2 st (1 to the right of the underarm CO st, then 1 of the underarm CO st) pm, pick up and knit 2 st (the other underarm CO st and then 1 st to the left of the underarm CO st). Total st: 34

Using 4^th DPN, join for working in the round and work in stockinette for 30 rounds.

Knit another round, decreasing 2 st. Total st: 32.

(K2, P2) for 8 rounds.

Cast off in pattern. Finish off.

Finishing

Cast on 3 st. K 20” of i-cord. Finish off.

Weave in ends.

Block gently, if desired. 

Weave i-cord through holes in bottom ribbing, going under K st and over P st.

Sew on buttons.