When I Was 15...

I would have been crushing so hard on Edward Cullen.

So yesterday I read Twilight finally. The Yarn Harlot wrote recently about knitters (and readers) who avoids popular patterns (or books) just because they are popular. I fall into this category sometimes, just out of sheer hard-headedness.

But yesterday I was car-less, and I had a little time between work and picking up the boys, so I got the book at Union Station and finished it before midnight last night.

I have to say, it was a good teen book. When I was 15, I would have been so into it. As an adult, I find it a little purple-y...if she had told me one more time what an "Adonis" little vampire boy was, I would have screamed.

And yet...

I woke up this morning figuring out where I can pick up New Moon.

I am a geek.

(I thought I was going to make more progress on my sweater yesterday, but Metro was giving me fits. And though the sleeve is small, the finished body attached to it is not...)

The Uncounted Sweaters

Technically, my baby sweater count is a little off.

There is Baby Sweater Version 0.0, which was the Baby Kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting. This partially accounts for my utter distaste for seaming. (Awww...check out the Baby Lion adorableness...)

Then there is Baby Sweater -- the Girly Version. This is actually the first time I used EZ's easy yoke sweater formula. I figured the smallest version would give me good practice for turning this into an adult-sized sweater.

The yarn is Artyarns Supermerino in colorway 112. I originally picked up these three skeins at Stitch DC to make a pair of socks for my mom. But they never got made and the longer the yarn sat in my stash, the pinker it looked. I am not actually a huge fan of pink, so it just dropped farther into the stash.

HOWEVER: I love this yarn! It turned out to have all these beautiful purples, burgundies and golds in it, and nothing pooled at all. It didn't turn out to be as girly as I thought it would. It knit up very fast and beautifully.

I ended up modifying the pattern to make a slight v-neck, but since I wasn't thinking I only did it flat in stockinette, which rolled. So I picked up some stitches and made a sideways ribbing. It's a little funky (translation: it's not just the shadows in the above picture), but I think it worked.

I cast on for it the day after finding out a couple of our good friends from Raleigh who we had lost touch with had moved to DC and had a baby. So of course baby Clover had to have a knitted goodie for winter! I knit into this sweater all of my hopes for knitting back together our friendship and re-establishing our ties. And I finished it in less than a week. Truly a satisfying knit.

Random Kid Pic:


Anyway, it's time to start the bath and bed routine, so I had better sign off.

Hey, great trend, huh? Three posts in three days. Yay me!

Knitting? Are You Kidding?

I know. You have to go have a laydown now that I have actually posted about actual knitting.

Go on. I'll wait.

(hmmm...gotta find my US8 dpns. The kid is growing and the sweater isn't...)

Okay, ready?

So, it has appeared on the blog, but improperly noted: Baby Sweater Uno.


It is Stripz, a Minnowknits pattern started way back before the Great Blogging Hiatus of Summer '07. I bought the Manos Cotton Stria from Springwater Fiber back in December '05, just after I learned how to knit.

It was going to be a sweater for Slim, but it marinated in the stash for so long, I was worried I wouldn't have enough yarn for the 2-year-old size. (I probably would have. Especially since I didn't end up making the hat.)

(ETA: The above awesome hat was made by KnittinSis after a Mosaic Knitting class she took. Slim has a companion hat that also needs a blog post. They are truly adorable. Perhaps she should get a B.L.O.G. so she herself can share her knit projects??? hint.hint.)

I made some modifications to the sweater pattern, including knitting the sleeves in the round. I didn't quite make it long enough, but it's okay. I found some cute as a button (ha!ha!) train buttons, and I'm pleased with how this turned out, except for one, small, important detail:

It's handwash.

AAAAUUUGGGHH. I think there is still some smushed banana in the sleeve that the SOAK hasn't removed.

When I bought the pattern, newbie that I was, I didn't know anything about substituting, and I went blindly with the recommended yarn. Handwash yarn for a toddler sweater is a little nutty if you ask me.

HOWEVER, apparently not nutty enough for me to avoid repeating in Baby Sweater Dos:


Pardon the crappy flash photo, but I am both proud and embarrassed by Baby Sweater Dos, made out of (handwash, drat!) Patons Classic Wool in green and army camo.

The pros:
1. I made it from Elizabeth Zimmermann's "Knitting Without Tears" recipe for a basic raglan sweater. I felt like a capital "K" Knitter working the details out by myself based on her very sensible recipe of gauge and percentages.
2. Despite the yarn being handwash-only, the stitch definition is great and it is not pilling as much as I thought it would. Plus, what beats a sweater made out of $10 worth of yarn?
3. When I first read about EZ's raglan sweater, the idea for this two-color pullover popped into my head and would not leave. When the going got rough (see the cons), I did not give up the vision and I made it work. Whoo-hoo, Determination!
4. The kid wears it. But not the one pictured above.

The cons:
1. That two-color raglan pullover idea I had? Yeah, in the round? Let's dissect that a bit: Does the wiseass in the back know what exactly happens to the sleeve yarn when you get done knitting a row of the sleeve in the round? Let's just put it this way, it doesn't work. And yes, it took me actually knitting it to figure that out. So I cursed a little (or a lot), and worked it out. I split the front and back and knit them flat, finished the arms separately and then seamed them together. And it worked!!
2. I didn't decrease down as much as I wish I would have, so it's more of a boatneck than a crewneck. But since my kids have big heads, it's all good.
3. Apparently, I either cannot (did not?!) measure or the kid is growing faster than I can knit. Since Baby Sweater Uno was made for the Lion, this one was supposed to fit Slim. Actually, I blame his father. He's got the Cap'n's freakishly long arms.

But that's the benefit of having two:


Baby Sweater Tres is on the needles. It's out a 50% yak, 50% merino yarn I picked up at the 2006 Stitches East convention from Schoolhouse Products. I'm trying another in the round, in a 2x2 rib.

Hellllooooo, Giant Time Suck!

I have very, very, very good reasons for my suckassery in blogging.

A) I am a mother of two small children. Free Pass for Life! Or Until They Turn 18!

B) My husband is trying to tear out our kitchen within the next month. I want to let him, but except for, you know, the subsequent lack of a kitchen.

C) I really am going to apply to law school. Really. This year. Really. I swear.

D) I have been writing. Fiction, of all things.

E) I got off my lazy butt, found that Ravelry invitation from July (!) and joined.

Oh. My. God. Why am I such a loser who gets an invitation to join all the cool knitting kids online, and then I sit on it for three months?

'CAUSE RAVELRY ROCKS. HARD.

(I'm muthaknitter if you're on there and wanna friend me. heehee.)

So I put in all the books I could remember off the top of my head (23) and all the WIPs I'm going to publicly admit to (5) and joined some groups. (Look, ma, friends!) I have already spent an inordinate amount of time surfing patterns and people.

In fact, I think Ravelry will help me redeem the unmitigated disaster that is my first sweater. You know, the World's Warmest Sweater of Buttery Goodness (TM) first blogged about in February 2006. Yep, you heard the year right.

It deserves a post all its own, with the horror properly documented in pictures. The Cap'n has agreed to photograph the evidence. And should I ever get out of this hell known as No SD Card Reader, I will be able to download the photos to my computer and blog them.

Because really, the adorability that is the Little Lion's sweater, the coolness that is the Harlot's hat, the wonder that is Lady Eleanor (finally fringed this weekend!) should not be missed.