Craig, more baby surprises ruined below

Oh, I love babies. They give you so many opportunities to knit cute, small things. I finally finished the blankie, and she. is. LOVELY.

Presenting FO #26



Pattern: Cot Blanket by Louisa Harding, from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms

This may be the last pattern I make from this book. I'm sooooo tired of it. The book, I mean. I've made at least five things from it already. Maybe more. I'm kind of over it at this point. But the cot blanket, oh that I love.

Yarn: Berroco Comfort, 3 skeins, 1 each Peach (9704), Seafoam Green (9714) and Butter (9701) (my color names, their color numbers!). I bought 6 skeins for this project, but I used probably a yard from each of the second balls to finish the last strip on the side of the blanket. Other than that, one ball of each color was all I needed. I guess I could have added more, but I thought the blanket was big enough without it.

I love the Comfort yarn for baby stuff, too. The balls have 210 yards per ball, so they go a long way. The nylon/acrylic blend is smooth and very, very soft, and the yarn is machine washable.

Needle: Uh, I don't remember! I think I used a size 7 bamboo circular, but honestly, that project was done last week, and I haven't thought about it since.

Notes: If you're going to attempt this blanket, and if you like babies, I suggest that you do, because the squares are a lot of fun, then you'll want to do it in strips, rather than one at a time. Believe me when I tell you that the seaming was a bitch. Vertically, it wasn't so hard, but the horizontal seams are what gave me the trouble. Knitting in strips would have taken care of that problem.



The sides were fun to do too. Each side has a different order of colors, since the original blanket used five or six colors and mine only had three. I did two stripes of each color on each side, just in different orders. And the corners, which I thought would look messy, don't! They look great. I think this one is a winner! LOVE IT!!!

ALSO, do you remember me telling you that I have rediscovered my stash? I have!

FO #27



Pattern: Confection Baby Shrug by Tonya Wagner from The Shizknit

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, 1.5 balls

Ths yarn is from my stash. I don't know where I got it (I think at The Yarn Connection, the LYS that was by my office before its untimely demise last year), and I thought I had three balls, but after looking everywhere, I had to concede that I probably only had two all along.

It's a lovely color, don't you think? Purple, with gray overtones, and so soft, because it's cashmerino! But what to do with two balls of Aran weight yarn?

Thank goodness for Ravelry! The extended pattern search helped me find the Confection Baby Shrug, which was perfect!

Look at the little eyelets around the sleeves!



Cute! I thought it would take both balls, but I still have half a ball left! What do I do with half a ball of aran yarn? Do you think it would be enough for a little roll brim baby hat? I don't think it is enough for baby leg warmers...

Needle: US 8 circular from the Boye set

Notes: This little shrug was such a pleasure to knit. I love the DB cashmerino. I've knit now with the bulky and the aran, and I think I have some baby cashmerino in the stash waiting to be socks or gloves or something.

Anyway, I like to think of Rachel keeping this little shrug in her baby bag for when they go into air conditioned restaurants or the mall or whatever they do down there in Texas. In hot places, you never know when you're going to need a little something to throw on in the chill of the refrigerated air.

I have one more thing to make for the little baby to be, and then we're sending the box down to its new home.

That's good, because I'm sure I'll be knitting more for that kid later, but I still have some work babies to knit for. There are two people who I know less well. Each one I'm making something small, and each present is half finished. Then I have to make my friend Sarah something for her little boy. Maybe I'll use the remaining Comfort to make another baby blanket!

Anyway, last but not least, FO #28



Pattern: Pieces of Eight Baby Socks by Susan Lawrence

Not much to say about these, except that I used Lion Brand Magic Stripes yarn left over from Spanky's last socks, and I didn't have enough to make both socks, so used some leftover red Aussie yarn to knit the toe of the second, even though it was thinner and smoother than the other yarn. A) these are for a baby and what do they care, and B) That was the only solid color that I had as a remnant.

I can't even find all my sock yarn remnants at the moment, but I think the red toe looks cute. I'm using the rest of the red to knit a pair of lacy baby socks that are going to be given to a woman with a boy baby along with these, so I hope it goes over ok.

I used US 1 needles, and they were really fun to make. I'm going to make another pair for Craig/Rachel (the last thing I have to make for the package) out of leftover yarn from my mom's Jaywalkers.

Finally, I also started knitting my legwarmers out of the Noro Kureyon I got at the Stockinette. I wanted to do something just for me, and it's starting to get a wee bit chilly now, so best be prepared and get these out of the way!

glorious day

Again with the summer days! I swear, taking Friday off from work is (to borrow an old phrase from the kids) the BOMB. You can get over whatever your problems were from the week on Friday, a day when otherwise you'd be sitting at the desk stewing in them, so you're free to really enjoy Saturday and Sunday, instead of using Saturday to get over the week (and do chores) and Sunday to finish up whatever you didn't do Saturday and/or to get over your hang-over. It is amazing the difference it makes! I feel so much better now that I think I'm even ready to go back to the gym tomorrow morning. YAY!



And at 3pm I met the ladies for knitting at JC's newest attraction, Zeppelin Hall, a giant beer garden! Let me tell you, it is a lot more relaxing to knit in the afternoon with a beer. I love this place!



They have veggie burgers!



Hopefully this won't be the last time we meet here. On the knitting front, the blanket has two sides bordered now! Only two to go! I'm SO CLOSE. And I started a baby shrug from two balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran I found in the stash, and I'm up to the point where I need to sew the arms together and pick up for the border! (You can see it poking out of my knitting bag above.)

HOT in the city

Newsflash--summer is hot. OMG. I about had a melt down at one point today where if I hadn't been able to get a bottle of water, I would have really lost my shit. Thankfully, Spanky was there, and I didn't embarrass myself too much.

We got up with the intention of getting in on the last day of Summer Streets, but Spanky couldn't get her act together in time for us to make it down there. It was only til noon, and she needs a LONG lead time.

Instead, we headed to Chelsea for brunch at Blossom, an awesome vegan restaurant on 9th ave between 21st and 22nd streets. My assistant had given me a gift card last Christmas, but we'd never made it over there during brunch hours, due to extreme laziness. Today, since we were already up for Summer Streets, we decided to make a day of it. We went to brunch, then stopped off at Printed Matter on our way over to the High Line.

At Printed Matter, which is a very awesome store (and archive, I think), for artist's publications, Spanky found this book on art and knitting, and brought me over to show me the awesome sweaters.



She didn't know I already knew about Lisa Anne Auerbach and her message sweaters, but I didn't know she had put them out in a book! OMG! It's really amazing. I bought it, of course.



Not only does it have handy charts (fetus, anybody?), but I just wanted to support her art. Also, I am in love with that blue sweater on the right in the above picture. She's basically used the 9/11 sweater pattern on the left, but instead of the words, she's inserted another one of her charts. I know that she does these sweaters on a machine (or at least she did the last time I looked into this at all), but someday I'm going to follow her directions, and figure out how to make that blue sweater for myself. So cute! (although I know you can't tell much from my crappy pic...)

Now, you have to imagine this whole day taking place in a miasma of heat, drizzly rain, overcast skies, and air so thick you can feel it brushing by you as you walk. After Printed Matter, we carried on to the High Line. I'm glad that Spanky wanted to do this, because I don't know that I would have been motivated enough to get over there on my own, and I would have really missed out. It's a beautiful space:



Sorry for all the pictures, but it was a lovely park. It stretches for about 6 or 8 blocks, and is different all the way down. We're already planning on visiting it later in the fall to see how it changes, and hopefully be able to hang out longer. It was just too damn hot this time to linger, even though the space itself it quite enticing. I made the pictures small to save space, but if you want, you can click any of them to see them bigger.

After we walked all the way down the length of the park, we carried on into the Village for gelato (which is about when I had my melt down) and settled in Washington Square Park for a bit before starting home.

All in all, a lovely summer day. I'm glad it didn't rain harder or longer, and I'm really glad I didn't pass out from the heat or kill anyone. And when we got home, after a cool shower and a short romp with the dog, I finished one side of the blankie's border!



I am about ready to be done with this project. It has been wonderful knitting, but I'm ready for it to be over, because I have all kinds of other things waiting in the wings. I have rediscovered my stash, and I've got plans, baby! Big plans! Stay tuned for more on that later...

craig, stop reading now

I've been busy this week. Work has been one. long. slog. I am busy gearing up for fall, wrapping up summer, and generally stressing out about the upcoming four months. I have a target every freaking year to meet, and it keeps going up. On the one hand, that's because I keep meeting it, but on the other, it makes for a few nail-biting weeks on the run up to Christmas. I really hate this aspect of my job. In fact, it is the ONLY thing I really hate about what I do. Everything else--the travel, the endless conferences, the schmoozing professors, the planning and freaking paperwork, the publishing I love. The insane demands that the business makes on you and the toll it takes on your self esteem is something I could really do without. I don't like failing. I do a good job, and what I accomplish, I think I do pretty well. But this industry is just getting ridiculous.

Anyway, besides that, there have been shenanigans around Hudson county lately, which have started to intrude on my life. This was waiting outside city hall on Tuesday when I got home to walk the dog.



But there has been knitting! I've pretty much abandoned my two lace projects for this:



One of my very good friends from college is expecting his first baby with his wife, and I couldn't be happier for them. They've wanted this for so long, and they will be great parents. And to top it off, the baby is a girl! So I'm making her a little welcome pack. Spanky got some stuff too, and we're going to send a box later this fall, but first things first--she needed a hand knit baby blanket. I'm going with this pattern, unsurprisingly. I know, I'm so predictable. But I also have to make a blanket later for another good (work) friend, and I'm going to try something different for that baby. I'm enjoying knitting squares more than I thought I would. They go pretty fast. I know the blanket isn't too big, but that's even better, because I also want to make a couple of sweaters and some other stuff for this baby, and if I suck all my energy into a never-ending blanket, then I would be screwed in terms of time. I know exactly which sweaters I'm going to make, and everything else is just falling into place. It's amazing--when I knit the squares for this blanket, I actually do feel calmer and happier, and have more hope than I did when I was knitting the milan jacket or the zig-zag sweater I made before that. It really helps to have a pattern and yarn that you like, as well as a grateful recipient to think of. I like to think of this little baby girl lying on the blankie on the floor of her living room while her parents watch her, or tucked up inside it during the mild, yet chilly Dallas winter in her car seat or stroller. Anyway, the yarn I'm using is Berroco Comfort, and hopefully the yarn matches the bedding they've picked out for the bedroom too.

I have four more squares to knit, and then I need to seam them all up and knit the border, and I think I'll be done with the last four squares by the end of this next week, and the border the week after that, plus I'll have started the next baby present.

Yesterday after work, I went through my stash and pulled out all the odd balls and leftovers that I had which might be good for baby knitting, and I'm going to try to utilize what I have rather than buying more yarn. I had to buy the yarn for the blanket, because I don't have that much of any one kind or brand of yarn suitable for a baby blanket, but I do think I can use what I have left from other projects to make the sweaters. I'm pretty excited about all this. Making do, knitting for this little girl bump, who is so anticipated and loved already, and I'm actually not dreading knitting for the three remaining babies at work (hats for two of them, and sarah's blanket).

So yay for babies! (But please, let's all just take a break, eh?)



Oh, and finally, Spanky and I took a stroll over to the stockinette today to peruse their sale--half off pattern books and 30% off yarn until Labor Day! If you're in JC, check them out. Support your only LYS and get a deal! Anyway, I walked away with the Classic Elite Alpaca Stories, which I had desperately wanted last fall but didn't want to pay for on its own, for $6.00, and two balls of Noro Kureyon that I didn't really want but I couldn't find anything else I really wanted, and I figure at least I can make myself some replacement hand warmers for the one I lost last time I was in London. So, although I just popped those suckers into the stash, they'll be used this fall. I may try to make legwarmers from them, since I've been really jonesing for some. It gets really hard to wear skirts, even with tights, when the wind blows fiercely round the buildings. Anyway, we'll see. But they were only about $6.50 each, so not a big deal. Stella got really hot on the way back, and we ended up taking turns carrying her like the little Sultana she is.

Fall Knitting Mags

Generally, I don't consider myself a seasonal knitter. I don't worry about using wool during the hot months, because I'm not actually going to be working on it outside. But there is something about the fall knitting magazines that revs you up, you know? It is like a new beginning, a chance to start squirreling away for the colder months. I subscribe to both IK and Vogue Knitting, and I was reasonably impressed with both Fall issues. I also picked up the new Knitscene, which was a bit of a disappointment.

The Good:

Let's start with Vogue Knitting, since I got that one before the IK. That link is to their preview of the issue, since I am not sure about the ethics of just copying their images, and am too lazy to take pictures of the magazines right now. First off, HATE the cover. I was not a big fan of "McKey" on America's Next Top Model, and I don't think she's elevated this photo shoot at all. She always looks totally bored and fake to me in all her pictures, and I can't believe this is the shot they chose for the cover. Who wears their hats like that? That's just silly.

Having said that though, I do love the hat. In fact, that beret, by Angela Hahn, and the one by Kate Gagnon (#13) were my two favorites from that hat spread. I like most of the others too, but those two are the ones I can see myself actually making.

The first spread, "The Warming Trend" is a bunch of red sweaters on top of other red and orange clothes, which makes it really hard to see what they sweaters actually look like, because they just blend in to everything else. I don't think I'll be making any of these, but I'll be curious to see the ones that other people do on Ravelry.

"Natural High", the next spread, is much better. I like Cathy Carron's cabled pullover, but I can't see myself wearing it. I do love the grey one by Amy Polcyn. I would probably wear it with jeans, and would make it out of plain merino, not a cotton-wool blend. It looks really cozy though.

But the best spread, the one that is what I think of when I think of Vogue Knitting, is "Gold Rush". I love every single one of these sweaters! My favorite is the one by Anne Farnham, but I would wear every one of them. I also appreciate the styling of this shoot--it's arty without being lame, the model looks pretty and cool, and the clothes are appropriately haute. Not like the next spread, "Private Lives", which is rather ridiculous and misguided. But the less said about that the better. I love Rebecca Taylor's sweater, and Nanette Lepore's cardigan is fantastic, even if they belted it with this really ugly belt.

Pattern Lust count: 9! Amazing.

Moving on to Interweave Knits, which just got here. I'm less impressed than I was with VK, but still. This isn't a bad issue at all.

"Woolen and Worsted" was ok. I liked about half (and to clarify, when I say 'liked', I don't mean that the other designs are bad, just that I wouldn't personally make them. Sometimes though, the styling is bad.) I've decided that the model in the purple sweater is the new red-headed model, which means that she ends up looking larger than she really is in stuff. The first piece I really love from this spread is Katie Himmelberg's Felicity Hat. It's so cute! I may actually attempt colorwork in order to have this. Strangely, that also applies to Lisa Shroyer's Bandelier Socks. I am not usually attracted to very intricate socks, and will probably never make these, but they're so pretty! I love them exactly the way they are in the magazine. I also love the Slanting Gretel Tee by Petra Manis. I can see myself wearing this all. the. time. And I will probably try to make it eventually this fall. So cute!

"Rule of Three" isn't very useful to me. I like the idea of both the Barcelona Jacket, and the cover sweater, the Clasica Coat, but would probably never attempt either one.

In "Lace in September" my hand's down fave is the Nordique Swing Jacket by Veronik Avery. Love it! I also surprisingly like the Alpaka Tunic by Deborah Newton though. It looks very flattering and comfortable, and will probably go on my wish list.

And in "Double Sided", let's just skip that wrap and go straight to Rosamund's Cardigan by Andrea Pomerantz and Connie Chang Chinchio's Farmer's Market Cardigan. Generally, I don't wear sweaters that don't close in the front, so I would probably add some sort of closure to that one, but I really love both of them!

Finally, I really love the staff projects, so I'm glad to see them once again. Some good scarves this time.

Pattern Lust Count: 7 Not bad...

The Bad:

Like I said, Knitscene, which I normally enjoy, was a bit of a let-down this time. I really don't like the cover model. She seems to be sneering in almost every photo, and they've done some atrocious things to her hair. Gah!

I did like the article about Melissa Wehrle, and I think I might actually make that Emerald Isle Cardigan. It really is a good, basic sweater. I like that you can roll up the sleeves.

In "Graphic Elements", I really LOVED the Dagger Lace Scarf by Lisa Shroyer, and the Crochet Bobble Beret by Robyn Chachula, although I think it might be kind of small for my head... I even kind of like the Caterpillar-Stitch Pullover by Kathy Zimmerman, although I'm not sure if I would really make that one.

"Contemporary Cables"--eh. I like the Valentine Cables Hat by Cassie Miller, but won't be making it. It's just good to know about in case I need a present.

"Fall Session" is notable mainly because it contains the Heather Hoodie Vest by Debbie O'Neill, which I think might be the next big thing. I know I want to make it. It would be really warm in Lamb's Pride Bulky, but the short sleeves kind of counteract that a bit.

Finally, I appreciate them trying things with more unusual yarns, because I know I always look at the Loop-d-Loop Fern and wonder what anyone uses it for, and Lisa Shroyer's top is pretty cute, but it makes that girl look large (and therefore, what would it do to me, who is not a model?), and that's the picture where they've graced her head with that horrible wrap. Why?!

Anyway, Pattern Lust Count: 5 Sigh.

The Ugly:

Well, not really ugly, but that's how it goes right? The good, the bad, and the ugly? Anyway, my mom keeps my subscription to Creative Knitting going, and I'm grateful that she thinks of me in this way, although I don't really find a lot here to make most of the time. I keep the issues though, because they do have good dishcloth patterns, and they do these really great sweaters for the American Girl-size dolls, and my niece (as you know if you've been reading this blog at all) has two, so I always think at some point people will stop having babies, and I'll be able to use the extra yarn to make things for Bella's dolls. Although by that point, she'll probably be in college.

This issue actually isn't that bad (they come out monthly, which is pretty amazing in and of itself), but still... The cover sweater, by Jodi Lemieux Snyder, the Winding Road Henley, is pretty, and I do love the Autumn Rust Cardigan by Cecily Glowik MacDonald. That would be a great work sweater. Mary Beth Temple also has a cute cardigan in here called the Sunshine Cardigan, which looks easy and pretty. The doll sweater this time is called the Ribbon Bow Cardigan, and it's really cute on the doll. There's always one for a girl too, but that's pushing this too far, I think. Finally, there are two baby patterns here that are very useful, (and again, if you've been reading, you know I'm on the hunt for more baby stuff!), the Baby Raglan Cardigan by Kelly Klem, which has a cute little cabled heart on the front of one side, and the Simple Stripe Blanket, by Debbie Slaback, which is done in Berroco Comfort, which is what I'm using for my current baby blanket! This yarn is just great for baby knits.

Anyway, Pattern Lust Count: 3 for me, 3 extras (the doll and baby stuff). Eh.

Finally, I also get Cast On, as part of being in TKGA (The Knitting Guild of America), and their August-October issue just came out. It has some really good articles! There is a toe-up socks article with four patterns, an entrelac knitting lesson, which I still don't know how to do, and a great pattern for a christmas stocking, which I think I might attempt later this year. There are also some garments that I like: the Snowflake Eyelet Vest by Suzanne Bryan, and the Ashley Sleeveless Henley Top by Christine Wilkins, which is really plain, but that's the beauty of it. I don't always want tons of patterning or color work or thinking from my knitting. This is a plain, sleeveless shell that fits the bill of mindless (but useful!) knitting.

But that is it, really. I think the great usefulness of the articles and tutorials in this magazine is what people get out of it. The patterns are just extra.

Sadly, pattern lust count: 2 garments, 3 extras (2 sock patterns and 1 xmas stocking)

So that's it for the fall. I think the Fall Interweave Crochet is still to come out, but there's plenty of time for that, and mostly I just get it to be inspired. I don't know that I'm up to crocheting garments for myself. That baby onesie almost killed me.