Lindsay's Mint Leaf February Baby Sweater

 Knittin' with the Kittens

I have made several versions of this pattern in the past few years.  To spice it up this time I picked out a lace pattern with a 14 stitch repeat, Beech Leaf Lace.  I was inspired by the minty color of the yarn.  It came from my friend Stacy's stash, which she generously handed down to me not too long ago.  I don't usually buy acrylic blends, so this Plymouth Dreambaby DK would never have found it's way onto my needles otherwise.  I was pleasantly surprised by how soft it is, and the color is just lovely.  Moms appreciate wash-ability in baby items, so being an acrylic blend is a good thing for this application. I hope it still fits the baby, who has been waiting very patiently and probably doesn't even need a sweater during this second warmest spring on the record books...

 The sleeves were done last, in the round.  Which is not how EZ says to do it, but it worked ok for me.

 Finally, after languishing for a month waiting for buttons, the sweater is finished.

Kitties can not resist knitted things.

Here is the link to my project on Ravelry.  If you are a Raveler, send me a message or something!  I don't have the social networking aspect of that website quite worked out, but man, can I make use of their incredible pattern library!

Hexipuffs

These little guys are my newest yarn crack. Inspired by Tiny Owl Knits Beekeeper Quilt, I fiddled around with my worsted weight yarn scraps till I came up with a serviceable recipe for my own hexipuff.  If you want the real deal, buy Tiny Owl's pattern, it is only $5.50 and I'm sure it is worth every penny!  I might do that someday when I develop the patience to work with sock yarn.  But I looked at the pictures and decided I could figure it out on my own, and so I did.

You have to use DPNs for this, although I suppose you could do it with the Magic Loop method (but I like DPNs better).  These little guys are knit seamlessly in the round, and I don't know how you could do that on a pair of straight needles.

 

• On a size 7 Double Pointed Needle (or one or two sizes smaller than you usually use for your choice yarn) cast on 16 stitches.  I used the long tail cast on, but I think any one would work, and there are probably several different ways to do it. 
• Place those stitches on two dpns.  The first stitch goes on one needle, then the second stitch goes on the second needle, then the third stitch goes on the first needle, and the fourth stitch on the second needle and so on, till you have 8 stitches on each needle.  Alternately, if you have some kind of figure 8 cast on or somesuch that you use for knitting toe-up socks, that would work too.
• Knit around once, putting 4 stitches on each of four needles.  
• You could use a stitch marker to mark the beginning of the round, but the yarn tail from the cast on is the only thing you really need to be able to see.  Once you've worked back around to it, you know you have completed a round!
• On the second round, increase once at the beginning of the first needle (I do m1l and then k4, but you could do kfb or another increase you like).  For the second needle the increase goes at the end (k4, m1r). On the third needle, the increase goes first again, and on the fourth needle, it goes last.
• After every round of increases, knit one round without any increases.
• Repeat this process till there are 8 stitches on each needle. Make sure to do a round of plain knitting after the round where you increase to 8 stitches per needle.
• Start decreasing. ssk, k6 on the first needle, k6, k2tog on the second and so on around.
• Knit one round plain after each decrease round.
• When you get back down to 4 stitches on each needle (the last round you knit should be plain, with no decreases) you are ready to stuff your puff.  I use poly-fill, but you could use yarn scraps or cut up t-shirts or whatever you have lying around, although I cannot recommend using dryer lint, because it comes right out when you wash it the first time.
• Put the stitches from needles 1 and 2 onto one needle, and put the stitches from needles 3 and 4 on another needle.  Now you should have two parallel dpns with your live stitches all ready to finish off.  I use the kitchener stitch to sew up, but you could do a 3 needle bind off if you don't like grafting.  However, I thing the grafted edge looks super sweet and it is a really good way to learn the skill, doing it over and over again on tons of little puffs.

I bet you could make these bigger and they would be swell, just cast on more stitches and keep increasing till the length of one side is the same as the bottom.

I don't have enough puffs to start joining them together, but when I do you'll hear about it.

To Dye For

Last week I spent my Tuesday evening playing with yarn. It had been a grey weekend, and I badly needed some color in my life. I had recently purchased a fat lot of naked Fishermen's Wool from Michaels when it was on sale, and set about to dye up a bunch samples, in preparation for a project I've had brewing in my yarn brain for a while.

This yarn comes in a pretty big ball, 8 ounces worth, or 465 yards. I had read that you could use one packet of Kool Aid to dye one ounce of yarn, so I had to figure out how to measure out 8 hanks from each ball without any kind of yarn meter. Some household measuring and some simple math problems led me to the discovery that if I wrapped the yarn around the leaf of my dining room table 26 times, I would end up with approximately one ounce of yarn! Yay! So then there was a lot of winding and tying into hanks.

I've been collecting Kool Aid now for a while too, sussing out which "flavors" are available at which stores, and buying bunches of it on sale. I think I went through something like 50 packets on Tuesday. But that's OK, because I can always get more! It's not like I have to order it over the internet, or get any kind of mordant. The citric acid in the Kool Aid is all you really need to set the color in wool. Bonus, the whole process is food safe, so when I wanted to do more hanks at one time I just busted out a regular old stainless steel saucepan and went to town, not worried that I would have to relegate it to the craft cabinet as no longer food safe.

There are a ton of great tutorials all over the internet about how to do this on your stovetop. If you understand what happens to yarn to make it felt, you can use that knowledge to avoid it. Basically don't shock your yarn with rapid temperature transitions, and don't agitate it much while it is dyeing. A bit of stirring is ok.
You can tell when it is done because the yarn will exhaust the dyebath. When your water is clear, you are good to go. In all my experimenting, I used up to 5 packets of Kool Aid to one ounce of yarn and had no color left behind in the water.

Each hank was cooled and rinsed and hung to dry in my bathtub. I let them dry overnight with a fan on, and in the morning just twisted them up all nice to protect them from the cats. I made little tags for the blended colors, hopefully I will find some way to match the recipe to the right yarn before my mind disconnects that information. Now, if only I had a ball winder! It took me one night to dye all this yarn, it is going to take me 2 weeks to ball it up so I can knit with it!

Knitted Christmas

Here is my cute-as-a-button niece Zoey wearing the Rainbow Girl sweater I made for her Christmas present. The pattern is Radiant by Meghan Jones from the Winter 2010 issue of Petite Purls. The yarn is Bernat Mosaic, which is an acrylic (easy care) self striping yarn I found at A.C.Moore. The only modification I really made was to put buttons all the way down the front. Delia and I picked out some crazy swirly buttons at Jo-Ann's for this sweater, but when we got them home they were way too big to fit through the buttonholes. That was OK with Delia because she immediately took them off my hands. I wonder if that wasn't her plan all along. Anyway, I sifted through the most recently discovered jar of my Grandma's buttons (Mom finds these things in the house and sends them home with me) and came up with exactly 5 carved shell buttons dyed orange. The reason we save things, I hypothesize, is so someday they can bring joy to someone else, and remind them of us. I have a feeling that every time my sister buttons her girl into this sweater, she will feel the coolness of the shell and think of Grandma.

And Zoey really seems to like it too!

Here we have the hat I knit for Seester! She told my hubby some time ago that she was still wearing the hat and scarf I crocheted for her back before Delia was born! That is dedication. Hopefully this hat will serve her for another 12 years. The pattern I used is Irish Girlie Knits Snowboarder Hat That Rocks, and the yarn is Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande. Seester is sensitive to wool - as in, she thinks it is really itchy even when I think it is not, so I knew whatever yarn I used would have to be super soft, and this 100% alpaca fits the bill. The cables were so fun to work and never got tedious because the yarn is so big it knitted up quickly on size 10 needles. One hank of this yarn will not finish the hat (four rows from the top, I had to grit my teeth and wind the other hank into a ball to finish), so I got 2, and I have plenty leftover if those pom-poms ever need replacing. Instead of the braided ties from the pattern I knit on three lengths of I-cord and braided them, mostly because I love knitting I-cord. And the pompoms, well, they were for fun.

I think she likes it too.

And so it was Christmas

Christmas Eve I was at work before the sun came up. Of course, I am always at work before the sun comes up. My boss was drinking a Coke in a classic glass bottle, and you know, that's pretty special since you don't see it very often.
"It is Mexican Coke." she says. "It's made with-"
"Real sugar. I know, it was my Dad's favorite."
And so after that I had to go sit in the bathroom and ball my eyes out at pretty much thirty minute intervals till I finished baking all the Cookies and Christmas Bread. Don't get me wrong, I still like Christmas. But when Elvis sang "Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree/ won't be the same Dear, if you're not here with me," it meant something different this year...
Then I walked home, in the not quite cold air, and it didn't really feel like Christmas at all. I got myself together and decided not to cry anymore, because it would just bum everybody out and I didn't want to do that to them on Christmas, you know?

The first thing Husband said to me when I walked in, as cheerful as always, was "So how was work, baby?" Of course I just threw myself into his arms and sobbed something about Mexican Coke, and he just held me like he's so good at doing. No heavy sigh emanating from his lips to let me know how unfortunate it was that I was ruining Christmas, just that strong hug and the familiar "I know, baby." Because he does, he knows about the unopened bottles of Coke in my parent's basement that my Dad was saving, and he knows how much I miss my Dad. And then I just had to sob even harder, because it hit me real hard how it might be to go on living without him, and that my Mom was living in a world like that. This great bleak panorama of all the women in my family history outliving their husbands played out behind my watery eyes, and it was humbling and terrifying all at the same time.
A girl can only cry for so long, and trust me, I've been crying semi-professionally for my entire life. When the tears were about dry I ran upstairs to hop in the shower and get ready for the big Christmas Eve Dinner at my Mother-In-Law's house. There was something really healing about the quality of light in my giant southern-facing bathroom. I don't get to take a shower at noon very often, but the sun shines full into my bathroom through layers of sheer curtains and the draping pothos vines and citrus trees I have in front of the windows. The combination of that soft, bright natural light with the steamy shower helped me rinse all my tears and worries down the drain. The nap I took after that helped a lot too. By gosh and golly, at 3 PM we were all ready to go down to Clarksburg and have some good Christmas fun with Keith's family. My Mom went to Seester's house this year, so we didn't get together at Sun Valley. Which might have been just as well, me being an unstable snot/tear factory and all...

Dinner at Grandma Virginia's house was Absolutely Lovely. Constance baked a wonderful turkey and scalloped potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, and stuffing. There were also deviled eggs made by Grandma Virginia - and instead of being sliced long ways they were sliced the other way and they were super cute and delicious and I think Delia ate half a dozen of them. I whipped up some gravy when I got there, FROM SCRATCH, with a can of beef broth that Grandma had under the cupboard. There was not a speck of green vegetable in the house, much to Delia's delight.
After dinner, and after Grandma's Galettes, we opened presents, and everyone was delighted. Constance gave us, among other lovely things, a real boss coffee maker that has a water filter and timer and a couple of other bells and whistles that are sweet. The girls all got cute PJs and sweaters and makeup and perfume and were happy as clams. I kind of felt bad that I didn't get presents knitted for Becca and Schyler, but they can place requests and I will make them something in the future.

Of course I didn't take enough pictures in North View, in fact, the only one I got at Grandma Virginia's house was this one of my niece Kaitlynn in the present I made her! The hat is Leethal's Short-rows Wavy Hat and the scarf is Karen Baumer's Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf. Both are knit in Bernat Mosaic, Psychedelic colorway, a 100% acrylic self striping yarn that I picked up at AC Moore in Bridgeport. Both were knit on size 8 Clover Bamboo needles.

She is just the cutest thing.

After Ryan and Deb and the girls took off in their sleigh to go visit Deb's fam, Keith and Delia and I wandered next door to Grandpa Carson's house.

My sweet girl in front of Grandpa's Christmas Tree.

They say Christmas is for the children (well, at least Barry Manilow says it!) and you know, Madyson was the star of the party at this house. She had plenty of packages to open - but she got a little sidetracked after the first one, which was a shopping cart. She pushed that little thing all over the house and wouldn't sit down to open another thing! During this time Delia decided that she was going to buy herself a viola with her Christmas money. My girl has priorities.

Grandpa Carson and Cathy got this awesome slide for Maddy, and she LOVED IT! I think she slid down it a hundred times.

Grandpa helped her climb, and Uncle Keith caught her.

It was super fun. I must have taken 30 pictures, but most of them were of a blurry Maddy in mid slide. Blurry is in this Christmas I hear.

Keith, Delia and I made it back to Edgehill House before midnight this year! Once my sugarplum was tucked into her bed, the Elves got to work Elving, and we had a nice quiet little time waiting up for Santa with The Twelve Beers Of Christmas, courtesy of Keith's bosses.

Christmas morning came early, Delia woke us at 7:30 and we enjoyed coffee from our new coffee pot and bacon & eggs while we opened gifts. I am ever so thankful to have this little family.

A Sweater for Pippa

My little friend Pippa turned one earlier this month. She and her mom went with me in the fall to the Sheep And Wool Festival up at the University Farm, and while we were there we found this skein of pink coral wool that decided to become a sweater for her. I used the pattern for the Sunnyside Baby Cardigan, with some speculation, alteration, a bit of hope and my own force of will to make it come out. As it started growing on my needles, with the cables highlighting the raglan increases and all, it reminded me of the BPT cardigan I made for myself last year (or has it been two years now... I forget). And you can't tell from these photos, but the cables meet at the underarm and continue down the length of the sleeves and down the sides of the sweater.
I couldn't get gauge on the initial swatching, but just went ahead and made the sweater anyway, estimating up a size or two in the pattern to compensate for the tightness of my knitting. I also ran out of yarn before I knitted the sleeves on, so had to unravel several inches at the bottom of the sweater to get enough yarn for the sleeves. Ultimately I went into my stash and wound up a hank of kettle dyed Malabrigo Sock to finish the hem and cuffs - although it is a somewhat finer gauge yarn, knit on the same needles it worked out just fine.

The buttons are from my Grandmother's stash, Delia and I went through all our button tins and also a new trove that Lisa (Pippa's Mom) brought over. Ultimately we decided on these vintage pearly shank back jobbies that are made of some kind of classic 1950s opalescent plastic. I did break several trying to sew them on with the darning needle I had handy - the eye of the needle being just slightly larger than the hole in the button shank, until there were only enough to finish the sweater. Then I had Keith use his sorcerous powers to get the yarn through the hole in the button, and then I threaded it back onto the needle to finish sewing it on the sweater. It was rather tedious and harrowing, but Oh So Much Fun! Really, I would have had to walk all the way upstairs to my attic workshop and putz through boxes of notions to find a needle one size smaller that would still accommodate the yarn through it's eye.

I fear I made it a bit small, or maybe I didn't put enough buttons. The last one I made for her had TOO MANY BUTTONS. Perhaps the next one will have no buttons at all!

I am also in love with that Snoopy hat.

Finished Objects and some Self Reflection

Self Portrait with iPhone

I'm just not so good with the Humans. Cats, I can communicate with. Humans, not so much it seems. I got myself into a little pickle in the middle of November by making a hat for a complete stranger. Which was spontaneous and kind of fun, but these things always seem to backfire on me somehow. One thing lead to another, and she asked me if I would like to make a couple of hats for her to give as Christmas gifts. This was really immensely flattering. I have a friend who makes lovely things and people like them so much they give her money for them, which has always seemed like a romantic way to earn your daily bread. So when the nice lady for whom I made a hat asked me, I said yes. I thought, I can totally crank out two or three hats in between my big Christmas projects, and it will be nice to have a little extra cash for Santa-type activities.

Couple of days later she brought me a bag full of yarn, 8 balls of yarn, and said here you go! These 4 are for men and these 2 are for ladies and these 2 are for kids. And there was a serious conflict raging within me, because it was less than 2 months till Christmas and here was a HUGE bag of yarn and an order for more hats (in 6 weeks) than I have made IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. But also the possibility of some extra money. So I took it home and started to work.

These three hats are what I have finished so far. One for a toddler, one for a teen girl, and one for a lady. And knitting these three hats has taught me a whole lot about myself and my craft.

• Knitting for money is not as much fun as knitting for someone you love.
• People who don't knit have NO IDEA how much time and effort goes into a handmade item.
• I am NEVER going to do this sort of thing EVER AGAIN. If I sell anything in the future, I am definitely going to make it first, put a price tag on it, and if someone wants to buy it then that's all good. I just can't handle the pressure of "just do whatever" because there are too many variables. What if the hats don't fit the recipients? How big is a toddler's head? What if she doesn't like them?
• Most patterns say that you can't sell stuff you have made with them without permission from the author. I am a real stickler for that sort of thing, and therefore didn't use any pre-written pattern. Which means I don't know what a thing is going to look like until it is finished. Which adds to my stress.
• People do not really want to pay as much for your time as you think it is worth. If I paid myself minimum wage for the time it took me to knit these hats, the littlest one would cost $43.50, and the biggest one would cost $72. That is kind of ridiculous. But my time is worth way more to me than the money I could get from these hats even if I sold them for $30 each. I don't buy presents anymore, I make them. But if I made all 8 of these hats, I wouldn't have time to make the Christmas presents for the people I love.
  

When I finished the High Tension Cable Hat (maybe there will be a recipe for that one up here soon) I decided to work on some of the projects I have going for my gift list. I made good headway on several of them, and also got a couple of hanks into the dyepot with some awesome BLACK Kool-aid I picked up after Halloween for a nickel a pack. I basically Space Dyed these and they came out a delicious silver grey with pink and blue gradients. The yarn is about 45% bamboo, which doesn't take dye like wool does so the color is not nearly as intense as it would be on 100% wool. But if Santa is on the ball I will get a hank or two of nice wool in my stocking and use up the rest of my Kool-aid stash on it.

Cool Color Yarn Dye

This was my second try dyeing yarn with Kool Aid. It came out really pleasing to me.

The yarn started out an oatmeal color, it came from the stash of Bemidji yarn I used before. I mixed up cups of lemon-lime, blue raspberry lemonade, and grape (although the photo shows Blastin' Berry Cherry because it was in a purple package and I am easily confused).

This is me painting the yarn with a turkey baster. Kool Aid will stain your countertops, so do lay down some plastic to protect them.

Here is a shot of the yarn after I wound it into a ball. And after I went to the store and foolishly left it out on the table. When I got home it wasn't on the table anymore, and after a moment of frantic searching I found it chewed, snaggled and partially unwound in a corner under the table. Thanks Rohn!


I fixed it.

Oughta be Knitting, But...

So I signed up to teach this knitting class. I can't lie, after the first session I was a little dispirited. It is one thing to teach your kid how to knit over a period of several years. It is quite another to teach ten (mostly) strangers to knit in two hours (which was supposed to only be one hour). It didn't turn out quite like I hoped. Still, they invited me back the next week to give it another go, and so I have been trying to find a different approach to teaching the class (one that actually helps the students learn how to knit). Friday I go back to try again, keep your fingers crossed for us all! I feel like if I can surmount this first hurdle, I can share all the cool knitting tricks I have picked up over the years.


Yesterday I felt like I needed to do something really creative and spontaneous. Trying to pick apart the mental processes of knitting so I can teach them to other people... it is just kind of hard for me (which is why I am doing all this in the first place, honestly.). I was reworking my lesson plans, my approach to teaching the knit stitch, and every time I wrote something different down the internal critic sliced at me. A step back, a different perspective, a diversion, was just what I needed, and so I decided to dye some yarn.

I have been reading about dyeing yarn for a year or more. It is one of the knitting peripherals I have been avoiding on purpose. Like my Dad, I have a tendency to get really into something and then about halfway to mastery, get seduced by something else. I didn't want to have to make an investment in dyes and tanks and dedicated equipment, and moreover I didn't want anything to take me away from the knitting I am working on - sweaters for Keith and Delia, gifts for loved ones, my fruit and veggie projects... Oh well, too late now!

It took about an hour, not including the trip to Krogers for my dye. Hello Kool-Aide! I followed, more or less, this tutorial from Knitty, all the while thinking about the hand dyed skeins I have met and loved. The flavors I used on this hank were Black Cherry, Lemon and Orange. I already have at least two more colorways floating around in my brain, and with Kool-Aide coming in at about twenty cents a packet, I think I can even pull it off before my next paycheck comes in!

The yarn I dyed was Homespun Yarn from Bemidji Woolen Mills in Bemidji Minnesota, purchased several years ago from the Needlecraft Barn in Morgantown. It weighed in at almost 3 oz. AND IT STILL SMELLS LIKE FRUIT! Rohn actually ate about 4 inches out of the top of the ball after the photo shoot before I could stop him. He loves yarn as much as I do, but in a slightly different way.

Cowl Girls

Here are a couple of marginally unflattering photos of me and my sister wearing our Mobius Cowls.

This one is knit in Noro Kogarashi color #9, on size 11 needles. When I snapped this pic my sister squealed! I hope she's ok with the fact that I am publishing it to the internets. It was either this one or the one with half of her face cut off and the camera looking right up her nose, so I went with the lesser of two poor photos. Maybe my New Year's Resolution should be to learn to take better pictures!


This one was knit in Quaking Maples Farm Handspun color Maple Spring on size 9 needles.
Delia snapped this at my request, but she wasn't taking the photo shoot very seriously. At least the camera strap isn't in this one!

I was inspired to knit the Mobius cowl on New Year's Eve, as it was a portable project that wasn't too fiddly but also satisfied my need for learning something new. If you don't know what a Mobius strip is, apparently you are not alone! I was shocked by how many people at the NYE party had never heard of one. Later I tried to explain it to my daughter but she doesn't believe me. One side, one edge, that's it kids. That's geometry, and math, married in another discipline called topology. Weird, wild stuff, and super sweet knitting!

Balls of Yarn

The Original Snow-Ball.

The Ice Ball (because it is kinda blueish)

Knit from this pattern, using size 5 needles. I am addicted. There are so many other things I ought to be doing right now, but I can't stop knitting these spherical objects. So far there are two, but who knows when the whim will leave me, I might make a million. They are SO MUCH FUN TO THROW!

A Sweater for Pippa and other stuff

Check out those sweet buttons I found at The Sew Inn on High Street in Morgantown!


This week I knit like a madwoman every day to finish up this sweater in time for Lisa's baby shower. It is based on the Elizabeth Zimmerman February Baby Sweater from Knitter's Almanac. I substituted my favorite lace pattern, Fancy Trellis, for EZ's Gull Lace because both are 7 stitch repeats. The yarn is Patton's Kroy Socks in the Flax colourway.
The main deviations from the original pattern are in the sleeves, which I knit in the round. The sweater is made seamlessly by picking up the cast on stitches at the underarm just like I did on the Madyson Sweater, using the selvage of the knitted-on cast on as a row of stitches. It isn't perfect, but anyone who picks up the baby's arms to stare at my seamless join deserves whatever they get!

Delia and I arrived late to the baby shower because unlike most people, I have to work on Saturdays. It was a lovely party which we enjoyed very much (Judy has a TREEHOUSE in her backyard!).

We left the party a little early, but I think it was actually a cosmic good thing, because as we pulled onto Edgehill Street I saw an old friend of Husband's walking up. He'd knocked on the door, but I think Husband must've been upstairs because he failed to answer. It was a great thing that I caught him and his wife before they got to their car. We had such a lovely visit! I hadn't met Andy's wife Yu Ezhong before (so strange to think how quickly 6 or 7 years can pass, what all can happen in that time that you didn't realize you'd missed!), but we hit it off. We ended up having dinner at Lavender Cafe. Our dinners were not brought out at the same time, I stared at my Spicy Red Dragon Roll for 15 minutes while we waited for the rest of the food.
Otherwise everything was DELICIOUS, and the conversation was also delightful. Yu Ezhong (please forgive me if I butchered the spelling, I had to crib it from the internet as best I could) ordered a seafood dish that so reminded me of Dad. She told us about her favorite restaurant food back in China, which is kind of a meatball made from squid, which nobody here in WV seems to know how to make. She also helped Delia with her Chinese pronunciation, because Dee has been learning a few phrases in school. We all had a great time! I hope we get to do it again soon.

On the way home from the restaurant we were waylaid by a shambling tide of ZOMBIES. I wish I'd taken photographs, but it was still a worthwhile experience. We stood on a pedestrian island so the ZOMBIES could drag themselves down the street all around us. They were led by several men in Umbrella Corporation uniforms, which I thought was a super nice touch. Delia was delighted by the spectacle at first, but then came the first Screaming Fast Moving Zombie. And I have to say here that I am SO IMPRESSED by the decorum of the ZOMBIES. Even the folks who were really in character, really making it scary, they never crossed the line and got close enough to touch my kid. It really only took two scary monsters to get Delia Deliciously Scared. And by that I mean the good kind of scared she gets from reading Goosebumps books. We all three huddled together in the street as the tide of ZOMBIES flowed all around us. I especially liked the Gas Mask zombies from Dr. Who. Hooray for the Zombie Walk!

The Madyson Set

Thanks to Lisa who had the perfect color of sewing thread in her embroidery bag, and to Keith who picked up the buttons while he was in Clarksburg for work on Friday, the Madyson sweater and hat set are complete!

The sweater is Knitted Baby Set, No. 107 from Doreen Volume 100 Baby Gems by Nell Armstrong. It is available on line here. The hat is Aviatrix Baby Hat by Justine Turner, and is available free on Ravelry.

The buttons are JHB from Jo Anns. The yarn is Red Heart Ltd. Heart & Sole, which I picked up at AC Moore.

This sweater was knit on size 3 needles, and the construction was intriguing because it is all shaped with short rows. Even though the pattern doesn't call for it, I wrapped all the turns and then knit the wraps. Doing that takes the eyelets out, but I didn't really want those little holes there, as I wasn't going to finish the sweater with ties anyway. I did a button band to finish instead (repeated the garter stitch part of the pattern stitch, and made 7 YO buttonholes).

Instead of doing the sleeves as called for in the pattern, I did the following:

• Cast on the underarm stitches using the Knitted On method.
• Instead of binding off at the end of the sleeve, I left those stitches live on one needle. Left the working yarn attached and hanging at the cuff end of the sleeve.
• Using the other needle I picked up 48 loops from the cast on edge, starting at the armpit. My cast on was loose enough to allow this, your mileage may vary.
• Turned the sleeve with right sides together and from the cuff edge did a 3 needle bind off to armpit, where I jumped back in to the pattern as written.

It was fun! I hope Madyson likes it.

Things that are making me happy Right Now

Pizza with garlic & onion sauce, topped with spinach, mushrooms, ricotta, roasted beets and Havarti cheese.


My fern is growing!


Elizabeth Zimmerman's puzzle of a baby sweater pattern, and the magical internet community of knitters called Ravelry which helps me make sense of it. Oh, and the Araucania Nature Wool that is such a pleasure to knit up.


My Distinguished Scholar daughter, who brought home some stratospheric WesTest results, decided to scent our last batch of homemade laundry soap with her lemon balm from the garden, and also gave me a foot massage.


The wet orange leaves all over my neighbor's driveway and the smell of earth after rain.


Our little PurrMonster Rohn, jumping up onto my lap on purpose.