Baby sweaters

July’s spinning is pitiful: only 1 ounce that I spun relatively thickly and Navajo plied so I would get some practice (and, frankly, so I wouldn’t have to deal with multiple bobbins that day because I was feeling lazy).

This fiber felt rougher, longer, and more crinkly than the natural white merino top I spun a few months ago.  I don’t know whether this is because of the individual sheep’s wool or the top’s preparation, or whether natural moorit merino is simply different in texture than natural white merino.

Fiber: 100% merino moorit top
Colorway: Moorit
Quantity: 1 ounce
Finished yarn: 1 skein, 32 yards, worsted weight
Spun at 12:1 on 7/6/2008, Navajo plied at 8:1 on 7/29/2008

This is my first mostly successful Navajo ply project. There was no cursing involved (!) this time around, simply because the singles never broke. I recently bought Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s Handspinning book and it both has photos of how to start a Navajo ply and offers the tip of pulling through several loops before starting the wheel. This did the trick for me. Usually what happens is I break the strand over and over, trying to get the chain started. I call this project “mostly successful” because the chains are not even and the finished yarn is both lumpy and overtwisted. In other words, I made yarn with character!

I did have one area of trouble while plying. I use my right hand to chain and the left both to control the singles coming off the kate and to smooth out any chains as necessary. Doing this, my left hand constantly was in the way of the right and I had to twist my body. With only 1 ounce of fairly thickly spun yarn, though, plying went quickly so I wasn’t too bothered. Now, had I been able to read bowerbird’s post that includes a little sentence about keeping the singles on the right (about 1/3 of the way down that post) before I tried this, or even thought about perhaps MOVING THE KATE TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF MY BODY when my hands were running into each other (duh!), I wouldn’t have had this problem. Location, location, location. Next time I’ll know better

On the wheel for August: traffic-cone-orange merino that I will spin 2 thin singles of, to ply with 2 thin singles of Grimace-purple merino. Wish me luck; the last 4-ply I did took me 6 months.

The Prezioso sweater was nearly done but I decided on the bus yesterday that I really didn’t like the neckline, so I ripped out the last 2 inches and it now looks a little shorter than this:

Sleeve #2 looks an awful lot like sleeve #1:

This is a good thing.

Mr. MmmYarn and I went to the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles last night. I was particularly interested in seeing the sheep and the home arts building. As I walked in the sheep barn, I realized I didn’t recognize a single breed. Not that I could have recognized them visually anyway, as all were sheared, but each stall bore a small placard listing the sheep’s name and breed. I came to the conclusion that since these were raised for food, meat breeds must be different than wool breeds. Years ago, when I first learned to spin and was still living in this area, I went to the fair and someone had a llama. She gave me a small bit of the fiber for spinning. No fiber at this year’s fair.

The home arts building housed entries in quilting, sewing, baking (most cookies and pies still looked pretty tasty, but having been on display for nearly 2 weeks some of them looked unappetizing, to say the least!), and, of course, knitting and crocheting. Some of the knitting was very well done with some original patterns, too. The first place winner in the baby clothes category was a well-knitted Feburary Baby Sweater (from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac). I was surprised that the first place winner in scarves was your basic 12-stitch garter stitch scarf on fat needles with fluffy yarn. I found some of the other scarves far more interesting and technically challenging than the winner. Perhaps the fact that the yarn was in patriotic red-white-blue helped its cause.

I also saw a chicken getting a beauty treatment as she was going to auction in the morning. First she got a soapy bath in dishwashing soap, then a dip in some rinse water, then a thorough blow-dry. She looked lovely when finished. It’s too bad her breed was “roaster” as this makes me certain of her destiny when the fair is over. All animals get cleaned up before going before the auctioneer: cattle get vacuumed so their fur really shines.

This yarn jumped out of the pile on Sunday night, saying “knit me!” This week’s bus knitting is a little sweater:

It’s coming along quickly. The sleeve in the picture is nearly done and I’ve already worked a few inches on the body. I’ll join body and sleeves and work a raglan yoke in the round until I get to the point at which I want to start the button placket for the front. Then I will work back and forth. I’m still thinking about what kind of a collar to put on it; I’ll have to decide that once I see what the placket looks like.

The little green sweater with white and tan stripes is finished. I found good buttons in my stash of buttons, too:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece; 80% cotton, 20% wool; 1/2 skein color CW-380 Dusty Sage (green), a bit of color CW-820 Teddy Bear (tan), and a bit of color CW-100 Cotton Ball (white)
Buttons: found in a store’s bin so no brand or item number
Needles: size 6 for body, size 4 for ribbing
Size: 20″ chest, so up to about 1 year old

I mitered the buttonband corners coming up the fronts and in retrospect I think I should have mitered the band the other way going around the neck on either side. It puckers just a little there, but I think once it’s worn the kid’s neck will fill in that space and smooth out the pucker.  

I was grateful for the time in the car over the weekend. It was just right for weaving in all those ends. Since the green was left over from a blanket I made more than a year ago, it’s in small butterflies of yarn so I had more ends to weave in than usual with this sweater.

My knitting mojo has resurfaced and Jaywalker #2 is at the heel. Further progress delayed until commuting on Monday. Yesterday I figured out where my green fuzzy sweater went wrong after it sat in the corner for a few weeks (it turns out nothing was wrong, I simply miscounted stitches in the dark cafe at knitting group) and today I started this:

Baby things are so tiny that they provide nearly instant gratification: it’s already more than halfway to the armhole. My stepsister-in-law’s baby shower is in three weeks and I want to give her options on light green and tan (her requested colors) sweaters for the expected little guy. I made the Baby Surprise in Tofutsies a few weeks ago with her taste in mind and am making this as backup.

I am also practically drooling over some of the baby designs in Dale of Norway booklet #162 that I picked up last week. I really want to make the long-sleeved dress.

The Baby Surprise I started last week went for a walk in the park today:

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann, in Knitting Workshop
Yarn: about 1.25 skeins (I have 75g left of 200g, weighed by my not-so-accurate scale) South West Trading Company Tofutsies; 50% superwash wool, 25% Soysilk fibers, 22.5% cotton, 2.5% chitin
Needles: size 5
Size: newborn

I couldn’t get 6 matching buttons so made do with 3 of each color. I held two skeins of Tofutsies together throughout, both to help avoid pooling and to make the yarn thick enough to work with this pattern. When I first touched this yarn in the skein I thought it was a little rough and I hesitated to use this for a baby sweater, but it turns out it’s skeined very tightly. Once I had worked two or three rows the skein loosened and felt soft. The sweater feels great, too. I hope the coloring meets my stepsister-in-law’s criteria of soft greens and tans for her baby boy due later this year.

This brings me down to only 43.157 miles of yarn in my stash.

Now I have to go come up with a project that meets jury duty criteria for tomorrow: small, mindless yet interesting enough for me, and on wood or plastic short needles so security doesn’t take away my knitting. I will bring a book, too, just in case.

I am on a little EZ kick over here and decided to make a February Baby Sweater right after the Baby Surprise Jacket. It went just as quickly with even less need to look at the pattern. You will notice the colors are the same as the BSJ’s. Sorry about that. I realize this may bore my minuscule audience but I am eager to finish up with this yarn already. When I bought it I had no idea I would be able to make 3 sweaters and a few hats with only 4 skeins.

Here’s the finished sweater. I like how the two front panels serendipitously ended up nearly matching in the pooling and that the sleeves look almost deliberately striped:

Yarn: nearly a full skein (about 10 yards left) Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport, 100% superwash wool, color 62 (Childsplay [sic])
Pattern: Baby Sweater on Two Needles (February) by Elizabeth Zimmermann, in Knitter’s Almanac
Needles: size 4
Size: tiny! Probably newborn to 3 months only

Aren’t the buttons great? You will need to click the photo to get a bigger version of it and see the buttons properly. I like the little colorful dots in the pink that work well with the yellow sewing thread I used.

I made a couple of modifications to the design. The lace pattern simply did not show up in this busy, busy yarn so I went with straight stockinette. I also cast on 6 extra stitches (8%) under the arms when I separated the sleeves onto waste yarn and knitted the body first. Then I picked up the set-aside sleeve stitches plus the 6 extra stitches, working them in the round rather than back and forth and reducing 2 stitches every other round twice to give me a total of 30 sleeve stitches instead of the 28 the pattern calls for. They still seem really narrow when compared to the Baby Surprise Jacket but I am sure they will fit. This is, after all, for a tiny person.

Next time I will work the yoke increases on the wrong side rather than the right side. Those little bloops of color bother me just a little and I noticed the increases are invisible on the inside of the yoke.

And what’s riding the bus with me as of Tuesday morning? Another Baby Surprise, this one in a double strand of Tofutsies sock yarn.

It was not raining when I got home so the finished jacket and I went outdoors:

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann, in Knitting Workshop
Yarn: 3/4 skein Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport, 100% superwash wool, color 62 (Childsplay [sic])
Buttons: Dill Buttons #1612
Needles: size 4
Size: newborn

Tonight Mr. MmmYarn is preparing for his weekend alone and I am preparing for my trip to Santa Clara in the morning. Someone at work bought this blanket from me today so I have extra cash to take to the Stitches West market, hooray!

If you’re going to Santa Clara, too, be sure to stop by A Verb For Keeping Warm; they have great naturally-dyed colors.

My sister-in-law and stepsister-in-law are both expecting little ones in late summer and early fall so I decided to get a jump start on small gifts.

First, I’m using up my leftover black and pink linen to make washcloths for the moms-to-be, my reasoning that they get tons of gifts for the babies but none for themselves. However, the finished squares are more diamonds than the intended squares:

Trust me, that pink one is as tall as it is wide (twice as many rows as stitches) but it really looks short of the mark here. They’re both garter stitch and apparently this linen does not like that. I am going to run both through the washer and dryer to see what happens. Most likely they will stay biased and I will need to wet them down again and block them forcefully into shape. I don’t mind if they’re skewed after they have been used but for presentation purposes I want them to look good. I made another black one in 4×4 knit-purl basketweave and that one did end up being a square.

A quick search through my box of finished items reveals a decided lack of baby things. My sister-in-law is too early along to tell which gender she will have; the stepsister-in-law’s first ultrasound showed boy parts but now they’re thinking girl. Perhaps the ultrasound technician was inexperienced and saw “amazing” boy parts, perhaps the umbilical cord? Who knows. It means I will need to make at least two boy items and two girl items to cover all the bases.

The first of the girl items is the Baby Surprise cardigan you saw a few days ago, started last Monday night and finished Friday on the bus:

It’s always amazing to me how that amorphous mess turns into such a cute little sweater with a few flips of the wrist. I took it to Monday night knitting to let the ladies marvel at Elizabeth Zimmermann’s brilliant origami puzzle so I hadn’t sewn the seams yet in this photo. Here’s the preview:

Buttons are on it now, too, and a good photo is coming once there is a break in the rain.

In the meantime, my little EZ kick is continuing and I am working on a February Baby Sweater in the same yarn as above.  Therefore also girly. Hmm, where is that Stitches West list? I need to add boy yarns to it.

The sock blockers I bought have arrived! Check out the moose-y goodness:

Mr. Mmmyarn’s socks look quite stylish on them, although the height of the cuff covers up part of the moose:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 1 skein Steinbach Wolle Aktiv Effekt; 75% wool, 25% nylon; color: 02
Needles: size 2 double-points

I doubt I’ll use the blockers to block the usual plain socks I make, but if I ever make fancy entrelac or stranded socks I’ll use the blockers for their intended purpose then. In the meantime, I do think they allow socks to photograph much better.

I finally finished the baby sweater. The theme I was given was “the sea and the sky,” so I picked blue for sky and water, white for clouds and seafoam, and tan for sand. Button-shopping was a pain; the recipient requested airplanes and there were simply no buttons imprinted with airplanes to be had in San Francisco (or at Stitches West, for that matter), so here we have the little cars I found instead:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece; 80% cotton, 20% wool; about 3/4 skein of the blue and not even 1/4 skeins of the white or tan
Needles: size 4 for ribbing, size 6 for body
Size: 20″ = 1 year

I heard the baby is a large-ish baby and although he’s only about 5 months old this sweater may not fit him after all. Humph. I hope it fits. The sweater really doesn’t have such a balloon shape, I just didn’t have time to block it before sending it on its way.

In an effort to knit from my stash and also reduce the size of my stash, I actually gave away (alert the media!) a large ball of rayon chenille I knew I would never use to someone who said she could use it. I also pulled out some of the acrylic stuff I bought years ago and made a cage cozy for a local animal shelter:

Pattern: own. (Really, just a dishcloth: cast on 3, increase with yarn overs on each side every other row until you use up one skein, then decrease to the end of the second skein. You can’t see the yarn over pattern in the edges in this photo.)
Yarn: 2 skeins Lion Brand Homespun; 98% acrylic, 2% polyester; color: 350, Elizabethan
Needles: size 8
Size: 24″ x 23″

Cage cozies are used in animal shelters to give animals a bit of padding and warmth in their often cold cages, to give them a bit of comfort in the form of a security blanket that’s theirs alone, and to make an animal up for adoption look more attractive to prospective adoptive parents. Looking at this, uh, “square,” I see my garter stitch technique is apparently in want of improvement. The cozy is slightly longer than it is wide and it has a tendency to relax into more of a parallelogram than a square. I yanked its edges like crazy to prep it for its photo shoot.

WIP update: Socks for me are underway (bus knitting), I got started on the “Lily of the Valley” shawl (Knitter’s, Summer 2004), the to-be-felted bag is waiting for the rest of its i-cord, and my red cabled sweater is languishing again until I can drum up the enthusiasm for v-neck calculations. I also have some finished singles ready for plying. So much knitting, so little time…