I’ve finished and gifted a stealth knit! Ravelry is fabulous in many, many ways, but it does make it tricky to knit for other knitters, which is why this is the first anyone is seeing of my take on this pretty shawl designed by my talented friend Kristen Hanley Cardozo.

One of the things I love about the way Kristen wrote this pattern is that you can essentially build your own version of the shawl based on how much yarn you have, how large you want it to be, and how ornate you’d like the edging. Kristen has included a pattern map that shows your best options in every scenario. I followed my own path and combined two of the edging possibilities in a way that wasn’t suggested — I liked the symbolism of teardrops becoming “heart leaves” for this particular friend in this moment of her life — and it worked out beautifully.

The yarn is Schaefer Anne in a teal and blue colorway. Anne is a sock yarn, and a tough one — it contains both mohair and nylon — but it softened nicely after a swim, and again, resilience with a bit of a shimmering halo seemed appropriate in this gift.

Another thing I like about this pattern is that it’s named for the leading lady of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, a book I was finally able to enjoy at the end of last summer during those long and multitudinous newborn nursing sessions. I’m a sucker for knitwear inspired by literature.

(And yes, this is my beautiful star magnolia bursting into life. Let us raise a glass to certain spring!)

… to drizzly days and the sadness of new teeth (Ada’s, not mine, and I can’t see them yet, but they’re making her gums swollen and her demeanor cranky, though probably not as cranky as I’d be if my gums looked like that). This is High Road, Mary-Heather Cogar’s clever design for A Verb for Keeping Warm’s Pro-verbial Club. I’m making a present of it, but I might make another for myself. The Metamorphosis is delicious yarn and well suited to small shawls: the silk content gives it a faintly grippy hand that it helps it stay put better than my all-merino neckerchiefs. It was a quick knit — or would have been if I hadn’t made mistakes I don’t understand because I was too darn tired and I still am — and the dry desert colors are everything my home front isn’t at the moment. So even if they’re not my colors, they’ve brought me some cheer. Thanks, Kristine and Mary-Heather!

How about some knitting actually done by me? Yes, it’s baby knitting, and while I’m hankering to work on some adult garments, there are still a fair number of mini-knits on my needles that need attention if they’re ever going to fit anyone of this generation. Plus I’m trying to stay ahead of my daughter’s growth curve and finish some things she can wear next fall. This new sweater would fit that category, except that it isn’t for her:

This is Rufus, from Kristen Rengren’s Vintage Baby Knits, finished at last for my friend Leigh’s little boy or girl. It’s more or less Rufus, anyway. I checked the book out of the library and had to return it long before I had finished, but the stitch pattern wasn’t difficult to memorize and I can produce a raglan cardi without directions. Now that I’m looking at other Rufuses on Ravelry, I see I imagined the shawl collar, but doesn’t it look just right for this professorial little sweater? I made mine by keeping the original number of stitches for each front — I did the raglan decreases, but at the same time I added new stitches right next to them and took them into the garter stitch portion for the collar. I also worked the sweater all at once rather than in pieces. However, I did note that the pattern called for a smaller needle in the garter stitch button bands, and while you might not think a quarter of a millimeter would affect the outcome much, garter has a different row gauge than the pattern stitch and I suspect you’d get rather loose, wavy button bands if you disregarded this suggestion. No one likes a wavy button band. So I worked the body on a US #5 needle, letting the bands hang out on a #4. When I came to those stitches I worked them on their own needle — just as you’d do if you were using two circulars to knit in the round.

Cute buttons, right? I thought they were appropriate, given that this baby’s last name will be Wood. The yarn is Imperial Stock Ranch Tracie in the color “Quail.” Great stuff. It’s sold as sock yarn, but I think it’s far too softly spun to hold up to foot wear. Good for baby things, though! It isn’t superwash, but this mom’s a knitter who knows what to do with wool. And I’ve found that baby sweaters made of good wool are remarkably drool resistant. I rarely do a full immersion of Ada’s sweaters; a quick squeeze of the slobber zone in lukewarm water now and then has been enough to keep them looking and smelling presentable.

I may need to make another of these for Ada. I realized as I was knitting it that it’s an awful lot like my Amanda. Matching mother-daughter sweaters? That’s only going to be cute for a couple of years. Better work that while we can, right?

Whew, two posts in two days! Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?

Most of my friends and acquaintances know I knit — doesn’t take Sherlockian powers of observation to deduce this when there’s yarn peeping out of every bag I own and I’m actively knitting it at every opportunity. So when Ada’s decked out in cute woolen hats/sweaters/booties, people always assume I made them for her. This is true less than half of the time. My girl is blessed with a great many talented knitting aunties who have made many of my favorite articles of her wardrobe. Case in point: the pear sweater.

I was so delighted to find she’d grown into this. Daphne made it for her and I think it may be the cutest sweater ever. Those stripy sleeves! Speaking of stripes, she’s also wearing this now:

Still loving the toes. I swear I try to get her to do something else in photos, but up go the feet…

But it turns out I didn’t get the shoulders quite right. I need to overlap the fronts and backs more, which may mean changing the shaping a bit as well. So we’ll call this an Okoboji prototype and I’ll add it to my list of designs that need to be tweaked and re-knit…. Anyway, back to the gifts. A fabulous blanket arrived last week from my dear New York knitting friends:

Psst… look who learned to sit, just like a real person!

Knowing my eternal admiration for Elizabeth Zimmermann, they collaborated on a Mystery Blanket for Ada. (That’s a Ravelry link; go check out the many beautiful versions others have made so you can really see what it looks like. I’ll try to get a better photo of this one.) This is the April project from The Knitter’s Almanac and EZ’s singular genius for imagining new constructions is on full display: the squares are knit from the center out and never bound off, but rather grafted together. I’ve knit a few squares of it myself for inclusion in that crazy log cabin-ish blanket that’s languishing at the bottom of my workbasket, and it is fun. As long as you don’t mind grafting. (Which I don’t. But not everyone enjoys it the way I do, and therefore I’m extra impressed that my dear friend Lisa put in as many hours of it as I know she had to for the finishing of this project.) This blanket is soft, soft, soft, and we’re loving it thoroughly.

Thank you, my knitting friends! We wish you all lived in Portland!