This rose and a pitcherful of its friends grew outside my house. In January.

There aren’t many patterns I’ve knit three times, but when you need a pretty little cardigan for a wee girl, it’s hard to go wrong with Elizabeth Zimmermann’s gull lace and garter. This latest incarnation of the Baby Sweater on Two Needles from Knitter’s Almanac is for a baby born in Costa Rica last October, which shows you just how back-logged I am on knitting for my friends’ children. Thank goodness it blocked out like a champ — I thought I’d be lucky if a four-month-old could be stuffed into it for as long as a week, but now it looks like it might fit her next fall!

This yarn is Deep Stash. In fact, in stash terms, it basically dates from the paleolithic. It is so old the internet doesn’t know it ever existed. (Okay, a few other knitters on Ravelry have some, but nothing comes up on Google so I haven’t been able to find out just how ancient it is.) I inherited it from my mother-in-law, and I’d been doubting whether I’d ever use it — cotton and viscose blends are not my cup of tea, and this one proved to be just as splitty and unpleasant on the needles as I’d foreseen. But the yarn, made by Crystal Palace, is called Helena and so is the baby. How could I resist? And I have to admit the finished cardigan is pretty charming in that antique ivory, with the vintage buttons that match so perfectly…

(What I’m going to do with the other seven balls, I have no idea. They’re a brighter white than the three I used here. If shiny, splitty cotton-viscose yarn really floats your boat, drop me a line and I’ll mail them to you.)

We replenished the bird feeders this morning and discovered a mouse had moved into the seed bin on the back porch. I spotted the evidence right away, but didn’t expect to see Mouse herself peeping up at me from a hole in the bag, all sleek fur, bright eyes, and quivery whiskers. Ada, having been recently enchanted by a pet rat at the tea shop, thought we should pick her up and get to know her properly, but we didn’t. I am tenderhearted about mice, although I sincerely hope this one’s family isn’t expecting to move in with us for the winter. (The cat should be an effective deterrent. For all his faults, he’s a competent hunter and also pulls his weight when it comes to chores like dispatching house centipedes with alarming legs. (Don’t google them. If you don’t know what they look like from personal experience, thank the appropriate deity and go on your blissfully ignorant way.) And while the dog is useless against the creepy crawlies, she’d be thrilled to go all buddy-cop with Mingus on a mouse if he wouldn’t end her for cramping his style. So I’m not too worried about a rodent invasion.) But I’ll be devising a way to lock down the bin lid more securely. In the mean time, the finches seem untroubled to have shared some of their sunflower seeds. I’ve never seen a handful of birds tuck in with more vigor. They must realize summer is fading, too.

While the featheries are plumping up for winter, I’m feeling ready to turn my attention back to the thickest and warmest projects in my knitting basket. If you’re a knitter, there’s an excellent chance you already know what this is…

… but don’t tell, okay? Here be secret knitting. And speaking of miters, I’ve nearly finished my Mitered Cardigan: a seam to graft, buttons to attach, ends to weave, and then I cross my fingers and block this sweater like the dickens and, if all else fails, maybe take up running in case there’s a spare inch or so that could come off my middle.

(Mr. G saw this photo and said, “Is that our lawn?” He mowed it promptly thereafter. Thanks, love!)

10 months old and still no teeth!

A word about the hair before we get back to the cardigan: yes, it actually grows that way. But I like to tell people we get up at 5:30 in order to spend an hour fixing it just so with the curlers and blow dryer. I suspect we’ll be making appeals to all our curly friends for hair management advice, because Mama sure hasn’t had to deal with anything like this on her own head! I mean, do you even try to brush it? My friend Maria recommends a spray bottle of diluted leave-in conditioner, which sounds pretty reasonable for a squiggly toddler… But for now, back to the sweater.

Yarn: Socks That Rock Lightweight (NB: Jen’s single-color version is written for Heavyweight) in Blue Brick Wall (furrows) and a Rare Gem (ribs) that’s similar to Bumbleberry and Flower Power. It’s completely reversible; I sewed buttons on both sides. So far, I’m thinking this was worth the extra effort. I love the color combination no matter which side is out, and it’s so practical to be able to turn it around if one side gets foody or spitty when we’re on the go.

Needles: 2.75mm, US #2. Brioche is so loose and fluffy that you need to use a smaller needle than you’d think.

Modifications: I learned everything a person needs to know about basic brioche and two-color brioche from Nancy Marchant’s website and book, both of which should be considered knitterly world treasures. Don’t be intimidated by the new notation you’re going to encounter within; because brioche requires combinations of familiar movements (yarnovers plus knitting or purling and slipped stitches), it makes sense to offer a new shorthand, and that’s what Nancy has done. Jen has used Nancy’s system, and I think you’ll find it’s straightforward and sensible once you spend a little time with it. I will make my notes with the specific numbers necessary to recreate Ada’s jacket available this summer (or, um, as soon as I find them in my shameful mess of a woolery), but if you’re itching to start now, all you really need is Jen’s pattern and Nancy’s website. I cast on about 30% more stitches because I was using the lighter wool, and after stabilizing the cast-on edge I’m happy with the result, but the Channel Islands cast on and the brioche pattern are so stretchy that you could, instead, start with the numbers in the pattern and then add an extra increase round in the yoke before you divide for the sleeves. This would give you a sweater with a snugger neckline than Ada’s jacket has. Also, I added a round of increases halfway down the body to achieve a swingy line. I thought this would be extra cute on a little toddler and would work well with the single closure point I was planning, and I stand by that decision now that I see it on my babe. Especially since she came with lady tackle. I made no pretense of any intuition about her sex while I was pregnant, but apparently my fingers knew something my brain didn’t. Everything unisex I made for my little one kept turning just a little bit girly on me.

Love the short sleeves for increasingly capable little hands!

I expected to prefer the blue side, which is more to my usual taste, but I think this one suits her coloring remarkably well. She’s got a slightly ruddy complexion from her dad’s family and my rosy cheeks. (But she made up this fierce, impish smile all by herself. It goes with a rather scary growl when she’s excited. Not for nothing was my daughter born in the year of the tiger.) I can’t wait to see her staggering tipsily around in this jacket later in the summer. We have a lot of practicing to do, but Ada’s will is strong. Give me your fingers, Mama! Let’s walk! Rooooaar!

]]> http://www.bluegarter.org/2011/06/summer-swing/feed/ 19 http://www.bluegarter.org/2011/05/may-is-for-winter-knits/ http://www.bluegarter.org/2011/05/may-is-for-winter-knits/#comments Sat, 21 May 2011 19:11:59 +0000 Sarah http://www.bluegarter.org/?p=1860 Elizabeth Zimmermann, in her wonderful Knitter’s Almanac, designates the month of May as the time to knit mittens for next winter. You’re digging in your heels, right? In the northern hemisphere, at least, May tends to bring the first really promising weather of the year; summer is just around the corner and we can finally forget about winter. Who hasn’t had enough of rain, wind and snow? The next winter isn’t for ages, and there are three whole months of lovely long, bright days ahead. Many people I know cease to knit entirely at this point in the calendar. (I call them foul-weather knitters. We fair-weather knitters have been seized by an addiction so bone deep that blistering sun and wilting humidity cannot keep us from the wool. I shall be joining squares of a thick wool blanket in the summer heat this year.) Anyway, it’s understandable if even year-round knitters are turning to swishy summer skirts and breezy tops in linen or cotton. And yet, Elizabeth was as practical as they come. “It is better not to make mittens in a hurry,” she wrote. “When snow flies and small frozen hands beg for warmth (sob), the actual knitting tends to be perfunctory and possibly scamped; one economizes on the number of stitches; one does not make the cuffs sufficiently long. The main object then is to turn out scads of mittens to appease the demand, and enjoyment of production is not what it might be.”

The same is true of winter hats — who hasn’t, in a hurry to be done, started the crown decreases too early and left the ear lobes exposed as a result? — and my daughter has just outgrown both her warm ones. Also, I am not optimistic enough to expect real warmth in the month of June, particularly at daybreak when my husband often buckles our girl into her pack and heads off to the coffee shop. (They bring me coffee in bed. I know. It’s an excellent arrangement.)

My kid has an enormous head. It’s in the 97th percentile, while her weight is 65th. Having spent many years looking at her father, I am not surprised that this turned out to be the case. (And I’m very grateful she was willing to start small at birth and then grow that noggin really rapidly once she was out.) But the hats sized for children 1-3 years old don’t fit any more, so I thought I’d best take an actual measurement before knitting her a new hat to make sure it would fit for next winter. Eighteen and a half inches, my friends. This translated to the Adult Small size of the pattern I’d chosen. Not the Toddler size or the Child size, the Adult Small. Ada is wiggly in general and also wanted to pull the measuring tape off her head to examine and taste it, so it’s possible I was off a little bit, but I thought I’d better play it safe. Adult Small it was, though I did go down a needle size because, really, Adult Small? An apprentice teacher at my school taught her class to use their own Reasonableness Detectors to check answers to math problems (you subtracted and got something bigger than the original number… does that make sense?), and this was pinging mine. But I didn’t go so far as making a swatch or anything. Another thing I’ve learned from Elizabeth Zimmermann is that a hat is an excellent swatch its own self. Plus the yarn was so delicious that I had no choice but to knit it RIGHTNOW.

Mopsy, from Blue Moon Fiber Arts… it’s my new favorite. You’ll never believe it’s only 10% angora. Cozy doesn’t begin to describe it. I want to knit a sleeping bag out of this stuff. And it loves to cable. I felt compelled to cable all the ribs on the hat even though the pattern doesn’t call for it.

Here we’re wearing it Dutch Girl style, with the ear flaps turned up. But turned down and pushed back is pretty hilarious, like Princess Leia on a wagon train. (I think the flaps will lie flatter if I actually give the hat a bath and a bit of blocking, but it’s tempting not to.)

And yeah, it’s plenty big for next winter. And the one after that.

P.S. This grown-up girl said “Mama” yesterday and I think she may actually have meant it. She was in bed with me, clambering about and practicing standing up, looking pleased as punch with herself when she managed it. I could see the wheels spinning as she thought, “The only way this situation could be more excellent is if I were also nursing right now.” So she huffed and puffed and bumbled herself sideways, stooped for the attack, then looked up at me with a big, milky, toothless grin and said, “Mama!” I’ll take it.

]]> http://www.bluegarter.org/2011/05/may-is-for-winter-knits/feed/ 16 http://www.bluegarter.org/2011/03/rufus/ http://www.bluegarter.org/2011/03/rufus/#comments Mon, 07 Mar 2011 04:20:49 +0000 Sarah http://www.bluegarter.org/?p=1797 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?

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!

We rescued this hat from the sad fate of abandonment on a sidewalk during a week of solid rain — we let it sit for a few hours after we first saw it in case the owners were backtracking for it, but it was only getting more and more sodden and forlorn. I hope we’ll run into another young family in the neighborhood who will say, “Oh, we had that same hat, but we lost it!” and I’ll be able to give it back. Meanwhile, it’s having a happy second life warming my big girl’s big head.

Want an easy-peasy thumbless mitten recipe for a baby in your life? Here you go!

Tom Thumbless Mittens

Materials:

Remnants of worsted-weight wool (I used Dream in Color Classy), maybe about 75 yards? (I asked for a kitchen scale for Christmas, so if Santa Claus comes through I’ll weigh the mitts and then give you an update on the yardage. )

US #8 dpns

Directions:

CO 28 sts and work 9 rounds in k2, p2 rib. On the 10th round, knit the knits and yo & p2tog over all purl sts but the last two. Knit 20 rounds, then decrease as given below. Rounds begin just left of center on the back of the mitt.

Rnd 1: K3, k2tog, k2, ssk, k8, k2tog, k2, ssk, k5.

Rnd 2: K2, k2tog, k2, ssk, k6, k2tog, k2, ssk, k4.

Rnd 3: K1, k2tog, k2, ssk, k4, k2tog, k1 and then divide the sts on two needles, one for the palm and one for the back of the mitt, to graft them closed. There will be one extra st on the back where you didn’t work that 4th dec; simply work those 2 sts tog as you graft.

Make a matching mate.

Twist up a mitten cord, beginning with a length of yarn about as long as your wingspan, tying a knot in the middle and looping it over a wee doorknob or picture hook or the finger of an obliging friend, then twisting the two ends together until they do not wish to twist any more. Keeping tension on the cord, pinch it at the mid point and at the ends, then relax the tension and let it twizzle up into a lovely cord of a good length for weaving in, out, in, out through the holes above the cuff and tying in a bow. Tie a knot in the end that needs it before you do any weaving, of course.  If your cord has squirrelly bits that twizzled away from the main cord, just give a few tugs on the ends and they should jump back  into place. Make another cord for the second mitt.

I’m going to pick up stitches on the inside of the cuff tops and knit a lining for each mitt for extra warmth, but for now Ada’s wearing them over those sleeves that fold over her hands.

P.S. Someone’s going to ask about Ada’s furry boots. They’re made by Robeez and I love them. I justified the splurge by giving them to Mr. G as a birthday present, but they’ve been well worth it; they are as functional as they are cute. And luckily Ada has very small feet, so they should last all winter.

I’m one sleeve and five buttons short of a new jacket for Ada. It’s got a hybrid round-raglan yoke, some garter stitch, some stockinet, and some slipped stitches for extra style. I’m going to change a few things based on this prototype, but I have to say I’m pretty happy with it. And the yarn, too — I finally stopped chiding myself to knit from the stash and bought some Malabrigo Twist. I’ve got two skeins of Liquid Ambar (and I can see how liquid amber sounds more poetic than pitch). I’m cutting it close on the yardage, though. Good thing I didn’t bother to swatch, right? I knit most of this while we were most pleasantly putting our feet up in Friday Harbor a couple of weeks ago. A cooperative baby who was strangely amenable to being propped among the couch cushions at the yarn store allowed for the knitting of the first sleeve on a rainy day last weekend. We’ll see if such favorable circumstances can be reproduced this weekend to finish it all off.

Speaking of babies, I love the sleepy stretching before they wake up:

Yeah, that’s a commercially knit hat. I have no excuse for not having made her a better one yet. Or a pair of mittens, for that matter. Except that I’m all about the little jackets right now.

]]> http://www.bluegarter.org/2010/10/friday-snap/feed/ 10 http://www.bluegarter.org/2010/10/practical-pebble/ http://www.bluegarter.org/2010/10/practical-pebble/#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:01:07 +0000 Sarah http://www.bluegarter.org/?p=1705 Raise your hand if you need to knit a quick baby gift. (Yeah, me too.) May I suggest a Pebble vest? This is the quickest and easiest of projects, and it is So Darn Useful. Just right for a little extra coziness before you bundle the baby into a front pack for a nice long walk when autumn is coming on. If the baby lives in a hundred-year-old house like ours, it’s also perfect for fending off the morning chill indoors. And the evening chill. And the high noon chill, here in soggy Portland. (Not today — today’s lovely. But last weekend? Yes, that was Pebble weather.) Ada’s been wearing hers very regularly indeed.

If you’ve already made a vest like this or if you’re a seasoned baby-dresser, you’ll probably spot the most major thing wrong here immediately. Let it be said that I knit this vest when Ada was four weeks old. It was probably the peak of sleep-deprived loopiness, looking back. I thought I was feeling pretty sharp, all things considered, but it took me three tries to graft the twenty shoulder stitches together. I pride myself on my thorough understanding of grafting and I got it wrong three times. That’s more times than I botched my very first attempt ever. The third time I just laughed at myself and let it be wonky. I wasn’t going to win this one. It wasn’t until I went to put the vest on the baby that I realized I’d grafted the wrong shoulder to boot. Um, yes. The point of having buttons on the shoulder is so you can open up the whole garment flat, place the baby on top, feeding one arm through the armhole as you do so, then button it all closed. It still works just fine the way I did it, but I have to feed the head as well as the arm through the hole. Aren’t these mismatched buttons fun, though?

Close examination here will reveal that I couldn’t even manage to be consistent in the way I sewed the buttons on. Oh well! The baby’s cute anyway!

The yarn’s nice, too. It’s Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds, the Bluefaced Leicester DK. I used slightly more than one skein for this vest, so I’ll have to combine the leftovers with something from the stash when I make the next size up. I didn’t actually use the Pebble pattern because I was knitting at a smaller gauge — I cast on 98 stitches and allotted 40 to the front and back stockinet panels and six to each button band and the opposite side garter column, if you’re wanting to do something similar. It came out just right for a three-month size, which was my aim.

Hey! I can smile on purpose now!

]]> http://www.bluegarter.org/2010/10/practical-pebble/feed/ 14 http://www.bluegarter.org/2010/09/another-surtsey/ http://www.bluegarter.org/2010/09/another-surtsey/#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:49:49 +0000 Sarah http://www.bluegarter.org/?p=1693

More catch-up documentation of summer knits… this has gone across the country to Baby Walter now, so it can have its day on the blog! I had a lot of leftover Indigo Moon Merino Superwash in Mossy Green from the stripey baby sweater I knit at the beginning of the year. (It’s such a cheerful, vibrant green that my camera lost all confidence and didn’t even try to reproduce it here. Way to phone it in, Olympus.  You’ll just have to imagine it about fifty times springier and better than what you see here.) Anyway, it was the excuse I needed to buy a skein of Claudia Hand Painted Fingering in Copper Pennies, over which I’d been drooling ever since Twisted received it. (And now I have leftovers of that… enough for edging on a raffish neckerchief, I should think, if I stripe it with something else russety from the stash…) I’d been intending to make a Baby Surprise out of these two yarns, but when Kristen told me about Surtsey I couldn’t picture them as anything else. (Mom wants to know what a Surtsey is. It’s one of the newest islands on the planet, formed by a volcanic eruption in Iceland’s Westmann Isles in 1963. Now seals and gulls and puffins breed there. Puffins! I badly want to see puffins in the wild — clearly I must go to Iceland. Surtsey takes its name from Surtr, a fire jötunn in Norse mythology. Since I love islands and Norse mythology, it was my choice of the names Kristen was considering for the design.)

I picked up these excellent orange buttons at Close Knit. I had nice russet buttons that matched the contrast color; in my original plan for a BSJ they’d have worked nicely on a green button band. But this little sweater wanted something loud and fun, and while I don’t love the orange buttons quite as much as the red ones on Kristen’s original, I think they’re pretty darn good.

Happy birthday, little Walter! I’m pretty sure I made this big enough to encompass your whopping 9 pounds 5 ounces (and gaining steadily, I’m sure), but I hope the heat wave in the Northeast will be over soon or you might miss your window!