Category: knitting for our baby

Heart dress

I bought a pink skein of Cascade Sierra on clearance (a complete impulse purchase on a quick trip to buy needles – my guard was low, carrying a baby and corralling a three year old). I was thinking it would make a good tulip hat, but the gauge is obviously way too thick, and I think it’s actually not a great color next to her face. It’s been sitting near my desk, waiting for inspiration to hit. As I cast off the Downton Abbey knit along cloche, suddenly I found myself casting on a little dress. I’m using Topaz as a rough guide, although I changed the hem, am knitting in the round instead of seaming it, and had to adjust for gauge (4.5 st/in instead of 4). I also decided to write a little intarsia heart pattern instead of the southwest-inspired fairisle in the pattern.

It’s an addicting little knit. Somehow in spite of knitting for 24 years I’ve never tried intarsia before. There will have to be more of this in my future, it’s so satisfying. I experimented a lot with which way to wrap, so some edges are smoother than others and it needs a good block, but super fun. I meant to put it down and take a picture several rows ago – it looked for all the world like a jellyfish, with long, long white tendrils and shorter pink ones, but now that I’m further in, they’re less dramatic.

Such a sweet, pink, cheerful little knit. I even found a new-to-me pink knitting/house blog to enjoy while I work. What fun.

Ribbon

The baby looked like this:

And so the counter looked like this:

I wanted to make a ribbon flower to accessorize the green baby aviatrix hat – my thinking was that I could make a flower, put a buttonhole in it, and then the yellow button for the strap could be the flower center. I liked this tutorial, and bought a woodburning tool on Amazon for $11 to cut and heat seal the ribbons. It took me several days to work up the gumption to use the tool and make the cuts. The whole thing seemed sort of … flammable. But in the end it was an easy five minute project, even if the ribbon fringe on the tool occasionally smoked a bit. The cuts turned out so nicely! I used a dime as a cutting guide for the larger ribbon and a washer for the smaller ribbon. Great new hobby?

Unfortunately, the buttonhole idea was a non-starter. I tried it two ways – once on the sewing machine, and once by just searing it with the woodburning tool, and both times it was gappy and ruined the shape of the flower. So then I tried just sewing the strap onto the hat, and adding the flower and button as accessories.

Better, but the flower is too low to look proportional, so I’m going to have to move it up an inch and a half, or maybe make a different, knit flower instead.

As is, it isn’t quite there yet. Colors are great, but execution is lacking. Luckily, the hat is still too big, so I have a while to mull. We’re almost to pumpkin hat season, then this and the turquoise flower hat can share time in December unless I knit something more seasonal?