Category: knitting for our baby

I’ve barely posted about this project at all, which is such a pity because I’ve loved working on it. I started about a week before we left for PA, then continued working throughout the trip, and finished the hat and bootees once we got home. The pattern is cute, but the part that pleased me the most was how wonderful the yarn is. It’s a bamboo blend, machine-washable, and so very soft and drapey. It just feels snuggly.

The back is simple, too – there’s something to be said about a pattern like this that just works the way it’s written and comes together well.

So now it’s off to go live in the cabinet with the pile of other baby things for a few more months.

My travel knitting for the trip was the Sirdar Baby Jacket. I managed to leave the patterns for the matching hat and booties at home, but the ribbing took much longer than anticipated and so I didn’t end up casting off until midway through the trip home anyway. The yarn (a bamboo blend) is wonderful — so soft, great stitch definition, and allegedly machine-washable. I wish I’d found it earlier — it’s a great option for baby knits. I still need to get the buttons sewn on, and clearly this needs to be blocked, but here the jacket is in its nearly-complete state:

Continuing the theme of baby knits on the rock wall in the back yard, here’s the finished Debbie Bliss Ribbed Jacket with some pretty white mystery flowers.

This sweater, knit in aran weight yarn, was a lightning-fast knit. I used Cascade 220 superwash, and I’m wondering if I should have gone down a needle size as it grew substantially when I blocked it. The fabric feels nice, with good stitch definition, and while the under-arm seams aren’t smooth, I think they’ll look fine when the sweater is actually being worn. (Ignore the raggedy hemline, here. The sky was starting to open again as I took the photo, and I didn’t take the extra second to straighten it. In real life, it’s even.)

I suspect that the buttons may not be in the best taste, but I’m leaving them anyway.

I bought them on Queen Anne in the first month or two after we moved to Seattle, and I’m quite pleased that they finally have a home.

After a long interlude without buttons, the baby surprise jacket is done!

I finished it early in the week but the rain and dark clouds were a constant this week and this yarn is had to photograph without real light. After so many days of downpour, the garden is vibrant, though, so it was clearly for a good cause. Here’s the finished jacket with the blooming violets, forget-me-nots and periwinkle (not to mention the ever-present moss and a few ivy starts that I missed while weeding. You can also see a stand of mint in the upper-left. The mint was simply delighted with all of the rain this week and has been flourishing. We’ll have to do mojitos or something similar soon to subdue it a bit).

A less leafy view of the front, but hard to see the purple and green accents in the yarn:

And here’s the back:

I probably won’t use this yarn again – it feels wonderful and was so pleasant to knit with, but the color variation looked prettier in the ball than knit up, I think. Nonetheless, I’m pleased with the sweater and it’s so nice to finally have the buttons sewn on and be able to cross it off the list.

After those last long rows of the Sunrise Circle Jacket, I needed something quick and gratifying to knit. One of the things in my Ravelry queue was a 3-6 mos Debbie Bliss baby sweater in worsted weight yarn, and I’d picked up yarn for it just recently. Perfect. I’d been expecting fast, but it really just flew. Here’s one evening’s worth of leisurely knitting (a little over halfway done):

I love those tulips, by the way. Generally, I’m much more of a vibrant tulip person, but the subtle pink and white is lovely, and I love the two layers of petals. Rather blowsy and completely the right mood for the week.

I meant to post this and then finish knitting the body, but it was too quick, and so here’s the body blocking:

Tonight, I have a bunch of seaming to do – buttons for the Baby Surprise Jacket, all of the seams and buttons for the Sunrise Circle Jacket, and then the hems , sleeves and sides of this little jacket. Then I can pick up stitches along the edges of the front and sides and knit the ribbed collar. We’ll see if I manage to get it all done?

I bought three skeins each for the Peapod set and the Baby Surprise Jacket (which I’ll get completed photos of as soon as I find buttons), and then only ended up using one and a half skeins for each project. The Acorn Street Shop, where I bought the yarn initially, has a sixty day return policy, and I realized on Wednesday that I still had four days to trade in the yarn for a new projects’ worth. I headed over Friday after work, and was quite pleased to be able to buy yarn for not one but two projects with the store credit:

That’s Stork in yellow and light blue, for a newborn sweater and hat (a going home outfit?), and two skeins of Cascade 220 Superwash in light blue for the Debbie Bliss ribbed baby jacket in the 3-6 month size. I’m trying to finish my Sunrise Circle Jacket before I go cast on, since I’m having a hard time finding long-sleeved maternity shirts and I’m down to two sweaters that fit for work. But it’s a tempting little bag of fun projects.

I’ve been steadily plugging away on the Baby Surprise Jacket, and I’m finally seeing some real progress. For a few days, my pattern seemed to be that I had to rip and reknit two rows out of every four, because I kept sailing by one of the pairs of increases. When I miss a single increase, I can make it up even a few rows later by crocheting down, but double increases make the tension far too ugly. At least I kept catching the problems quickly (I’m using the row-by-row chart, crossing off rows as I work, and counting regularly), but it’s made this project feel like more of a slog than fun. Because of the increases, each row is longer than the last, so that probably doesn’t help my sense of progress.

I took photos of the construction so far, but the light here has been horrible and they’re all yellow and flashy. Sorry. I tried retaking them, but the March clouds are just too persistent. (We are so ready for summer!)

Here’s the unfolded blob on the needles:

I’m at the point where you put the two fronts on holders and just work on the back and bottoms of the front for a while. The cast on edge is the trapezoid at the top – the top edge plus the two sloping edges at the sides. You can see diagonal lines coming in from the top corners – the decreases for the sleeves, and then slanting back out the other way – the increases for the body. Because of the increases and decreases, it’s impossible to lie this flat, so there are folds of fabric on the right and left sides.

Now, if you fold the sleeves in half (the cuffs are the sloping cast on edges) so that the seam will run across the top of the arms and shoulders, you get a jacket. Huh.

Here’s the back:

It’s a cleverly designed pattern and shape. I’m not sure if I’ll really knit this again, once might be plenty, but it certainly was a puzzle to work on until my eyes adjusted to the construction.

There are some patterns that it feels like everyone must knit (this feeling has only been magnified now that people can track their projects on Ravelry, and you can see the thousands of versions of the same sweater or scarf). Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Baby Surprise Jacket is one of those patterns. It’s unusual in that it was published in the late 60’s (most of the bandwagon projects have been published online in the last few years).

In theory it’s a simple knit, because it’s all garter stitch. The odd part is the construction – the cardigan-style sweater is knit in one piece – you cast on along the line that runs from the cuffs of the sleeves, along the top of the arms, and across the back of the neck. You strategically decrease for a while, switch to strategically increasing, and then bind off along the line that extends down the middle on one side of the front, around the bottom of the back, and then up the other side of the front. The directions are easy to follow, but trying to envision the finished pattern as you work is truly mind-bending.

Here’s my progress at the end of the decreases:

The right and left sides are the completed sleeves. Ultimately, I’ll fold the bottom edges of the sleeves up to the top and seam them to make the shoulders and the top of the sleeves. I think I finally understand what I’m doing, but it’s very convoluted. Based on other people’s gauges and results, I think this will turn out to be a 6-9 month size – perfect for early next spring. I wasn’t entirely sure about the purple (I think I’ll probably omit it in the next two balls), but otherwise I love the yarn – a very soft washable cotton with interesting and pretty color variation.