Category: knitting for our baby

Most of my knitting time was in the airports (I try to sleep on planes) and in the evenings before bed, but I still made a lot of progress on the Peapod Sweater (just need to find buttons! Something in the brown/orange/red spectrum?) and the beginnings of the matching hat!

This picture makes me want to squint it’s so bright, and yet it was taken at 9:30 in the morning when the sun was just starting to climb. We both managed to avoid burning (yay, 45 SPF) and came back with tan lines, so it felt like a successful vacation. 🙂

I finished the body on the Pea Pod sweater last night. As you can see, the back and fronts are knit in one piece, with sleeves and the collar added later. The front is asymmetrical, with the leaf lace panel roughly centered and the closure to the side of it.

I’m thinking buttons somewhere in the brown to orange spectrum will look great. I started the first sleeve, and aside from some mixups in the lace, it’s been flying. (I should know better than to knit the first few rows of lace patterns while reading, it always goes awry.)

I’m debating what to knit next after this. We have friends getting married in Costa Rica, and we’re going to have a beach vacation. (Can’t tell you how much we’re looking forward to the sun!) I’m guessing I’ll run out of things to knit on this within a day or so of arriving, so I need more vacation knitting. My top candidate has been the Baby Surprise Jacket, but I didn’t realize you couldn’t buy the pattern directly from Ravelry. 🙁 We’ll be going on vacation before the mail-order version could arrive, and I’m opposed to buying any more Elizabeth Zimmermann books. (I keep giving in and buying them based on one pattern that I like, but the two that include the BSJ are quite a bit more expensive and I’m just not that big a fan of the rest of the patterns.) I put a hold on it at the library, but the next book’s due date is the same day our flight leaves, so that seems really unlikely to pan out well. Barring some library miracle, I think I’ll probably give up on the BSJ for now, and instead use the Yarn Harlot’s Daisy sweater as a base and incorporate some sort of fun “interest” out of Knitting on the Edge? And use cotton out of stash, since wool won’t be as nice to knit on the beach? Decisions…

These photos are already two weeks old, but I finally finished and blocked the first baby sweater. Ready? Awww:

I found the pattern on Ravelry, and made some adjustments (changed gauge from Worsted to DK, added the stripes). The construction was completely confusing to me at first (I was having trouble figuring out from the photos how the side slits and ties worked), but I really like the end result.

It took a few tries to get my tension right on the diagonal lace – it wasn’t very stretchy, I was knitting in cotton (which is non-elastic), and the color changes complicated the issue – but I finally got the hang of it and it looks great after blocking.
Here’s the back:

This set of photos is finally accurate on the color. The vinegar washes appear to have done the trick to prevent bleeding (knock on wood).

The pattern called this a 6 month size but it looks so small. We’ll see? Now it can just be tucked away to wait for next fall.

I’m starting to feel like if I don’t speak up soon on the blog, the plethora of baby knitting projects will soon give it away: I’m pregnant. 🙂 I’m just shy of four months, and due mid-August. January was a long month (while Kevin was busy renovating rooms and keeping the fish going, I ate cheerios and snoozed on the couch, waking up just long enough to take a photo of whatever he was up to), but I seem to be improving on the energy front and the knitting has commenced in earnest. 🙂 We won’t know gender for another month or so, but I have several patterns that would work quite well either way, so those are at the top of the list in the meantime.

I finished the kimono baby sweater last week, but I haven’t blocked it yet. I thought to test the yarn for color-fastness only after I’d made quite a bit of progress, so of course the darker one bleeds. Oops. Not ideal for a striped sweater. I’ve been soaking it in cold water and vinegar baths which seems to be helping. I’m going to try it in hot water tomorrow, so fingers crossed. I’ll get photos as soon as it’s blocked.

In the meantime, I’ve started knitting Kate Gilberts’ Pea Pod sweater, shown here with the tulips in the morning sunshine:

I love the yarn (Provence – a really nice DK cotton). The body is knit in one piece, starting with a leaf rib, and then it switches to mostly stockinette with a lace panel. It feels like I keep only making it through a row or two at a time, but the progress is starting to feel noticeable. Here’s a closeup of about 6″ of the leaf ribbing.

I finished the back and one front of the kimono-style baby sweater I’ve been working on. The yarn continues to be impossible to photograph – this color is closer, but a bit too yellow. Unblocked, it’s curling madly (to be expected, but it’s making it look even smaller than it is. I’m always surprised how tiny 6-month clothes are. Here’s the back:

And the front:

The diagonal edging was a bit of a headache, since it isn’t particularly stretchy. Combine that with cotton yarn (ie. no elasticity) and the typical colorwork tension issues, and I had to rip back several times. The second front is going much faster, though. I did a preliminary block and the pucker you can see in this photo disappeared. Yay!

Within moments of blocking Kevin’s hat, I was already swatching for my next project. I’ve had this yarn sitting in my stash for ages, and finally came up with a perfect idea for it. The ball band called for #6 needles, so I cast on and away I went, then realized the resulting fabric was far too loose. Oops. I went down to #5 needles, then #4, and finally #3 before everything seemed like the proper fit.

The good news is that the gauge is now a perfect DK, which will make the math nice and easy. (I’m loosely following a pattern, but it was written for worsted yarn.)

I’m planning to switch off in 2 row stripes, which I think will look great. My only concern is that the darker color seems prone to bleeding, and I want this to be machine-washable. The ball band says something about doing the first wash in vinegar – will that set the color? Prevent bleeding?

The colors above are quite a bit off. This photo is closer, but both yarns are a little bit more teal and less blue, and less saturated than they appear in this photo.