Category: knitting

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?

Sleeves!

Inspired by the knitting Olympics, even if I’m not officially participating, I’ve been getting a ton of work done on the February baby sweater. A zillion stitches that add up to a few millimeters of progress at a time. I don’t know what possessed me to make this out of sock yarn – really should have stuck with DK for the lace. But the second sleeve is done, and I’ve picked up the body and done a few rounds.

So, hurray for progress.

On the needles

Now that I finally have enough to look like something, here the beginnings of a February sweater for the new baby.

I’m a few rows away from the arm/chest split, which should speed things up a bit. Lace on sock yarn just isn’t speedy, especially when I seem to knit at most a third of a row in any one sitting. 🙂 Love the yarn and the color, and can’t wait to be a bit further along. I’ve knit two of these as gifts, it’s so much fun to be knitting one for our little girl.

Bonnet

I finally found ribbon and threaded it through to make ties, completing this simple, cute little bonnet.

The sizing is way off – what was supposed to be a newborn size turned into more of a two year old size. (Still haven’t re-measured to determine if the pattern or my gauge is at fault.) So we’ll just lay this one away for a few seasons. Makes me thing of the Elizabeth Zimmerman maxim for such situations: babies grow. I’m still happy with it, even if it’s way too big. Soft and old-fashioned and simple.