Sweaters for Esther

If I didn't have a blogging backlog I could probably write a whole post about each of these sweaters that I knit for Esther... but as it is, I am glad that I have managed to get photos of her in each of them and excited to share with you!  I finished basically all the knitting on these sweaters before Esther was born but didn't finish any of them all the way before she got here... I think it was similar to her quilt, it was as though by not finishing the sweaters all the way she wouldn't come yet.  Doesn't quite work that way though, huh?

This yellow kimono style sweater was simple to knit and luckily only required a few buttons to finish it up after she came - I knit it in a newborn size but it was stretchy enough to fit her from a few weeks old until she was several months old.  Worked out perfectly that I only made her this one tiny sweater since she was spitting up all the time and I didn't really want to put her in a sweater too often.  The pattern was quick and easy, I can see myself making it again either in a bigger size for Esther or as a small one for another baby.

Speaking of how these didn't quite get finished before she arrived - here's a photo of the sweaters blocking that I took four days before she was born.  I remember it being a bit awkward crawling around on the floor getting them all pinned!  Not totally intentionally, the other three sweaters that I made for her were all about the same size (9-12 months)... but it worked out great, since she has finally stopped outgrowing her clothes every 3 seconds and is actually getting a good amount of wear out of them.  Plus they ended up fitting just right for the cold season, hopefully they will still fit through most of the rest of winter/spring.

This stripey green sweater is from the same seamless yoked sweater pattern that I used for this yellow baby cardigan.  It's a fun pattern and a quick knit, I may make it again!  The yarn is some fun liberty wool that I picked up on a trip to Olympia, WA - I bought three balls and managed to match up the patterning in the yarn so that the sleeves fell at the right point in the pattern and matched eachother!  I had just enough yarn for the sweater.  It's a little psychedelic but I really like how it turned out and she looks so cute in it!

This pink provence baby cardigan is the one that tripped me up the most of all of them.   I guess I have gotten spoiled by knitting so many sweaters with no finishing that having to seam all the pieces, and then pick up stitches for a collar and button band, was just too much for me (especially when very pregnant and then when Esther came along).  It didn't help that I outsmarted myself by knitting the body of the cardigan in one piece rather than separate back, left front, and right front pieces - and then that made the seaming to insert the sleeves trickier.  But I finally powered through it and finished up the sweater a couple weeks ago and I love how it looks on her.  And it just now is starting to fit her well so I don't feel too bad about taking so long to finish it.  Also I have to say I think this photo is the cutest.  I love the look on her face and also how she somehow managed to get her pants leg pulled down over her foot.  It's all about the pulling up and standing around here lately.

This grey offset wraplan sweater also gave me a bit of a tough time, but I finished the knitting so long ago that I can't totally remember what the issue was.  I think they had you pick up the neckline after knitting the sweater and it just annoyed me because it could easily have been knit in one piece.  And I maybe had issues with the button band (I think I overcompensated and have too many stitches, which made it kind of wavy, but it's not really too bad).  I love the offset opening on this, but the width of the neckline irks me - you can always see her onesie underneath like you see in the photo below.  This sweater is actually still a bit big on her so hopefully as she grows into it more this won't be as much of an issue.  I was pretty determined to make her mostly gender neutral sweaters/clothes when I was pregnant - since I'm not super into girly stuff and so that we could still use them for a potential future sibling no matter that baby's sex - although of course now that she's here it seems kind of silly and I don't mind dressing her in girly things.  But these basics are nice too, and this one strikes a nice balance with the purpley buttons.

There's actually a funny story about this sweater.  When I was knitting it, I showed Lawson the pattern a few times, which has an octopus appliqued on the front.  I was describing the sweater to Lawson and the idea of an offset cardigan wasn't ringing any bells, so I reminded him that it had an octopus on it in the pattern (but I wasn't going to put an octopus on the one I was making).  The first time we talked about it he asked why not (I just didn't feel like it), and the second time he responded with "I still haven't received a good explanation for why there won't be an octopus!"  So we joked about him wanting the octopus but he did give it up.  Plus we got a cute octopus onesie as a gift at our baby shower so that helped too.

If you're interested in what yarn I used for each sweater or those types of details, the info's all in my ravelry projects as always!

A few baby sweaters

I have always had the problem when I keep a journal that I compulsively feel the need to "catch up" by writing about what has happened in order before getting to the current events... Anyone else have that problem? In any case, I seem to be falling into that same trap here. Despite my lack of energy for blogging all summer and fall, I really did do quite a bit of crafting, and I do want to share all those projects! I may need to work on loosening up and sharing some more recent stuff too, though, before I forget all the interesting details.

I made both of these baby sweaters over the summer and they were both gifts for new babies that came this summer, and both made with knit picks comfy yarn (the first in worsted weight and the second in sport weight) - this is a great yarn for baby items, very soft and easy to work with and I love the range of colors it comes in.

This cute sweater for my nephew was made from the little coffee bean pattern and I just love the stripes - it's really fun to browse through the other ones folks have made on ravelry and see all the color combinations. I'm definitely hoping to make one of these for our peanut at some point (maybe in one of the larger, toddler sizes that the designer sells a pattern for).

I made this yellow sweater for our friends' baby from the seamless yoked baby sweater pattern.  I loved how simple this sweater was to knit, but that it still had the nice detail of the slip stitch design on the yoke.  There are links on the ravelry page for this pattern to a number of other similar seamless baby sweater patterns from this designer and I'll definitely be tempted to try some of them (or make this one again).

Love these cute vintage buttons that I used on the sweater too!

I have three different sweaters that I've made for our baby that are all nearly but not quite finished... two just need to be blocked and have buttons sewn on and the last one I need to do some (annoying and somewhat tricky) seaming and pick up and knit a button band... I've been indulging myself with fun little new projects instead of just finishing them all up, but hopefully I'll motivate to get them all finished soon.

Getting my Knitting Mojo Back

You may have noticed a lack of knitting posts around here. Last week, I finally came to terms with the fact that I just wasn't feeling excited about my two current WIPs - last seen here in a post from early March.  I have made really minimal progress since them, which tells you just how unexcited I was about them.  I felt weird not having a knitting project to take with me on the subway and on car trips, and that I felt like working on at random moments, so I finally admitted that despite all my claims of disliking having too many WIPs, it was time to start another project.  I cast on these socks some time early last week and must have had a lot of pent up knitting energy, because I finished them yesterday! (OK, so it may have also helped that we flew across the country for a short but lovely visit with friends in California for a long weekend, so I had lots of knitting time on the plane).

I do really still want to finish this sweater - clearly it will not be done by our one year anniversary as I had hoped/declared (since that date has come and gone),  and but I hope to finish it up in the next month or two.  I think I stalled out on this one partly because I just have trouble staying interested in sweaters and actually finishing them up, and partly because I starting having doubts about the fit, and whether I may have made the armholes too big, which definitely made me less motivated to finish it.  After having given it a good solid break though, I tried it on again the other day and feel much better about it.  Plus, I am nearly done with the body and then I just have to knit the two sleeves, which will be much more portable to carry around with me.  This is definitely the most complicated (and smallest gauge) sweater I have ever knitted and I think I should take the difficulty down a notch for my next sweater or two to try to minimize my sweater-finishing problem.  I really want to be a sweater-knitter!

These dragonfly socks were actually supposed to be my fun distraction from not feeling like knitting the sweater, but I was feeling less and less excited about them too.  Partly because they pale in comparison to the original, lost dragonfly socks, partly because I think there is just too much going on here with the yarn and the lace pattern, and then finally because they seem a bit too small when I've tried them on... I haven't decided yet whether I will finish these up or just frog the yarn and put it back in the stash for a more appropriate pattern.

In the end, the stripey socks were a much better distraction from sweater-knitting woes.  Knitted with a fun self-striping sport weight yarn that my mom had given me for Christmas a few years ago, they were quick and entertaining to knit.  I had even more trouble than usual finding the center-pull string and had to deal with a lot of "yarn barf" (Lawson loves this term) at the beginning - it was much worse than the remainder you see above - but I finally got it figured out and it was smooth sailing from there.

I even got the pattern repeats to match up on the two socks!  Miraculously, my first sock was nearly exactly 2 pattern repeats long, so I just tried to pay attention to keeping them lined up as I knit the second sock.  I don't mind socks that don't match, but it does bug me when they almost match but are just a tiny bit off, so I figured I should do my best to sync them up.  Now that these are done I actually cast on a baby hat with the remaining yarn, and am determined to get back to work on my sweater soon!

Knitting update, or how did I end up with 4 WIPs?

Luckily I am now down to three WIPs (works in progress) but for a moment I had four, which is significantly more than my usual number.  I blame these socks.

I really like to complete one knitting project before moving on to the next, but I have a bad track record of knitting half a sweater and then putting it aside for six months before coming back and finishing it.  Which is what has happened with the sweater mentioned in this post (at which point I was also not knitting it).  Although I was thinking about it the other day and realized I started it in May last year a few weeks before our wedding, so I really should get back to knitting it - I would like to finish it before our one year anniversary if I can.  Anyways, although I like to have only one project in progress at once the sweater situation has meant that I have had two WIPs at a time for a while now, and sometimes three.

So, when we went to Atlanta recently I realized as we were rushing out the door that I had only packed my one currently in progress knitting project, the green yarn-over cable socks, and I was pretty sure I would finish them while we were there.  Not wanting to get caught on a relaxing vacation without a knitting project I grabbed a ball of sock yarn figuring I already had the right size needles etc for the project.  I have a bit of a sock-knitting addiction, so my natural propensity is to knit pair after pair of socks anyways... So after I finished the green socks, I cast on for my second attempt at the Dragonfly Socks.  I really liked this pattern and was very sad when I left the first pair on the metro, so was happy to try the pattern again.

However, when I got home, I forced myself to put aside the socks and work on another project that I had been meaning to start, making a lace cotton/linen washcloth for my seven year old god-daughter who had let me know she would like one for "the next gift-giving occasion", which will be her birthday later this month.  I had made them for holiday gifts a few years ago and apparently she is always stealing her mom's and wanted her own.  How could I say no to that?  So now I was up to three WIPs... more than I ideally like to have, but not too bad.

But them some good friends of ours had their baby and we found out she was a girl (they had decided not to find out the sex in advance).  We were super excited for them and I wanted to put a gift in the mail right away but decided that I just had to make a knitted hat to go along with some pants, shoes and a bib that I had sewn before.  So... there I was, with four WIPs.  It wasn't really that bad since two of them were pretty quick projects but I did feel a bit like there were knitting projects scattered everywhere.  Although that says more about the level of organization at our house than anything else.

In any case, I luckily finished off the hat and am now back down to a more comfortable number of 3 (knitting) WIPs.  Although I think I will stay at three for a while because after I finish the washcloth I have a few other small projects I am going to try to convince myself to knit before I go back to the dragonfly socks.

How about you - do you like to finish up one project before starting the next, or do you like to have multiple WIPs going, either in knitting or sewing or other crafts?  What are you working on now?

Little Man Baby Sweater

OK, so I am a little late here... I just finished up my last Christmas gift, a sweater for my 4 month old nephew.  It is from the L'illo pattern on Knitty, and as the author says, it really looks like a sweater for a little man.  It almost seems like it should have elbow patches or something.  I love the way the slip-stitch patterns give it an almost woven/tweedy texture.  I used Knitpicks' Comfy Sport yarn, and was pleased that I was able to make a 12 month size (so he doesn't outgrow it instantly) with only two and a half skeins.  Also I realized this is first saddle-shoulder sweater I have made (well... if it counts - it is kind of a raglan/saddle shoulder hybrid).

I thought this sweater would be pretty quick to knit but it was a pretty complicated pattern for such a little item, in between the two stitch patterns, the complicated construction, and the seaming... oh, the seaming.  This is what it looked like after I had seamed the front shoulder raglan seams:

It's a good thing this was time-sensitive both in that it is a Christmas present and in that the recipient is growing rapidly, because if this were just for me I am sure this amount of seaming would have caused me to take one look and stick it in a drawer somewhere for several months (or seasons).  I have gotten in the habit of knitting in the round as much as possible, so that when I cast off a sweater I am pretty much done.  I do have a great reference book, the knitter's book of finishing techniques, which helps to reduce my seaming-angst, since it clearly lays out how to do all different kinds of seams (not to mention other helpful things like the kitchener stich, which I can never remember how to do or how to spell).  Armed with said book, I sat down and seamed away and remembered... seaming is actually strangely satisfying.  It is amazing how neatly everything lines up and goes from being a bunch of discombobulated parts to become a real garment.  Maybe I should be less seam-averse in future projects!

Birthday socks complete

I finished Lawson's socks on Sunday - after his birthday but within his birthday week, so I thought I did pretty well all things considered.  It has been unseasonably warm here in Washington state so he hasn't had much occasion to wear them yet, but he seems to be happy with them.  I'm glad I used the sport weight yarn, it made it go a lot faster than the year I made him regular fingering weight ones.

The other big project that I brought to work on is the Cables and Os sweater from No Sheep for You... but I forgot the pattern, doh.  We may stop by a library tomorrow to see if I can borrow the book for the rest of the trip.  In the meantime, I have been knitting some cute pumpkin baby hats which I have been making up - I will post the two variations (and patterns for both) when they are done.