lulubeans

FO: little sister's dress

i made greta a dress.  she  wore it to our friends' wedding last weekend.  she is at a life phase where dresses make absolutely no sense whatsoever.  she crawls.  she gets picked up a lot.  dresses aren't super compatible with either of these realities.  luckily, this dress will make a nice vest for her, once she's a little taller and she toddling about on her own two feet. 

the pattern is tora froseth's little sister's dress.

more info here on rav.

i am really happy about the buttons i dug out of my button drawer. they were harvested from this old mrs. roper style dressing gown some years ago and i think that they are pretty perfect here.

hope you are having a great monday!  the little and i are going to try to get out and enjoy some sun today.  hurray for warm october days.

FO: milkweed shawl, + other stuff

pattern: milkweed shawl by laura chau (ravelry link)

yarn: lulubeans handpainted sock

needle: US 4

totally embarrassing confession: while i was knitting this, i kept getting kelis' milkshake stuck in my head, only i replaced "shake" with "weed" (i know, there's some stonerific word play there, har, har).  and it's NOT that my milkweed is better than yours, or anyone's, it's totally NOT, and yet, it was impossible to keep that song out of my head.  impossible!

i was really happy to: a) finish something that required a little bit of concentration (not a TON, but enough that i had to start it over a few times.  my days have been so incredibly baby-centric as of late, and it feels really nice to say that i made something other than a mad dash for the toilet before miss speedy crawler puts her mouth on it.)  and b) give this to a friend who makes me feel really lucky and happy and normal and sane and thankful and all that awesome stuff that a good friend can make you feel. 

other stuff:

-a little yoga in the morning, even if it's completely half-assed yoga, with a baby crawling all over me and sticking her fingers in my nose, makes a lot of things a lot better.   i am so glad that amy karol blogged about yoga today's free stuff on youtube; it's totally upped my quality of life, honestly!

-i am hoping to lacto-ferment turnips + beets today.  yesterday i made yogurt cheese and saved the whey.  i hoping that adding more probiotic foods to our repertoire will help keep us healthy through the winter, and this is where my flu worries have led me.  there's a great article about food and immunity building here and while a lot of the weston price/nourishing traditions stuff makes me kind of squeamish + uncomfortable (ie, the enthusiasm for organ meats, homemade liver formula for babies, the use of the phrase politically correct as a slur) i can totally get on board for all the fermented stuff.  

-our downstairs neighbors left a giant pumpkin, a jar of homemade wild blackberry jam and a cool bowl for greta on our landing last night. our next door neighbors took natasha down to her bus stop so that greta could sleep in this morning after a hard, restless night.  (she's sloooowly working on her first tooth.)  our neighbors all around us look out for each other's kids and i know it sounds awfully corny, but they all extend so many small kindnesses and make me feel so thankful for the sense of community we share here.  thank you, neighbors!

FO: another pixie hat

it's starting to really feel like fall.  the good kind of fall, the kind where the sun reaches the earth with a special kind of sparkle and clarity and the mornings give us reason to bring out new woolly things.  (this as opposed to the oh-crap-we-need-to-order-heating-oil-NOW type of fall.  but let's just look at this baby and pretend that kind isn't right around the corner.)

pattern: my pixie hat recipe (you can rav it here)

yarn: pippikneesocks handspun

needles: US 13

baby: 8 months old, very mobile, extremely impish

three episodes of glee later, and this little speck of knitting is all i have to show for it.  musical numbers?  teen angst? jane lynch?  i'm in.  (i'm hoping that some of the stereotypes get complicated as time goes on, but i'm in.)  there really should be more knitting to show, but all that singing and dancing had me distracted.   mistakes were made.  there was a lot of frogging + restarting. (i know, i know, lifelines were invented for a reason! i am a slow and stubborn learner, but i will be adding them this time.)  

somehow, i don't think there's much knitting progress on my horizon today.

FO: stay-put booties

not too long ago, i actually thought that booties were totally archaic.  no more.

i'm not sure what spurned this sea change, but here we are and i have booties on the brain.  and once i decided to become a knitter of booties, a classic pattern like this one seemed like the perfect place to start.

it took me a week to make these booties, but you could probably churn them out in a few hours, without interruptions.   these were a gift for our neighbor friends who are having a baby in october.

pattern: christine's stay put baby booties (ravelry link).  i'll have to report back on how well these actually do stay put, but my sense is that they should stay on wriggly little feet pretty well.  i am making a pair for greta now, and she will put them to the test.  she has become an exceptional puller-offer of all foot coverings.

yarn:  my own handpainted sock (merino superwash)

needle:  US 1

i followed the pattern with no modifications, except for the ties, which are i-cords instead of crochet or ribbon.  this pattern was fun and easy but with just enough going on to keep me interested- my favorite kind of easy.  i liked it so much that i cast on for greta's pair pretty much immediately after finishing these.  i'm tossing around a few ideas for modifying her pair. 

so hooray for booties!  (although i kind of wish there was another word for booties.  booties needs a synonym.  "baby slippers" doesn't cut it and you can only say the word "booties" so many times before it starts to sound really silly.)

things we do for love

sometimes, as a knitter, it's nice to just make something that totally wasn't my idea.  the girl's squeals of delight made it more than worthwhile.

the pattern: ridiculously easy mary jane slippers (here on rav or here on craftster.)

to make these for kid-sized feet, i cast on 20 stitches instead of the pattern's 30 stitch cast on.

yarn: berroco plush, held double stranded.  it's nylon.  it's fun fur-ish.  it's kind of one of the last things i would instinctively reach for.  in other word's, it's a 7 year old's yarn dream come true.  and really, as far as fuzzy, unnatural yarns go, this one is actually not half bad.

 best for:  some awesome ice skating moves around the dining room.

speaking of love, i borrowed the up series from the library and i'm kind of obsessed.  have you seen it?   i have only watched to 28 and i can't wait to see the rest. 

finished object: spare ribs shoaker

i knit another wool diaper cover for greta using this pattern. (rav link)
it was fun + easy to make, and i love the way it fits . 

this was my first time putting elastic into the waistband of anything, and i was a little intimidated by it.   i have no idea why- it was really no big deal!
sorry if this is baby photo overload.  it's kind of impossible for me to resist.

some specifics:

yarn:  elann peruvian sierra aran

needle:  US 7

plus: a little of elastic.  the pattern calls for buttonhole elastic, but i just sewed in a strip of some plain elastic and it seems to be working well. 

also, to lanolize, i use tubed lanolin, and a squirt of baby shampoo (to help the lanolin disperse, nice too because we were gifted lots of excellently smelly stuff, and its not as though much of its getting used up on greta's head).  i shake some lanolin and the shampoo together in a small ball jar w/hot water and then stir this mixture into the sink where the soakers are already sitting in warm water.  (i've already washed them in eucalan.) i stir and allow them to sit for a good two hours, at least.  i am new to wool covers and was a little mystifyed by the process of caring them when i first looked into it, but it's been really easy. 

soakers are a gratifying, quick knit, and great for stash busting or, as in this case, using up yarn from a project that didn't quite go as planned. 
without getting into too much detail about the cloth diapering (there is a wealth of info out there) i will just say that i am pleased with how our soakers are working.  yet one more reason to love the power of wool! 

baby likes clapotis

in my dream "hey look i knit a clapotis!" photo shoot, i am nonchalantly demonstarting the glamorous versatility of my finished object a la dogsstealyarn.  and in my dream photos, you can see that, whilst donning my fresh-off-the-needles clapotis, i do indeed posess a bit of the "je suis belle et ça ne demande aucun effort" spirit that kate gilbert mentions in her introduction to the pattern.  i'm going to go ahead and guess that in these pictures, i'm actually *not* wearing what is, for all intents and purposes, a tee-shirt shaped spit up cloth, and in fact, there is nothing soggy, damp, mysteriously moist, or crusty anywhere.  maybe i also have a recent haircut.  

i hope that you will trust me when i tell you that my clap is done and it is lovely.  i had decided to make one back when i was pregnant with greta, thinking it would make for a nice cover up type thing for nursing.   it had been a while since i'd nursed anyone and i forgot that my general sense of modesty goes out the window when there's a hungry baby involved. regardless, i am sure that i will wear my clapotis often come cooler weather. 

my favorite thing about this project:  i cast on for this clapotis on january 14th and it was in the wee hours of that very night that my (very) slow-but-steady labor started.  so who knows, maybe the clapotis is a labor inducer!  i know i heard of stranger things as my patience dwindled, waited for this baby to come.  day one of labor was mellow enough for some knitting in between contractions, and so i worked on the set up rows. there are plenty of mistakes. a lot of varying widths in the stockinette sections that ought to all be uniform. but hey, i think i have an excuse! and while i most certainly did not knit the clapotis for the baby, it gives me a fair amount of joy to see that, indeed, she likes it.

au revoir, meret

i have decided that maybe i ought to document all the stuff that gets sent to the frog pond.
maybe it will be a lesson in accountability.  maybe i will become the more responsible, less fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants knitter that i yearn to be if i have to remember the poorly planned, the never-swatched, and the boredom inducing.

meret, actually, was none of these things.  despite its eventual purple pie man unfortunateness, meret was a good knit.  a fast knit.  a lovely, well written (and free!) pattern.  i just could not get gauge on that sucker.  and i called it "close enough".  and it's giant.  the photo doesn't really show just how oversized it is. 

meret has lived a brief but happy life, sometimes as a sort of seat cushion for a child's rocking chair, sometimes as a sort of makeshift handbag (good for hauling playmobil toys from place to place) and sometimes as a sleeping bag for a goat. 

so, farewell, meret. it wasn't your fault.  may you enjoy a greater sense of purpose in your next incarnation, as a soaker for the baby's bum.

FO: DROPS baby cardigan

pattern: DROPS design b14-27 jacket (rav link)

yarn:  lulubeans handpainted sock (superwash merino) in a deep dark cocoa and in a melon-y conch shell color.

needles: US #2 addi turbos

modifications: i changed up the striping sequence a little bit so that all my short rows were brown.  i wanted more brown than pink, and i reasoned that this was the way to do it.  as i was knitting, i wasn't too sure if i liked the resulted broad pink stripe around the neck, but know that it's all said and done, i like it.


thoughts:  this kind of languished on the needles for a solid month or so.  i had been thinking baby sweater!  quick!  but the actual going was pretty slow.  i loved the construction (sideways + short rows= love) and i adore the final product.  it's simple but so feminine, and girlish without being ruffle-y and frou-frou.  it's got a total norwegian elfkin quality to it, and hence i think it fits my wee girl to a T.