I've almost started to think of this buttercup baby jacket as Little Dorrit, since about 75% of it was knit and/or crocheted while I was watching Little Dorrit. Most of the early knitting was done while watching the 1988 version with Derek Jacobi on DVD and the latter pieces were done while watching the latest BBC version on PBS Masterpiece Classic. With its bright color and fun style though, it may truly be more of an anti-little Dorrit. It certainly was the perfect antidote to the dark and difficult themes in the story. After knitting through over twelve hours of Dickens, I completed the final piece of the jacket while watching the final episode last night. All that's left now is the seaming and the big crocheted fan edging all around the bottom and the cuffs.

I have high hopes that wee one might like this one. She caught me putting it away after taking the above picture and yelled "try on! try on!" And so we did.

Only one sleeve in and the second front piece not even attached, but she's smiling.

I avoided it as long as I could. With the temperature approaching 50, I had to admit that it was time to for me to start seaming wee's buttercup baby jacket together. Not that I had the slightest idea of how to join the v-shell crocheted shoulders or set the knitted sleeve into the crocheted armhole. I asked a few experienced crocheters about a special technique to seam crocheted pieces, but apart from telling me not to crochet the seams together, they didn't really have any sort of secret tricks to reveal. A peek at Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet seemed to confirm the fact that crocheters are kinda winging it, either backstitching, whipstitching or doing some muddled approximation of mattress stitch with various parts of the knots, er, stitches. I decided that it would be slightly less difficult for me to just make up some sort of seam than to understand the pictures in the SnB book, so I went ahead and grafted the two shoulders together and stitched in the gathered sleeve as best as I could. If I can avoid an inspection by the crochet police, I think I may get away with it.

What do you call a group of butterflies?

My swarm so far consists of a butterfly-bedecked back, sleeve and right front. Plus one little girl who wishes she were a butterfly.

She flies around all the time with her arms, uh, wings, out behind her (sometimes adorned with a few accessories, like the boys' crocs), saying "fwuh-fwy, fwuh-fwy!"

Because for the first time in the whole history of my knitting career, I'm actually able to keep track of my rows and increases/decreases while working on a project.

don't you just LOVE the shoes on this girl?!

Whether it's because the little gray cells don't work as well as they used to or because they've finally kicked in, I can't say, but I have been a paragon of organization while working on this buttercup baby jacket. Although I've always told my students to keep track of things with a row counter or piece of paper and pencil, I've also had to admit to them that I have never found myself capable of taking my own advice. I've always been too stupid to use a row counter, never remembering if I was clicking at the beginning of a row or after it, if I'd just clicked or not, or if I'd just clicked twice to make up for a row I'd forgotten or in anticipation of the one I was just about to do. Aaaaah! I would end up having to count rows on the actual garment anyway, so I saved myself the extra work of maintaining some sort of count, which in the end had very little chance of being right. But those days are over. I can count! I can crochet! I can do anything!

After three days of birthday fun, things are getting back to normal and I'm getting back to my projects, specifically the back of wee one's buttercup baby jacket. I've finished the crocheted bodice and can now move on to starting the front pieces. I'm looking forward to getting to knit again (the bottom skirt sections are knit just like on the back) because that crochet got boooooring. Strangely, although I can revel in hours and hours of stockinette, doing that crochet pattern over and over and over almost did me in. Perhaps it is because I have to pay more attention when I'm crocheting and can therefore really feel every minute that's going by. I don't have to look when I knit, but if I didn't look while crocheting, I'd, well, I don't think you could call what I was doing crocheting anymore. But when I do pay attention...

...now that's crocheting!

With shells on an orange beach. And butterflies.

This sweater for wee one kept me sane last night while we awaited yet another snow storm. It's all white and wet out there now and the boys are home for a snow day. Having spent the evening with my lovely, happy yarn, I may just be able to muster the strength to go out in the snow with them later. (With wee one too, as she is now as active as ever after her fever came down Friday night.) The bright bright yarn is keeping me so cheery in fact that I reworked these first few inches of the crochet section three times without complaint after a few failed attempts with gauge problems. Thank goodness for small, orange, yarny pleasures!

After patting myself on the back for successfully mastering the crochet pattern on the bodice of the buttercup baby jacket, I realized that I don't own a crochet hook in the right size for this project! Naturally, the yarn store was closed by the time I'd had my epiphany (I don't crochet, so why would I have the proper hook?) and was closed on Monday. What could I work on while I waited for the yarn store to open again?

So I knit a sleeve. The sleeves are entirely knit, with only a feather & fan style crochet edging added afterwards (the same edging that's on the bottom of the body in the pattern picture). I don't like leaving all the crochet to the end (it's going to be hell on my hands, which always start to cramp after I crochet for a while) but it's great to feel like I'm making some real progress on this sweater. I just might get it done in time for light jacket weather!

With the knitting done on the back of the buttercup baby jacket, it's time to start crocheting!

The pattern is, after all, from the Interweave CROCHET magazine and not Interweave Knits so you know there's going to be a good deal of crochet to come and since it's rated for "experienced" crocheters, I'm pretty sure I'm way out of my league here. I've never seen the stitch patterns called for in the pattern before and I can't really read a crochet diagram (without the grid structure of a knitting chart I feel a bit lost!), therefore it seemed like a good idea to try out the crochet section in some scrap yarn before mucking up the lovely orange piece I've knit so far.

I think these V-shells are nearly right. (I must admit that find this crochet terminology so unfamiliar that my first thought when I read the term v-shell was of some sort of pasta.) There's one little bit of the instructions I read incorrectly until the last two v-shells, but it was a minor thing and now I feel like I've got it. I'm at least pleased that it seems to have the sort of shape that the name would imply. I really don't have any general crochet knowledge (like how to do increases or decreases or what happens at the beginning/ends of rows, or how to measure gauge) so all I can do is blindly follow the pattern, make the stitches as instructed and hope for the best. It's a little terrifying but at the same time It's kind of exciting feeling like a beginner again, watching a lovely pattern emerge without your really understanding how or what you're doing to create it.

When wee one noticed me working on my crochet swatch (since I was only trying stuff out with a little scrap yarn, I thought I could risk working on it while she was still awake), she immediately came up to me, looked at what I was making and said "hat!" I guess I HAVE knit her a lot of hats! But this one will be something else entirely.

A brief lull in our otherwise brutal winter has gotten all us Bostonians hoping for Spring, saying ridiculous things like "Spring's got to be just around the corner" even though we know we'll be punished for such displays of weakness by not seeing a nice, warm day until May. But we do it all the same. I, too, found myself dreaming of better weather this week and was inspired to pull out the fabulous orange yarn that Dani (of Sunshine Yarns) dyed for me last year. Mmmmmm.... so bright and pretty and spring-y. Can't you just feel the sunshine and hear the birds singing? I can. And I can totally see wee one finally wearing the bright orange Buttercup Baby jacket (from Interweave Crochet Fall 2006) that I'd planned to make for her so long ago. I've finished the knitted skirt section on the back and so far I love it. It reminds me of the line in Love Actually (which I caught on cable last weekend on Valentine's Day) when Emma Thompson greets her child after he was a lobster in the school Christmas show: "Oh, you were sooo... what's that word... ORANGE!"

Mother Nature punished me soundly for all these happy thoughts of brighter days by making it snow last night. Grrrrrr.

I know what you're saying: hey, crazy lady, aren't you already making an orange sweater? I know, I know, but this is some amazing orange yarn I just got from Dani at Sunshine Yarns and is for a sweater I've been wanting to make for wee one for quite some time.

The pattern is "Buttercup Baby" from the Fall 2006 Interweave Crochet (yes, that's how long I've known I wanted to make this sweater). I don't usually buy Interweave Crochet - I don't usually crochet - but I was pregnant and this issue came out with this sweet sweater and the matching pants have butt ruffles and I was full of hormones, so I got the magazine and I swore I would try to make it. Someday. Someday when my crochet skills were better. But as wee one approaches two years, my time is starting to run out on all the cute baby patterns I'd dreamt of making for her. Which means today's got to be the day, even if I can't crochet one iota better than I could two years ago.

Recognizing this, I started planning this project a few months ago. I've got my lys's crochet expert on board to help when I get to the "experienced crochet" sections. I even swatched some stash yarn, cast on and knit a few inches. But I wasn't in love with the color and kept thinking that a fun, bright orange would be so much better for wee one. (She looks great in orange.) I mentioned this to Dani and asked if she might be able to dye me a really awesome orange. "What kind of orange," she asked. I started to look around, and, well, Knitsmiths does meet at a bookstore, so my eyes instantly fell on the books behind us.

this is Peta, by the way, in a lovely pink lacy sweater she knit last year

And there it was, the perfect orange: Penguin paperback orange! And voila, she nailed it!

Orange you excited?!