finally, my friends are coming through with the babies

 



Placket neck sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts in Classic Elite Spotlight Cotton,
Monogram Sweater from Hollywood Knits Style in Classic Elite Spotlight Cotton,
"Child's Cotton Hat" from Last Minute Knitted Gifts and Fiber Trends Baby Booties (CH-36)
both knit in Louisa Harding Kimono Angora

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Finally, I got off my butt and pulled down the Vogue Knitting reference and looked up how to do the embroidery for the Suss monogram baby sweater. It wasn't hard - I actually did it while playing "Trouble" with the boys - I had just utterly forgotten how to do it.

B agreed to try on the sweater for me, so I could see how cute it looks on a little person's body.

note: he's at least three years older and bigger than the recipient!

B would however like to remind everyone that despite the fact that he is trying on a pink baby sweater he is 100% boy. Thanks B.

Well, another baby on my list taken care of. Hooray for me! Hooray to the parents. Hooray for baby C!

Well, if you're my friend Lisa, you can bring two kids sweaters to a seaming party on Wednesday...

hooray, seaming party!

and turn them into two beautifully finished sweaters by Sunday.

 
Tea for Two and Smiling from Miss Bea's Rainy Day

If you're me, you can finish the seaming on a baby sweater in one night, but still can't remember how to do the danged embroidery for the initial after 5 days. Guess I'll have to look that up. Eventually.

The Suss monogram baby sweater (from Hollywood Knits Style) has two sleeves and is ready for finishing! This knitting continental thing is getting easier and easier. I think I may be picking up speed!

I've got a finishing class to teach next week and am hoping to get a couple of my other unfinished objects up to the finishing stage to bring with. If I spend some time next week seaming and weaving in ends, I can give my right hand an extra needed rest and have some finished projects to boot!

Back to the Suss baby sweater. Back to that sleeve that I had to rip out. Back on track.

You know, the Suss store in NYC had these sweaters for sale. They were definitely the same construction, but had a knitted square with an initial in it sewn onto the front instead of a single monogram. Knit in the Suss textured cotton, they were really sweet. But they were $89. I'm so glad I can knit!

Okay, so I'm substituting yarns for this monogram sweater and my gauge isn't even close to what it should be. Fine. For the body, I knit a size larger and, trust me, it's plenty big. But the sleeves call for pretty much the same number of stitches to be cast on for all sizes. I stuck with the pattern numbers and the dang thing came out skinny, skinny.

check out the schematic
seriously, always check out the schematic

Yeah, it'd be big enough for a little girl's arm, but proportionally it's going to look ridiculous with the rest of the sweater being so oversized. So I'll be ripping it out.

And that's what it's all about!

Since my recent knit-only knitting regimen has left my hand a little sore (I suspect that the real culprit may be the computer, still it hurts when I knit, so...) I went looking in the stash for a project that I could knit continental. I learned to knit continental a couple of years ago as a practice to making Dale fair-isle sweaters for my boys. I practiced with a few continental-only projects and often go back to it in circumstances just like this, where my right hand needs a rest. I don't want to stop knitting, but I gotta stop using my hand the way I have been. Thankfully, my left hand is standing by!

And there's a project I've really been wanting to start since my experience sitting behind new adoptive parents and baby on the plane ride home from Germany. It's a baby sweater for friends in Germany who have long wanted to have a baby and have recenly taken in a little girl for long-term foster care. The girl is about 1 1/2 yrs old and I thought the Suss monogrammed kid's sweater from Hollywood Knits Style would be a super cute gift. It's a simple, oversized sweater and looks adorable on the little girl in the picture. And I have just enough Spotlight cotton leftover from the girl's placket neck sweater to make it. A special gift for the new family, I hope.

And as it's all I've allowed myself to knit for a few days, it's going pretty fast!

The placket neck sweater from LMKG all finished and wrapped up for a long trip to its new home.

I used some scrap Manos Cotton Stria for the embroidered initial and found a button in the very same pink for that single buttonhole that I added. The embroidered initial was a great suggestion that knitbuddy, Shannon, made when I was looking for a way to girl-up the sweater. And once she mentioned it, I remembered the template for initials given in this child's sweater pattern in Hollywood Knits Style. (And now I'm remembering how super cute that Suss pattern is - I just may have to make it for the next baby on my list!)

I really enjoyed knitting this little sweater. I think it only really took me two nights to knit it and one more evening to weave in ends and do the embroidery. It's a sweet design, doesn't require much yarn, and looks so adorable on tiny babies. And, finally, with that corrected pattern, it's all I'd hoped a Last Minute Knitted Gifts pattern would be!

And it's all the in the yarn! I can't say enough good things about the Louisa Harding Kimono Angora. Really lovely colors, wonderfully soft - it just makes this simple little baby set so special.

Originally I had intened to make the angora booties from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, but it turns out that the kimono angora isn't quite fuzzy enough to hide the things I don't like about the booties (like the rectanglar duck foot shape, the pinched look in back where the three-needle bind off begins, the holes at the corners where the cuff begins, and the ladders on the sides from the double knitting technique). With super fuzzy angora, it's all good, but without the halo, it's no angel.

I searched through my patterns and it turns out that I already had the perfect bootie pattern, Fiber Trends CH36 "Baby Basics". Not only did it match the hat perfectly with stockinette stitch and cute little i-cord ties and everything, but the pattern is perfectly written. I don't think I'm ever using any other bootie pattern! And they're so sweet too.

Then there's the hat. I absolutely adore the hat. It's the Children's Cotton Hat from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

Because it's from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, you know it's stylish, clever, and - yes, you know what's coming - it has an error in it. Oh yeah, an error and there's no correction for it on the errata page. In the middle and large sizes, there are an uneven number of holes to pull the i-cord through. An uneven number of holes means that one end will be outside and one end will be inside. And that no workie.

Here's the simple fix:

Cast on and follow pattern as written until eyelet rnd.
Work eyelet rnd as follows: K4 (6, 8), *yo, K2tog, K2; repeat from* to end.
Follow pattern as written to end.

Still, it makes a gol'darned beautiful hat. What are you gonna do?

(Again, I've got to say that I love this book. Most of the errors, like the eyelet round error above, are something that an intermediate to advanced knitter can work out for themselves once they are aware of the problem. It's beginners who I really worry about. The patterns are so simple, it seems to me that this book should be a great book for beginners. But sadly, with all the errors, I can't really recommend it for new knitters.)

In contrast to yesterday's post, let me share with you my progress on the Child's Placket Neck Pullover, also from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. This sweater has the exact same structure as the man's zip raglan, but without the ribbing (and with the new corrected pattern) it's a whole different story!

babies are soooo much smaller than daddys!

The only change I made to the pattern was to add one buttonhole on the placket (the pattern doesn't have you make any and calls for beads that can be pushed through the knitted fabric instead of buttons). I've still got the seaming at the underarm to do and a little girly embroidery (I'm embroidering the baby's initial "E"on the front, see?), but the knitting went super quick. And I love how it came out. I was worried that the style wouldn't be girly enough, but seeing Wendy's beautiful finished sweater helped me change my mind. And the color of this Classic Elite Spotlight is so amazing that it convinced me. It seems so perfect for a little baby girl sweater, that I'm not even having the slightest regrets about taking it out of my stash and using it. Really no regrets. The remaining five balls are already earmarked for another baby sweater. I'm so proud of myself!

Years of complaining that I don't have any friends with babies to knit for, and now this year it looks like I'll have a half-dozen baby knits to make! For the first two, I've picked out patterns from Last Minute Knitted Gifts (a book that I both love and hate - more to come on my trials with another of its patterns later this week!).

After making a pair of those super cute angora booties for the store this summer, I've been waiting for an opportunity to make a pair for someone. When my mom mentioned that a colleague of hers is having a baby, I offered to knit a pair for her. I looked at a lot of the mega-fluffy, mega-pricey angoras, but ended up choosing Louisa Harding's Kimono Angora for the lovely variegated colors.

It's still plenty fluffy and super soft, and as angora goes, it's a steal. Even Clara likes it! I may make a matching hat as well, if the angora doesn't end up tickling my nose too much.

One baby is already here and so I'm getting started on her present first. She'll be getting the baby placket-neck pullover from Last Minuted Knitted Gifts in some salmon- colored Cotton Spotlight I got at a Wild & Wooly sale a while back. I picked out the yarn for myself, but I haven't used it in a year and a half, so it's fair game. I'm using stash - woo hoo!

And with the new improved pattern, I'm flying!