To do

I seem to be making a lot of "to do" lists these days so I thought I'd share my knitting list for today.

1. Finish "that darned baby sweater"

aka, Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Sweater on Two Needles (or February Baby Sweater) that I'm knitting up out of a skein of malabrigo sock yarn on size 3 needles. I just need to knit one more sleeve, weave in the ends, sew on some buttons, and block the piece. I should be able to finish that today, right?

I'm not a huge fan of the gull lace pattern but I think it looks lovely in this particular yarn with its blend of rich browns and greens. Plus, it lies flat pretty well even without blocking, which will be very handy when I just throw it in the wash with the rest of the dirty baby clothes. That said, the lace pattern does get a bit monotonous (the flip side of very easy to memorize) and so finishing one last sleeve does seem a bit daunting at the moment.

2. Sew buttons on the rest of the baby knits that need buttons. That would be Snug, my handspun BSJ, and this Baby Sophisticate that I whipped up last week for a co-worker's new baby.

This took 1 skein of Malabrigo Rios (about that stash diet . . . this one fell under the "I really didn't have anything appropriate for the gift in the stash" exception). I knit up the larger size but at a slightly smaller gauge than the pattern called for. Since the recipient is a big 3-month old at this point I'm really hoping that this sweater grows a bit in the wash. Naturally I want to gift this piece as soon as possible so that the little guy doesn't outgrow his gift before I even get it to him.

Besides, how I can I resist these buttons?

3. Wash and block (pat into shape and air dry) the above baby knits.

4. Figure out what knitting to bring to work this week. I started another pair of my favorite sock pattern last week and had that as a work knitting project.

It's actually a great work project - interesting but very easy to work so that I can knit if I have a bunch of reading to do. Of course, this also makes it a great project to have packed to take to the hospital when the tadpole decides to make her appearance. So I'm pretty tempted to save this one and find something else to stick in my work bag. I'm trying to be good this week and think about this before 9:30 at night (that never goes well). Thoughts?

5. Work on the other "baby knit" on the needles - a shawl that I'm knitting as a nursing cover-up.

This is the Draper pattern, put out by Shibui Knits, that I'm working up out of a skein of Briar Rose Sea Pearl (see above exception to the stash diet). If that yarn sounds familiar, it's because I used the same yarn for my Honey Baby blanket. Sadly, this pattern isn't available as a downloadable pdf so I wasn't able to get it quite as quickly as I wanted. But I was able to do the next best thing. I called (ok, g-chatted) a really good friend of mine who lives in Portland and works near Knit-Purl (I had seen the pattern advertised in one of Knit-Purl's email newsletters) and asked her if she would be interested in doing a pattern swap. If she would go pick up a paper copy of the pattern, scan it, and email it to me, I would gift her a ravelry or other downloadable pattern of her choice. It was a great deal. I got the pdf I wanted (I use a pdf reader that lets me annotate the files by, among other things, putting in movable lines that show me what row I am working on a lace chart) and she got a pattern from Twist Collective that she had been eyeing.

6. Update the 2011 FO links on the blog. As I was putting links into this post, I realized that I haven't been good at all about keeping up to date with the FO links. I doubt I'll get to this one today, but at least it's on my list.