Yellow and Green

Yellow is a big hit in our household - it's Tadpole's favorite color. So it was no surprise that when she and I were looking at yarn a few months ago for a new sweater for her, she automatically picked a bright yellow for her Wee Wildflower. The last sweater I knit her was a dud (I don't think she's worn it voluntarily). But to say this one's a hit would be the understatement of the year.

(I think that's supposed to be a pirate face.)

For starters, she stayed relatively still and looked in the general direction of the camera while wearing it, which almost never happens. And she wears it all the time. Voluntarily!

I used Quince & Co. Finch for this one (three skeins and a little bit for a size 4/6 hybrid). My gauge was a bit looser than the recommended yarn so I was able to follow the size 4 directions to get a roughly size 6 sweater. I think it'll still fit this fall (fingers crossed).

The pockets come in handy! I asked her the other day whether she wanted another sweater and the response was "Yes, please. In bright yellow." I have my eye on this pattern (maybe even matching sweaters for the girls). Yarn thoughts? I'm tempted to go with another Quince yarn but am all ears for suggestions.

I've also started my KAL sweater. This was my swatch:

I had read a blog post a few weeks ago mentioning not just knitting a sleeve as a swatch but dunking the whole thing (needles and all) to see how the fabric changes after wet blocking and thought that would be perfect for this sweater. (In case you're wondering, Addi lace needles do just fine getting dropped in the sink.)

By this point in my sleeve/swatch, I was pretty sure that I'd need to frog the whole thing and start over. The ribbing at the bottom wasn't as tidy as I wanted. The tubular cast-on edge looked a bit loose and wonky. And the color work section seemed to be pulling in too much to maintain the even tension I needed.

But I hadn't realized what miracles wet blocking would work on this yarn.

After a soak in the sink, the yarn fulled ever so slightly to create a beautiful, soft fabric. All of a sudden my ribbing looked cleaner (not perfect, but something I can live with). The cast on edge looked tighter. And I was able to gently massage the color work section into roughly the the same gauge as the stockinette portion.  (Look at the right edge of the sleeve in the picture above - the increases on the left make it difficult to judge the line).

Dare I say I'm hoping the weather stays cool enough I'll get to wear this one at least once this spring?

Pretend

The other day, I came across the ultimate "grass is greener" picture - a young family that had moved to Maine to try their hand at farming (all captured in glorious, natural light photos, no less). I sat at my computer and had a 15-second pity party for myself. You see, for that brief moment, I wasn't content with my great family, challenging and stimulating job that pays enough to support us, and comfortable house in a nice town. I wanted to be the kind of person who crafts in the middle of the day in sun-filled rooms and takes beautiful pictures of her domestic pursuits. And then I realized that I can do that - at least on the blog. So this weekend, when the sun came out I ran and grabbed the camera. I even knit a bit during daylight hours (very rare for me these days) while Tadpole and I watched the animated Hobbit during her sister's nap.

I know how important it is for many bloggers to acknowledge all of the effort behind the images they share with the world. But that's not what you're going to find here. Only a masochist would enjoy hearing me catalog the number of late nights I've worked after putting the kids to bed or the mental debate between trying to sneak in a bit of exercise and getting something that might resemble a reasonable night's sleep. That's all there in the background but not something I want to focus on here. Instead, welcome to a heavily edited glimpse into the small part of my life where I get to be one of those people who crafts in a sun-lit room.

Here we go...

I've been on a cowl kick lately. Not so much knitting them as favoriting patterns on ravelry right and left looking for just the right one. While I'm on the lookout for the perfect combination of cables (I'll let you know when I see it), I'm having a blast trying one of the hybrid cowl/shawl patterns from Hillary Smith Callis. I've just reached the part of the Luna Viridis pattern where you join the stitches for working in the round and I'm curious to see how the shaping turns out.

The yarn is tosh merino light (leftovers from when I had knit my Color Affection ages ago). It's a lovely green so you'll understand why I want to wrap this up and knit a bit before calling it a night.

But before I go, I think I've found the perfect baby gift knit: Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surplice Jacket.

This is the same sweater she wore home from the hospital. What other baby pattern do you know that fits as well at 11 months as it did at 11 days?

Revisions

I had a fantastic idea for a kids sweater bouncing around in my head recently. It would be a simple stockinette raglan, worked bottom up, with the bee lace from Cookie A's Kai-Mei sock pattern along the raglan seams. 

This design started to get a bit squirrelly from the get go. I couldn't figure out what edging to use for the bottom hem that wouldn't detract from the bee lace. A turned hem would have been great, except that I only have 400 yards of the yarn I'm using and I didn't want to lose yardage on the hem. So that was out (now that I think of it, a picot hem might have worked). Then I thought: seed stitch! At this point, I didn't want to transition from seed stitch at the hem to a stockinette body so I decided to make the whole body in seed stitch. 

I happily motored along to the underarm and used a provisional cast on for the sleeve stitches at the yoke. This is my favorite sweater construction for babies and kids - work bottom up to the neck and then back down the sleeves with whatever yarn is left. 

I think I made it through two repeats of the bee lace. It was just a mess. 

I had forgotten one of the key elements of Kai-Mei's success: negative ease on the sock so the foot stretches out the lace. That was not going to work on a kid's sweater. 

So I ripped back to the start of the yoke and decided to borrow from another of my favorite patterns. This time around, I tried a braid cable at the raglan and hid the decreases in the cable. 

That works much better. I threw in some short rows to shape the neck. The sleeves are stockinette and should knit up quickly at this gauge. I'll probably use a turned hem to finish them since it looks like I'll have enough yarn. 

Miss Tadpole even agreed to help me check to make sure the neck was loose enough. 

EZ's sewn bind off worked like a charm. But then the sweater was off a moment later. 

Once I'm done with the sleeves, I think I'll write this pattern up. At the very least, I'd like to make a coordinating sweater for sprout. And this will be a nice pattern recipe to have handy for gift knitting. Plus, if I'm really good, I can set up a spreadsheet to crunch the numbers for me. 

(I haven't forgotten about the purple sweater pattern - it's on the list. I just need to get my pattern writing feet wet again before I dive into that one.)

Popping in

I was all set to post about my latest FO - the first in my latest destashing operation - when I realized that I had probably better save the full write-up for after the recipient actually received it (which, in turn, requires that I get the package out the door). So I'll just give a little sneak peek for now:

Boy, did I find a nice new baby knit. I will definitely be making more of these!

I'm the meantime, I've been plugging away happily on a longer-term project. 

I'm a few rows farther along on the edging than you can see in this picture - I'm on the last color before turning the edge and working the back side of the double- sided edging! This one is taking a little while. If I remember correctly, the rows are several hundred stitches long at this point (closer to 1000 than 500). I'm certainly not going to check that number right now! But I did work out that each row takes about 40 minutes (10 minutes per side isn't bad). Multiply that by four rows for each of the nine colors, plus a couple extra rows for the turn, and you get a number I don't want to think about. All I know is that I'm almost halfway!