Repeat

I don't often knit multiple iterations of the same pattern but my two go-to projects right now are repeats. Sounds like I'll need to add Scrollwork and Wee Wildflower to my go-to project list (joining Habitat and Pomander Baby Cardigan - two of my absolute favorite patterns).

I had a hard time giving up my mom's Scrollwork set so I cast on for a similar cowl for myself several weeks ago using a different colorway of Malabrigo Rios (Vaa, probably my favorite of all of the Malabrigo colors). I had picked this for date night movie knitting and cast on during the car ride to the theater. I was pretty good about keeping to the ribbing pattern but got hopelessly off kilter partway through the movie (Selma, which was fantastic) and set this one aside for a while in the hopes that if I ignored it long enough, my mistakes would just fix themselves. Unfortunately, that didn't happen but I only had to rework parts of the ribbing and didn't have to frog the bit I had started.

I started knitting on the train again last week and now the cowl is really moving along. I should knit on the train more often!

This next piece was better movie knitting. Last week I was here:

After a date night to go see Kingsmen (good but not great) I was ready to bind off for the arm holes.

I finished the left front this afternoon and, while I don't think I'll have a finished sweater ready for Tadpole's birthday later this week, I should be able to have it ready during her birthday month.

I bound off my Luna Viridian cowl sometime in the last week or so, too. I can't put this one in the finished pile yet since it still needs blocking. I'm not enamored of the shape in its umblocked state so I doubt I'll feel inspired to block it any time soon. It looks uninspiring on me but pretty nice on the girls. (Sprout has insisted that this one go to her.)

I've added it to the "needs blocking" pile, tucked away behind my desk along with this lovely scarf.

I'll get around to blocking one of these days, probably when I figure out how to look good in a silvery grey.

In the meantime, I finally finished laying out the squares for my half-square triangle sampler quilt!

I even had a helper while picking the squares back up. They're all in order and I just have to remember what system I used when stacking everything up into a single pile. Wish me luck!

It'll probably be a while before I finish this one (and I'm nervous about cutting long straight pieces of fabric for the borders so I may procrastinate for a while on that step). But while I still had momentum, I put the first block together this evening.

The points aren't all perfect but this still looks pretty good to me.

Birthday Sweater

Sprout turned one last week (I have no idea where the last year has gone - somewhere between work and sleep deprivation, probably). And in honor of her birthday, I finished up a sweater for the son of a dear friend of mine who had turned one in January.

Pattern: Lucky (you)

Size: 2T

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios (2 skeins)

Needles: size 6 and 7 addi lace circulars

Sprout helped me with the FO shots (and confirmed that I had worked the right size).

This sweater is all about big squishy cables, which look fantastic in Rios. I don't remember using a cable needle on this one (see earlier comment on sleep deprivation) so I'm pretty sure even the largest crosses are doable without a cable needle.

And did you see that zipper in the first picture? I won't make you scroll back up - here it is again:

I'm enormously proud of it. I should be - I sewed in a zipper about 4 times on this project. Ok, maybe 2 and a half. But that's still 1 and a half times more than you really want to do.

Note to self - check to see if the zipper is a separating zipper before sewing it all the way in. That put me back a couple of hours (you'll notice I said "a" zipper rather than "the" zipper above).

I hadn't planned to use a zipper in the first place but I ran out of yarn about halfway down the second sleeve and, since I had bought the yarn over a year ago, I doubted I'd be able to find any that matched. So I had to borrow some from somewhere. Half the button band got me to the cuff and then stealing a few rows from the other cuff let me get two full sleeves.

Second note to self - yarn does not magically regenerate. 

When I see that I'm running out of yarn, I tend to set the project aside and hope that if I don't look at it directly, more yarn will somehow appear. My knitting life would be so much easier if I just frogged the first sleeve cuff right away and got the piece out of my WIP pile. Somehow stealing yarn from the button band doesn't seem quite as traumatizing as ripping back the sleeves so this zipper trick may be my saving grace. Especially now that I have lots of practice at sewing in zippers.

Third note to self - try to buy enough yarn next time. Maybe it's time to check out the stashbot app.

Fall Sweaters

Has it really been almost two months since I last touched the blog? It's been snowing this week and I realized that I had better share some fall sweater pics before winter fully arrives and the leaves in the background look completely out of place.

Sprout has been sporting a bevy of hand knits this season, only one of which is not a hand-me-down:

The pattern is the delightful Wee Wildflower, worked in MadelineTosh pashmina (a truly fantastic yarn). I don't recall what size I worked - probably 12 months, rather than 6 - but I remembered to pull the sweater out just in the nick of time before Sprout outgrew it. Instead of working the sleeves flat and then sewing them onto the body, I picked up stitches around the edge of the armscye and worked short rows to shape the sleeve cap before knitting the sleeves top-down. This let me eek out every last inch of yarn for roughly bracelet-length sleeves.

Where would we be without an FO shot involving Sprout eating grass?

Just because I haven't been cranking out new baby knits doesn't mean the little one is deprived of a lovely set of sweaters to wear. Remember this one?

Tadpole's Purple Sweater has been a big hit with Sprout, too.

I pulled out another old favorite last weekend. It never ceases to amaze me how much Sprout looks like her sister did at this age.

Sprout isn't the only one with a new sweater this fall - I finished one for myself, too! And by the time I get back to posting about the sweater, I may have even finished my new mittens.

Did I mention that they're lined with cashmere? I can't wait either.

Double Trouble (or, adventures in getting two small children to smile for the camera)

Something about finishing that shawl a little while ago has set of a finishing frenzy (full disclosure: no, I haven't mailed it yet). I wrapped up a sweater for each of the girls and managed to get pictures of both of them wearing their new sweaters at the same time. I should have bought a lottery ticket because that never happens around here.

First up: my baby version of Amy Miller's Princess Fiona pattern for Sprout.

Next, a basic raglan for Tadpole with the raglan decreases hidden in a braid cable.

I really tried to get good pictures of the girls together in their new sweaters. And I usually managed to get a good shot of one but the other was either acting up or melting down. Like this one -

Tadpole looks fantastic and is actually smiling for the camera but Sprout is just done with the situation and is about to wail.

We went outside and had a rollicking time trying to get the girls to look in the same direction at once. Art direction went something like, "Tadpole, look at the camera!" and "Sprout, don't eat the grass!" Someone is constitutionally incapable of staying on her back these days. Anyway, it gave me a push to add "learn to adjust the shutter speed on my camera" to my to do list. (Yes, that list is about three miles long at this point.)

Back to the sweaters. I managed to eek a full-sleeved sweater for Tadpole out of my single 400 yard skein of worsted weight yarn. How? Dumb luck. The sleeves were narrow and that is what saved me - I had about 12 inches left after I finished the i-cord bind-of on the second cuff.

The raglan cables really are my favorite part of this sweater. A close second is the contrast between the seed stitch body and the stockinette sleeves. Such a great mix of textures -- perfect for the subtle shading in the skein.

I had thought to do a baby version for Sprout using the orange yarn you can see above but the seed stitch that didn't seem so bad worked in worsted weight was mind numbing when worked in a fingering weight yarn. So instead I did this:

A top-down stockinette pullover with bracelet sleeves, a placket at the back, and an interesting lace detail at the side (not that you can see it here).

Better now? I may have swatched on this one to figure out my stitch gauge. I don't think there was too much thought behind the initial cast-on (I went with the number of stitches that looked "about right," however you want to define that very technical term). The placket was thrown in so that I didn't have to worry about whether I had made the neck opening too small. Raglan sleeves were a similar choice: they generally fit without any fussing with the proportions. I threw in a slight a-line shape to the body to make sure there was plenty of room and ripped back the bottom hem when I needed some extra yardage to finish the sleeves.

If I were to do it again, I'd change the proportions of the back/front and sleeves at the top of the sweater to make the sleeves narrower and the back/front wider. That said, I'm pretty pleased with this one.

And Sprout is, too.

In which one of my daughters models her new hand knit garment

Why yes, Tadpole and I have been reading Winnie the Pooh together. Those chapter headings must be rubbing off on me.

Both of my girls have new hand knits. One of them has tried hers on. That would be the immobile one, currently lacking the words to say "I'll try it on later, mommy."

Tadpole has a lovely new dress - the Goldilocks pattern - and I think it will fit. Hopefully she will be up for trying it on before she outgrows it.

Sprout was a more cooperative model in her new sweater, although she wriggled so much I had to switch to auto focus on the camera. Try telling a two-month-old to hold still - it just doesn't work. But happy, energetic babies are delightful creatures so we still had a lot of fun. Before I get distracted with the baby shots, here is the sweater itself:

Now for my model:

See why I wanted to make sure I showed you the sweater first? I kept getting distracted by those baby blues. Ok, now you can see how the sweater fits. It's still a bit big on her so I'm hoping it will fit for another couple of months - at least through the cool early summer evenings.

Now that I have you thoroughly distracted by the baby pics, I'm thinking of writing up the pattern. Any interest? This version was knit on size 1 needles using Sundara fingering merino yarn. Yes, there were lots of tiny stitches. But the stitch pattern would also look lovely in a heavier sock or even sport weight yarn on larger needles.

So if I were to write this up, would you prefer a free pattern with just one size or would you rather have multiple size and yarn weight options for a fee? And, perhaps more importantly, would you be interested in test knitting the pattern? I can promise an interesting knit, some clever details, and a satisfying FO. But you'll have to supply the baby.

Knitting with Baby

I finished a February Baby Sweater for my February baby the other day:

The yarn is Knitting Notions sport weight that I had picked up a couple of years ago, thinking to make something for Tadpole. That didn't happen so I thought to use the yarn for Sprout. I'd initially tried a bottom-up henley design of my own making (quick pic here) but ultimately decided that I didn't like the way the colors in this kettle dyed yarn flashed across the body of the sweater. So the yarn went back into the frog pond for reincarnation.

After I had knit the garter stitch yoke, I frantically searched through my Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries for a 7-stitch lace pattern to swap out for EZ's choice of gull lace. Nothing caught my eye and an hour later (precious knitting time gone), I settled in for gull lace after all. The knitting flew by - even the sleeves, which I might have complained about just a bit since I wanted this piece to be done - and the gull lace turned out to be the perfect stitch pattern for spreading out the slight variations in the yarn.

Miss Sprout even obliged for a photo shoot:

There she is with her serious face, contemplating the milk she's about to spit up all over her nice new sweater.

Here's how you can tell this is not my first kid: I wiped the spit up off the sweater and then picked the camera back up to continue shooting. Once we were done, I popped the sweater in the sink for the wash and wet blocking I should have given it in the first place.

My new little sweater model has obliged on a couple of other photo shoots, sans spit-up:

My Pomander cardigan fits reasonably well now with room to grow. I know I've said it before but this really is a delightful pattern, well written and full of thoughtful details. The designer has a gorgeous jumper pattern knit using Loft. I'm having visions of knitting coordinating jumpers for the girls. (Note to self: finish your current WIPs first!)

Another favorite: EZ's Baby Surplice Jacket.

These two may be my new go-to baby knits patterns. The EZ pattern has some of the same clever shaping as her BSJ and is also designed to grow with the baby. In other words, you don't have to worry so much about size - it should fit the recipient for a while (i.e. several months, which is quite a bit in baby time).

I've got another sweater for Miss Sprout on the needles right now and I'm making slow but steady progress with mostly middle of the night spurts of productivity. When her sister was this age, I found myself getting frustrated when she wouldn't go back to sleep in the middle of the night (or go back to sleep soundly enough to transfer to her crib so that I could go back to sleep, too). Looking back on that period, I wished that I had just focused on enjoying the snuggles and time with my small daughter. (I also realized that rocking a baby in the middle of the night was prime knitting time and the knitting might have helped me calm down a bit). I told myself that I would do better if there ever were a next time. Now that the next time is here, I can't say that I don't want to go back to sleep but the midnight wakings (and staying awake) are less fraught and I've had some wonderful times enjoying getting to know this new little person in our lives and making something for her to wear while I'm at it.

New Addition

Two weeks ago we welcomed a new addition to the Tinks and Frogs family:

Sprout arrived on February 17 and was quickly garbed in hand knits. She's wrapped in an Hourglass Blanket and is wearing a hat loosely based on one her sister wore home from the hospital.

We're all home and doing well. I've even managed to finish up a few projects over the last couple of weeks. But more on that later - I've got a diaper to change.