Trish Knits.com

Tag: baby

I’m Getting a Little Too Good at This

This morning before work I fixed some dropped stitches in my baby sweater.

baby sweater with dropped stitches again

I’m getting tired of this routine! It seems every few rows or so lately I’m having to do some major repair work. I’m pretty sure it has to do with my fatigue level, so I need to fix that, too. But for now, I’m focusing on the sweater. In the photo above you can see the extent of the damage. Not too bad, I guess, compared to some other stuff, but I do detest picking up yarnovers and trying to make them look right again.

picking up stitches from the back with a crochet hook

The job called for using my favorite go-to metal crochet hook, a red, dime store variety that used to belong to John’s great aunt Honey. (I never remember whether Honey was Mary or Frances, but she was Honey to family, and her sister was Duddie. Mary or Frances, Frances or Mary? Wait, I’m digressing…)

Anyway, I figured the easiest thing to do first would be to pick up the column of knit stitches on the purl side, the stitches that offset the cable. This wasn’t too hard. I find that when I have lots of columns of stitches to pick up, I’m constantly flipping the work back and forth, because it’s always easiest for me to pick up stitches from wherever the knit side is. I’ve never quite been able to wrap my brain about pulling the loop the other way ’round the yarn to make a purl stitch, so it’s easier to for me to just flip the work over and over, so I’m always creating knit stitches. Hey, it’s slow, but it works.

sweater is fixed again

And here is the sweater fixed once again, ready to continue with the regular knitting routine. Please wish me luck that the streak of dropping stitches is over for a while–I’d really rather be getting this project done soon.

More later!

August 7, 2008
Knitting Day in Bowie

baby sweater with sleeve stitches on holders

Well, I was successful in getting the sleeve stitches onto holders today before knitting group, so here is the latest photo of the baby sweater in progress. It finally looks like a sweater, no? I’m finally seeing a light at the end of this tunnel.

Now some scenes from today’s knitting group:

rhoda knitting on the BYOB bag from Knitty.com

Rhoda knitting on the BYOB bag from Knitty.com

Jo knits a shawl from handspun yarn

Dina is camera shy

(Dina is our new group member. She didn’t want her picture taken, but here she is!)

Lola knits a sweater

Marie was knitting and sharing her book stash–thanks!

Me knitting on my baby sweater

Lola saw that I posted on Ravelry to Jo the other day, asking if she had a drop spindle that I could play with at group today. Jo said no, she didn’t, but then Lola surprised me with this:

drop spindle with fleece and first attempt at spinning yarn

A drop spindle to play with and a bit of roving! I tried for quite a while to make yarn tonight and it was interesting to say the least. It looks so easy when I see others doing it! Maybe I’ll have to ask Lola to give me a lesson or two. I’m thrilled that she’s letting me borrow this spindle before I buy my own, though… it’s good to figure out whether I can even do it first. So far I’ve had yarn falling apart and lots of spindle crashing to the floor stuff, and very little yarn stuff, but I think I’ll get there. Wish me luck, and what a great afternoon it was. Thanks again, ladies! I had a great time.

August 2, 2008
Knittin’ on Some Stuff

me, knitting a purple sock

Just a Monday night at Trish’s place. I’m tired tonight, so we all had something simple for dinner, then I sat down to do some knitting… and then blog about it! I frogged my purple sock last week, and restarted it on size 0 needles. This time, on smaller needles, 56 stitches around seems to fit me just right. I forget sometimes that my feet are so smal, because I tend to wear shoes two sizes bigger because of my brace.

I kinda gave up on the idea of doing toe-up monkey socks for now, too, because the stitch repeat is so long that getting the right amount of stitches for my size is a bit of a challenge. So for now, I’m doing Wendy Johnson’s sock pattern that she designed for Summer of Socks, 2008. Well, sort of. I’m doing her stitch pattern, but my own heel and my own toe.

And here’s a shot of the baby sweater:

baby sweater in progress

Half an inch til I put the sleeve stitches on holders. I’m finally starting to feel the progress. Yay!

July 21, 2008
Knitting Roulette

Today I had an unexpected day off, caring for a sick, toothless 6-year-old, who, it turns out, has the strep buggers. So we had a Spongebob marathon, and watched Cars, I got some progress done on my purple sock. Not enough to show you though, so I thought I would talk tonight about my baby sweater. Again.

I played around with a couple of stitch patterns for the front panels, and I think I’m going with a simple plaited cable with vertical eyelets on either side. The entire rest of the sweater will be done in stockinete stitch, but I haven’t yet decided whether to do a garter stitch border at the bottom and cuffs, or some sort of ribbing. I’ll decide when I get there. I also have inserted one eyelet button hole, but it is so tiny you can’t even really see it in the photo. So I need to decide quick how to do the buttons. Maybe I’ll skip the whole thing and just do an i-cord tie. We’ll see.

I also decided to put the sleeve stitches on holders when I get to them and do them in the round at the end. That is what makes the most sense to me at the moment. I’m already wondering if this sweater is ever going to get done. The stitches are so tiny! Next time I use this yarn for such things I think I am going to double it.

Note to self: I stopped on the sock tonight ready to do round 5 of the second pattern repeat. But before I do any more work on it I want to put it on my foot again and make sure I wasn’t kidding myself about the size. It’s small. But I have a teeny foot (size 5, narrow). I often get away with wearing 6’s but I never wear open toe-d shoes so I forget how ridiculously big they really are.

All for now…

July 9, 2008
The Yoke’s on Me!

So I’ve never really done major baby knitting. A couple of blankets, but this is my first time attempting a sweater. I’ve never made a sweater of any kind, so I figured I’d better start small. I’m basing the method of construction for this sweater on the February Baby Sweater, except that my gauge is different, and my yarn is different, and, in the end, I don’t like the stitch pattern that was used. Well, ok, I do like the stitch pattern, but what if the baby is a boy? In that case, then not so much.

So I will use the concept of the sweater, in the use of the percentage system and the overall design. But I am still uncommitted as to which stitch pattern to use. Something that says, “Yeah, I’m a boy and I can still wear this sweater, even though it has pink in it,” but that would be ok for a girl, too.

Any ideas? I’d love to hear them. I’m stumped. 🙂

June 25, 2008
Baby Sweater Redeux

Not much, is it? Well… I should have been photographing along the way with my various experiments all week, but it was hot and I was lazy, and so… well… I didn’t. It wouldn’t have made for exciting reading anyway.

What you see here is the beginnings of my EZ February Baby Sweater. The pattern is from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac, and it gives a glimpse into Ms. Zimmermann’s infamous percentage system on a small scale. I like that! Especially since the yarn I have was way thinner than what the pattern was originally designed for, and the lace pattern used in the design just wasn’t giving me a substantially cozy looking sweater in that yarn. I’m a loose knitter, and so my yarnover holes are big, even with small needles, and so it was looking too lacy, and too girly, for this particular project need. (I don’t know the sex of the baby. Therefore, a totally feminine knit is out.) I’ve seen lots of these sweaters online, and many of them don’t look particularly girly, but with this yarn, somehow I couldn’t avoid that overall feeling.

So this morning when I couldn’t sleep and was up at 5:30 a.m. for no good reason, I sat with my stitch dictionaries and looked until I found something I like. Twin Rib. It’s a standby for me, but I like it. What can I say? I like it.

(I also used the gauge calculator at this site to help me with my math shortcomings… time will tell whether it worked!)

So, now I’m doing the sweater with teeny yarn on size 1 needles, at a different gauge with a different stitch pattern. Does that mean it’s the February Baby Sweater at all? Yes, because that’s the beauty of Elizabeth Zimmermann Knitting. It sets you free.

June 15, 2008