Owly

The baby has already outgrown his Baby Sophisticate sweater, the one I called "The Librarian", so I made a new one, carefully calculating a larger size...

The first: "The Librarian":


At first I planned to make this one exactly like the first - I even bought the same yarn. But I happened to pick up two skeins of navy Baby Cashmerino (Debbie Bliss) at my LYS and it really gave me ideas.



To make the right size for a 20 lb, 6 mo old baby I knit it according to measurements:
21" around chest
7" long from underarm to hem
6" from underarm to sleeve cuff
10.5" length from shoulder to hem

This pattern uses a US size 8 circular needle, and about 125 yards of DK yarn....

It fits perfectly and I hope to get some modeled pictures soon!

A new philosopher is born

I'm sorry I've been away for so long. I have embarked on (what is for me) a great adventure! I am 3000 miles away from home and living in an unfurnished studio apartment in a kind of spare Zen way... I will be here for a month. I have a good reason and this is it:



He is a Very New baby, just a week and a half old. Jule is doing great and she is a wonderful parent. I'll be here - far away from my own home - for the whole month. It's strange and exciting living in a new place, and of course I love being with them every day...

I am living on the 3rd floor of Jule's apartment building. She found and rented this place for me because it would be so much better than staying in a hotel for the same length of time. My apartment is beautiful, in a building that used to be a convent in the 30's. I have a big claw footed tub, a gorgeous deep bay window that is just begging for a window seat, and I have a lovely little 30's kitchen with built-in glass fronted dish cupboards and a sunny window.... I've bought very little and intend to live quite simply while I'm here.

As you can see, the baby is wearing the sweater I made before he was born. It turned out very tiny, but he's a tiny baby (just 7 lbs!) so it fits him perfectly now. We've had a couple of cold days here on the west coast, in between scorching 96 degree days, so he did get to wear it once or twice. I'll make him a bigger one when I get back home.

I also finished the big comfy sweater - Red Lantern - for Jule while I was here. I needed to fit it on her to make sure the arms were long enough. It's perfect! I'll take action shots as soon as we get a chance.



This is a beautiful deep red (deeper than the photo could capture) of Plymouth's Baby Alpaca Grande yarn. It took several skeins - maybe 6? It's my own pattern that I intend to write up. Here you are seeing it unblocked. And for some reason, the photo turned blurry when I saved it....

But here is a bit of a close-up that is a little sharper:



Today is Jule's birthday, and I suggested making a Maple Bacon cake and friends will be coming over tonight so there's lots to do and I'd better get started...

I'm keeping up with Ravelry and reading your blogs, but I don't get a chance to post very often, and now you know why!

from Space to the Library

Now that Flash Kelly has opened his birthday present (he couldn't wait until Wednesday), I can show you what I made him. This is the Space Invader baby hat, made man-size (and a big, brainy head it is, too!). I used the recommended yarn, Cascade 220, in black and cream. I know it's late in the season for a wool hat, but it's what he wanted and I have to admit, I wore a furry ear-flap hat when I was walking the dogs yesterday so perhaps he'll get some use out of it before next winter.



This was my first intarsia knitting ever!!

The pattern, which is written for baby size, doesn't give directions for up-sizing. I used my One Skein Top-Down hat pattern to make this hat, using just the charts for the intarsia space invader guys from the original pattern. The hardest part was figuring out the size of the ear flaps (I had to redo them when one came out smaller than the other) but it worked perfectly in the end. The opening between the ear flaps is twice as wide in the front as it is in the back. If you want to make one, my hat pattern is on Ravelry (button on the left takes you to the download) and you will need the original pattern for the space invader charts and placement directions. I suggest figuring out your maths for positioning the ear flaps on this adult size before you actually start them, but after you've finished the body of the hat.

Of course, as soon as I finished this I had to make one for the baby too:





I learned some things about intarsia while knitting these hats and was so chuffed to have learned a new technique that I wanted to apply it again immediately! I chose the baby sweater pattern Baby Sophisticate (you can find this free on Ravelry) and designed my own intarsia pattern on it. I think it looks like a sweater that a college professor would wear in the library:



The yarn is Sublime organic merino, just a little over 1 ball and a bit of a second colour. This yarn is very loosely plied so it knits up like a single ply yarn. It was such a pleasure to knit with and so soft!



The pattern itself is super easy and took just two days to complete (good Masterpiece Theater knitting). The pattern is plain, but having just learned intarsia, I had to try it out again. I graphed a school of fish and applied it in blue. They don't look much like fish really - I toyed with the idea of embroidering details on them, like eyes, to try to make them more obvious but rejected this as over-kill. With the blue fish buttons, I think the suggestion of fishes is subtle but works okay...



If you make this sweater pattern, I found that it ran very small. I used the 3-6 month size but at gauge it came out a small newborn size. I hope that it will last a while; babies grow fast! The good news is that the pattern is so fast and easy I can make another in the larger size with no trouble.