AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

GOAL!

Hockey season has only been over for almost two months, but hockey is always on our minds here.

I'm due in late September, so there is a possibility (though these are sized bigger than a newborn) that our baby will get to see hockey on TV and watch their first game all dressed up to root for BU.

The baby sweater is the Baby Pullover, a free pattern from Bernat. I followed the lead of another BU alum on Ravelry who had done most of the grunt work for turning the sweater into a hockey sweater. What I did that was different? I decided I still hate seaming and so knit the entire sweater in the round. This mostly worked until I got to the neckline and had to coordinate instructions from multiple sections of the pattern at once. Definitely a spot where writing things out ahead of time would have been key.

Next up was the Baby Robitaille helmet, which was a quick knit though slower finish because I put off sewing on the single snap. Once I had the snap separated it was, well, umm. Yeah. That. I did have to have someone separate the snap for me, because I had just trimmed my finger nails all the way back. For once I didn't even sew half of the snap on backwards. Take that pregnancy brain!

Lastly, I made the hockey skates (it's a free pattern on Craftster). Now the skates look huge, and while we hid it for the photo, I need to resew on the blade portion on the back skate. I don't think the pattern had any sizing or gauge guidelines, and given I don't really know much about baby booties I knit away not thinking about their size. It's possible that they will fit fine. My husband has very wide feet, so this might be for the best!

Oh, and for the blades, I took my grey yarn and cast on 24 stitches using a size 4 needle. I knit the even rows as instructed, but when it came to separate for the upright portions of the blades, I knit 6, bound off 12, and then knit 6.

We bought two pairs of 14-inch white shoelaces for the sweater and the skates. If I had to do it over again, I'd buy the next size up, because these were too short to easily tie. 14-inches sounds so much bigger until you are actually faced with the reality of lacing a garment.

It's not the booties, but it is a finish

I have a ton of projects "on the needles" right now that are just done and waiting their blogging moment in the sun, but we are in the middle of packing and I've been too crazy to just get it done!

Now, Camp Loopy project 2 was a project using at least 500 yards that either had more than 1000 projects or was in more than 1000 queues that we hadn't done before. I did the Pinwheel Blanket, which I had admittedly attempted before and failed spectacularly. I did probably 10-20 rounds before I realized that I apparently couldn't keep the increases in my head.

This time I wouldn't say I did better with the increases per se, but I was relatively consistent. There are areas that I am pretty sure I messed up on, but they are either hard to see or hard to fix, so c'est la vie!

I used one ball of Kauni (130 grams) and two out of the three balls of Madeline Tosh DK in Glazed Pecans.

It was awesome, and it is for the baby and is wonderfully unisex!

Of course my blocking boards weren't big enough, so it might look better in the distant future when I buy more blocking boards. Obviously something that won't be happening in the next month or so.

As for the packing, it is going. I did almost all of my clothes except for the stuff for the upcoming week this morning, brought a box of yarn to mail this morning, and have the kitchen about 1/2 way done. We have mugs and glasses left to pack and most of the pots, which isn't too bad for a Wednesday departure (next week!).

My next Camp Loopy Project is Mama Vertebrae (with an extra skein to make a matching baby sweater). If I finish that as expected, I will have finished 4 baby sweaters, a baby blanket, booties and a hat. Obviously there is a bit of room for more projects before I'm due in September. Fire away with any suggestions!

because a rainbow won't make a baby gay

This is the Little Sister's Dress by Tora Frøseth. She is one of my favorite clothing designers for little people (babies, toddlers and small children). I love her pattern, Angle, and will be hopefully finishing that in the next couple of weeks.

This dress is one of her free pattern offerings. It features a familiar welting motif around the bodice before joining in the round and starting the stockinette body. I really wanted to make at least one rainbow themed thing for our baby.

Rainbows. I like them, but I also like how some ultra-conservatives seem to think that rainbows and rainbow patterned things turn people gay. If that was all it took, then the human race would have died out a long time ago.

I figured that if I was going to do a rainbow-striped dress that I needed cloud buttons. I bought these buttons from Etsy seller, Pieceful Design. Shipping was super fast, but it took me a day or two to get around to sewing them on.

All and all, this is a wonderful project. It is super quick. It took me only a week to do all of the knitting, weaving in the ends and blocking. If I had buttons I wanted to use on hand, then I would have finished that same day.

The angle is a little funny, but I wanted a close up of the buttons. The toggles are done with just a little bit of crochet. Nothing to worry about there. I just did the vertical opening for the neck with a bit of single crochet and then made a pair of chain loops. It doesn't really show up with the buttons there, so it doesn't have to be good crochet. Just adequate.

Oh, and this is the 12 month size. We'll see if it will fit our baby (who is currently Schrödinger's gender) at some point close to 12 months or if it will be more like one of my friends whose baby blew past the newborn sizes so fast that the baby clothes I made were put on once and then no more.

Yeah, I'm knitting out in sizes, because I don't believe a lot of it will fit for very long otherwise. Those with children can tell me if I am being sensible or not.

Next time, I hope to have a complete set of baby clothes OR a blanket done. We'll see!