Current Knitting
As hinted in my last post (which was, surprisingly, just this week instead of sometime last month!), I’ve been doing some, but not a lot, knitting. As expected, I finished the knitting for the Baby Surprise Jacket this morning in the car.
It took about two and a half skeins of Tahki Cotton Classic, one skein of the blue and a skein and a half or so of the red. The mom of the intended recipient is allergic to many animal fibers and they live in CA, so I figured cotton would be a good alternative. And as a bonus, it’s washable.
This is my first time doing a Baby Surprise Jacket, and it was kind of fun to see how it all went together. I wasn’t sure how the stripe would look as I wasn’t sure how the piece got folded up, but I think I like it. Something I never noticed in pictures of Baby Surprise Jackets is the increases across the back and at each cuff, which I think are certainly more noticeable in the photos above.
The cotton makes the diagonal increases in the second half (front) of the piece look a bit exaggerated, but I think a little blocking will tame them some. I may at some point try to figure out reverse engineering this so the diagonal decreases fall on the front of the jacket because they look a little neater. I may not, though. *shrug*
Also, as I tend to bind off too tightly, I replaced one of the ends of my circular Options needles with a larger needle and it worked like a charm - I bound off as I wanted too without worrying about trying to keep things loose and having it be uneven, and it looks neat and clean.
So, now I just need to figure out buttons, and which side of the sweater the buttons vs. button holes go on so that I can get it to the recipient before it’s too small for him!
In the mean time, I’ve been dabbling with some socks. I’ve fallen absolutely in love with the color of these (but can’t remember what the colorway is.. it’s Trekking, though) because it reminds me of the deep and varying blues of the ocean.
The pattern may be familiar, but I decided I wanted a pair of my own and to my eye the pattern works very well with the yarn. I’m into the gusset at this point and now that the Baby Surprise Jacket is done, these will likely become my car knitting.
And I’ve done a bit more knitting on Jack’s Panda Cotton socks, which are also into the gusset. These are a bit more tedious, though, both because it’s a solid black yarn and because it’s an intentionally simple pattern. I’ll keep plugging away at them, though and eventually he’ll get handknit socks.
I was also lucky enough to get in on the group of test knitters for Cookie A’s new pattern, so sometime in the nearish future, you’ll be able to get a sneak peak of what that will look like as she’s very graciously told us that we’ll be allowed to share photos of our progress in our blogs and on Ravelry. While we wait for the pattern, though, I’m trying to figure out a good yarn. I have some candidates in my stash, but I’m thinking I need a solid or a yarn with more subtle variations than most of the stuff I have. I’m also thinking that I’d like to support one of the many smaller hand-dyers out there, so if you know of some good candidates, pipe up in the comments.
Random Monday.
Would that it were really Wednesday already, but that would be very bad as Monday has gone by far too fast already for everything I have to do this week.
Right then.. bit of a brain dump, and no pictures, but I will talk about some knitting I have going and some recent yarn acquisitions.
I had an eye appointment a few weeks ago and my new eye doctor doesn’t like the 30-day extended wear contacts I have worn for the last three years. He’d prefer that I take them out more frequently than every 30 days (he’d prefer I take them out every night, but I *hate* taking soft contacts out), so he suggested I go to a 2-week extended wear one. I like the 2-week ones less, but they’re rather significantly less expensive (the 30-day ones aren’t covered by my insurance and are around $350 a year, all of which I’d pay out of pocket; the 2-week ones are about 2/5ths covered by my insurance and around $160 a year, of which I pay about $100). The things I don’t like are related to the fact that I think they’re a slightly thicker lens, so they get gummy more frequently and shift out of place more frequently. It’s just an annoyance, and I’ll get over it, but since I never had to worry about the gumminess with the old ones, I’m not sure which eye drops I could use to make it go away when it happens in the middle of the day. Thoughts or suggestions are welcome.
A few weeks ago, we went to visit friends in Green Bay and in addition to playing lots and lots of games and eating many very good meals, P and I went visiting a couple of her local yarn shops. I was mostly good - I only enabled her into some sock yarn so she could learn socks and only bought 4 skeins of Takhi Classic Cotton to use to make a Baby Surprise Jacket for some friends’ new addition and a skein of the new Austermann Step with the aloe and jojoba in it. I I also started a new pair of socks in the car on that trip and worked a bit on Jack’s black socks. I will honestly try to remember to take pictures and get them loaded either here or in Ravelry soon - the Baby Surprise Jacket is nearly done!
It’s spring, at least by the calendar, so we’re starting to gear up for some more work on the house. First on the to-do list is getting the squirrel’s out of the attic and making it so they can’t get back in. That will happen tomorrow, and while Dad’s up in the attic fixing that, he’ll also figure out if the wall separating the two upstairs bedrooms is load-bearing so that we can make the right plans for removing it. This will make our house only 2 bedrooms, but as none of the existing bedrooms is actually large enough to be considered a master bedroom (you can’t get a king-sized bed into any of the bedrooms and still be able to open doors and/or walk around) we think this will be an improvement overall. The two smaller bedrooms will become one larger room (which we’ll likely keep as a den, but which will get counted as a master bedroom if/when we sell the house) and we’ll create some better closet space for both bedrooms. It’s a big-ish project, so here’s hoping it all goes well!
