Surprise, Surprise, Baby Surprise
In a crowd of knitters, if you mention Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket, you're likely to be met with one of two reactions. Either they'll have knit it, probably more than once, or they're intimidated by the scant instructions and "trust the pattern" nature of the knitting. I hadn't knit one, although I purchased the pattern several years ago. There's a lot of great patterns for wee ones out there, and I keep getting distracted by other patterns when I needed gifts for new little people.
It seems I am again at a point where many of my friends are expecting children, or have just given birth to a child. While scouting patterns for a baby due earlier this month (he arrived on the 15th, healthy and with a great appetite for living) I decided to take a stripey yarn (schoppelwoll's crazy zauberball in fresh fische) that looked kind of clunky in the ball and turn it into a crazy rainbow bsj. Because of the way it utilizes miters, it's a perfect pattern for yarns with long, gradual color changes. It's true that for most of the knitting, it looks like you're knitting a big, blobby amoeba. But if you trust Elizabeth's guidelines, you take that amoeba and fold it quickly into a wee sweater. Two seams and a few buttons and you're done.
The nature of the knitting forms those perfect square cornered stripes and then also some lovely horizontal stripes across the back:
I finished the sweater with 5 buttons from The Button Emporium in Portland. That place is a wonderland of buttons and ribbons. Almost any kind of button you might imagine wanting (although we did manage to leave without finding the right buttons for a sweater Jodie was finishing though). The rounded square shape and slight divot in the button provided just enough interest in a fairly busy sweater.
The sweater was a hit with the new little one's mama, and a joy for me to knit. I suspect it will not be the last one I knit.
An Instant Gratification Project; Knitting Punctuation.
I love a good semicolon; the way it transitions from one sentence into another without a hard, hard pause. When I saw this pattern for a comma, apostrophe or quotation marks I was smitten. As I was showing my husband the nearly finished item, he smiled and told me that I "should knit it a friend and make it a semicolon; I use semicolons at work a lot". And so the seed was planted and with just a little wrangling of the pattern I had made the comma's spherical friend and joined them into the beautiful semicolon.
Now I have this crazy idea to knit an interrobang, but I think it might be better suited to colorwork than to a softie.
Knitting of Olympic Proportions
The Knitting Olympics asks knitters to challenge themselves with a project that will stretch their limits and test their mettle as a knitter. Or cause a repetitive stress injury, whichever might come first.
I chose Tonk's Snow Peacock for my project because I knew that long rows in natural colored yarn was a recipe for a project that stalled out and dragged on if left to my own devices. I don't normally knit anything in natural colored yarn because I am 1. very pale and 2. very clumsy and the combination makes me look like a ghostly ragamuffin. However, the recipient of this shawl requested a warm white shawl since it will be her wedding veil. I'm all too happy to comply if it means that I get to play a role in outfitting a lovely person as she legally defines her relationship with the man she loves in front of all their friends and family.
So far things are moving fairly smoothly, I cast on as the torch was lit in Vancouver last Friday evening and have knit varying amounts every day since then. I've had a few upsets, including discovering that the garage needed to be totally rearranged due to a leaky roof. I'm just a few hundred stitches shy of halfway done so I'm feeling quite confident that I will be able to finish the knitting--if not the blocking and photographing--of the project before the Olympic torch is extinguished on the 28th.
*yes, 51,000. That's a lot of stitches. Every stitch is full of love and good wishes for the couple, that they may be as strong and happy a couple as my husband and I are.
Verdaia, or Testy McTesterson
I've been doing some more test knitting. This time, I test knit ViolinJodie's new shawl pattern Verdaia (ravelry.com link).
I ended up taking an impromptu trip east to stay with my mother for a week, which saved me a little money on postage as this was a gift for her. We got a little bit of snow while I was there, which is the perfect backdrop for this lovely shawl.
I knit this one in Madeleinetosh Tosh Sock yarn in the color Malachite and used less than one skein. The pattern is easy, and the main body stitch pattern is extremely easy to memorize. In fact, I liked knitting it so much that I started a second one, in red, for myself.
Great Horned Owl
I'm on vacation but Cathartic Ink is not. Enjoy these posts, and I'll be back with even more content after the end of my Great New England Tour of Aught Nine
One of the brilliant hansigurumi patterns by Hansi Singh. I knit this back in July as a gift for Lisa, my favorite owl lover. Knit in three colors of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes it took me way longer than it should have since I kept getting distracted. The knitting itself was not super time consuming and the construction was interesting (brilliant, really. Super neat uses for short rows) but I would have liked a few more schematics. This one would be okay for wee ones if you omitted his fuzzy beak fluff and the fluff around his legs, but since they're not sewn in, it would be super easy for the very wee to pull them out and choke.