Knitting Kninja

Sugared Violets

I’ve been sick.  And, while being sick is rotten and no good and indeed very bad, it’s lent itself to an increase in knitting production.  The Lady helpfully suggested any manner of good ideas after my last post, and I’ve taken them into account in dealing with my mess of UFOs, and that has meant prioritizing Christmas gifts, winter clothes, and projects I’m really enjoying.

Here’s the first thing I finished up – a baby sweater for a wee one due in November.  I wanted to make something clearly feminine, but not pink, and when my little girl was littler yet, I found myself really loving pale purples as a pink alternative.  I’m not a huge fan of pale purples in general, but I find them very enchanting on babies.

Hello! I am small and girly!

Pattern: Yellow Jacket Cardigan from Monkeysuits, size 0-3 months

Ravelry link:
Yarn: Crystal Palace Merino 5, Solid and Print, (Lilac and Violets)
Needles: U.S. size 2 and U.S. size 4 straight bamboo needles
Yardage: About 100 yards of the print yarn and about 180 yards of the solid
Modifications: Smaller needles than called for, fewer body stitches, no stripes, some edges bound in cast off rather than seamed (I wish I’d done this the whole way through), more buttons

I’ve used this pattern before and been very happy with it, but that was when I first started knitting and didn’t mind seaming quite so much.  This is such a boxy cardigan that all the seaming is really quite unnecessary, and had I the wish to do this over again, I’d do the bottom half in the round with false seams.  I think the end result is cute, though, and it looks to me to be a size 3-6 months, proving that the original pattern is on the big side (no great fault, since babies grow) and that you needn’t fear to go down in size if you wish to knit this pattern.

The yarn, Merino Five from Crystal Palace, is very smooth and soft, though quite splitty.  It’s composed of a myriad of smooth, thin threads all twisted together, and it’s really easy to accidentally slip a needle into the middle of a strand of yarn while knitting.  However, I think it’s a small price to pay for a reasonably priced superwash merino that comes in a wide variety of colors and prints.  The very qualities that make the yarn a little difficult to knit with make the resulting fabric firm and soft with a little bounce to it.  Bonus: Crystal Palace is a local company, located in Richmond, California.

I briefly considered adding a small patch pocket to the sweater, as I did on my original version, but decided that it would be too busy on such a small cardigan.

Buttons. Seven in total.

The buttons are from my button drawer. (I should take a picture of the button drawer some time.  It’s messy, but useful.  I tend to buy buttons in bulk and at random, so I have a lot on hand, but finding matching buttons can be hard.)  I had a hard time deciding which ones to use, and was leaning toward some round pearl buttons, but the button holes are a bit thick, so I decided that flat buttons would probably work better.  I stuck with pearly buttons, though, because pearly buttons are purty.

So this was the first useful result of being stuck in bed feeling terrible.  I caught a bug from Liam that went straight to my chest and that seems to have brought on a flare up of Fibromyalgia.  I’m getting better, but it’s slow, and the fatigue is by far the worst part.  The fatigue doesn’t seem to extend to knitting, though, so I’ll have some other projects to show off shortly.  I should have photographed my new felted slippers before felting and before I wore them, but I was so eager to own slippers that I skipped that step, and as I’ve been wearing them constantly since I finished them, they’ve already lost some of that new slipper gloss.  (Or rather, I’ve walked the mohair halo off the bottom of the slippers.)

There are a few surprises in store in the coming week or so, so stay tuned!  All I can say is that lying down seems to bring out my productive side when it comes to the fiber arts.  But I still would prefer avoiding illness, nonetheless.