So the great Cousin x2 Baby Shower Rush of February is over. (Twin cousins, due within a month of each other. Yes, such things really do happen!) Sweaters have been knit, hats crafted, booties…booted; garments washed and wrapped (while, perhaps, still a wee bit damp), and showers attended. (Ah, baby showers. Such fun and such…unique experiences. That’s the first time I have tasted baby food since I actually was a baby…)
FO: Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Sweater Sets
(apologies for the poor quality of the pictures…I was in a rush to get these wrapped and out the door so I wouldn’t be late, after waiting until the last second for them to dry, and my cameraphone was the handiest thing.)
Patterns:
Daisy, by Stephanie Pearl McPhee, in the small size
Easy 2-needle Baby Booties, by Libilou Creations
Hat was based off of the numbers in Ann Budd’s pattern book, with a knotted icord on top a la the Umbilical Hat.
Yarn: Knitpicks Crayon, in Orange and Yellow (both discontinued colors, sadly)
Needles: Size 6 straights for the sweater, size 6 DPNs for the hat, size 5 DPNs for the booties (although I knit them straight).
I really enjoyed these sweaters — all right. First, it’s time for a dirty, secret knitter confession. These are, in five years of knitting, the first sweaters I have done. I’ve made complicated lace stoles, and all manner of stranded colorwork, but sweaters always seemed so big, so antithetical to my knitter’s ADD. So I avoided them. But when this shower date was announced, I decided it was time to buckle down. I had bright, deliciously soft, squishy yarn, just right for springtime babies to be wrapped up in. The Yarn Harlot would never steer me wrong, right?
I had a slight shaking of the head over the divide, took a breath, and trusted the pattern. It worked, so the second shaking of the head, this time over the sleeve/neckline part, was dealt with in the same way — surprise surprise, it worked too. The second sweater was a breeze after that. A+ pattern, will knit again. Hat and booties were almost afterthoughts, to use up the leftovers and round things out.
I’m actually very sorry these colors of Crayon were discontinued. I got them on clearance, with an eye towards the bright colors. I am tired of seeing babies in pastel: it gets boring. If you’re going to avoid baby color stereotyping, do it with a flourish, right? And these two colors were perfect, especially when I went on vacation to Disney World last month and discovered that they were also a perfect match to Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. Before I knew it, two stuffed animals were in my suitcase to come home with me (really adorable round fluffy things) and I had a theme to go with my bright bold sweaters.
Only one problem — buttons. It seems that Classic Pooh is no longer the moneymaker it once was, because it’s damn near impossible to find buttons. I did, at last, find some Eeyore buttons on clearance at a Joanne’s, but Winnie and Tigger were no-gos, even at M&J. So I was forced to be creative. Winnie has honey bee buttons, which were very easy to find, but Tigger was really difficult. I was thinking bouncing, I was thinking springs, I was thinking all sorts of things that didn’t seem to exist. I finally found big chunky orange beads, with black spots. I sewed those suckers down as tight as I could, and they ended up working very well.
The entire kit and caboodle was wrapped up in Pooh bags (of course) with the appropriate stuffed toy, and copies of the 80th Anniversary edition of Winnie the Pooh, and I was honestly very gratified to see how excited my cousins were by it all. Hopefully in a few months I will get to see my work modeled on some very tiny people. =)
Other doings: the Nantucket Clapotis is just over half done now, as I just joined skein 3 of four during this morning’s commute. I finally finished the miles and miles of stockinette that will be the back of the Stag Bag Pillow that was supposed to be my dad’s Christmas present (uh. Easter present?), and I want to felt that up a bit before I join and stuff it, and get it out of here. I am using some of my embarrassingly large stash of Cotton Ease to make the Frontier Blues Jacket from the most recent Knitscene, because if I can knit baby sweaters I can surely accomplish a real-person sized one, right? We will not discuss the things down the pike, but there is KP Palette and Koigu here destined to be the Northern Lights Tam and the Anomoi mittens, and just today I was in receipt of a little pouch containing some Noro Sock yarn, which I have been intensely curious about. (I do suffer from Startitis. I admit it, and I don’t want to be cured.)