stash, knit, repeat

I still feel like I’m so behind, but now that our houseguests are gone and Passover is over and there’s no business travel on the horizon, I should be able to catch up!

…at least until we move (in mid-to-late June). Riiiight.

Anyway, some of the secret knitting has been gifted so now I can share with you all. One of the ladies in our knitting group just had her second child, so 5 of us got together and all knit strips of a baby blanket for her. I seamed them all together and edged them:

We knit the blanket out of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK, in the lovely purple color you see. I was worried about gauge issues until the end, but it all worked out just fine. I wrote the care instructions on a little card, wrapped it up, and it was all ready for C.!

She really seemed to love it, which was a huge sigh of relief.

Also, while the past month has been extremely busy and not always fun, today the mailman brought me something almost special enough to make me forget all of it:

The final installment of my current Seasons Club subscription. Yum, yum, and yum.

I’ll spare you any more stream-of-consciousness posting and go knit on my very first socks for Jacob, now. (!) Next up: A completed baby beret/sock set, and the weirdest sock construction ever.

Well, am I behind. Ahem.

Pattern: The Cable Tank Top by Debbie Bliss, from the Baby Cashmerino 3 pamphlet

Yarn: Baby Cashmerino, 2 balls indigo and 1 ball cream for the smallest size

Time Elapsed: Around a week? Each of the main pieces took only a day to knit.

Notes/Modifications: The only thing I changed was to shorten the armholes. The pattern calls for them to be knit in the same thick/thin stripe pattern as the neck and hem, and I thought that would be too bulky.

As usual, I find the boy patterns slightly less adorable than the girl patterns, but this is still pretty darn cute. It doesn’t seem to be as ridiculously over-sized as many of the baby patterns out there, so beware of that.

Not much to say about it, I guess. A cute, quick knit for a special little boy.

Yeah, yeah, there’s another FO to share, but hasn’t it been awhile since we just chatted? Life has sure been busy, and it seems like I have lots to tell you.

First of all, the wee beastie is doing just fine. Unfortunately, the swelling that plagued me for so much of my pregnancy with Jacob is back with a vengeance (good-bye, wedding ring!). I don’t think I’ll ever actually enjoy being pregnant. But all in all, 22 weeks isn’t as bad as it could be. At least I’m able to stomach coffee again.

Both my knitting and my yarn-buying are going well. Faced with the prospect of at least a year without practical sweater-for-myself opportunities, I’ve gone a little crazy with the cheez whizyarn clubs. After another shipment of Sundara’s club, and a general diminishing of the raging hormones, I’ve decided the club is both enjoyable and good for me. Unable to decide which season appealed to me most, I chose both Summer and Autumn this time around. As if that weren’t yarn enough, Madelinetosh came out with a club of her own. Her yarn is definitely a contender for #1 favorite, so I joined up. I guess my needles will be plenty busy, and hopefully I’ll be too focused on the luscious yarn to notice the lack of sweaters!

My secret knitting du jour involves what is probably my most favorite cable ever.

Also, it’s purple. How could purple be bad?

And finally, things seem to have gotten settled enough for me to share that we’re making a big move back to our house in the Boston area this summer. We have lots of good reasons to leave CA, most of them boiling down to family and culture. I’m so excited to go back that I can hardly stand it. We’ve been renting out our place, and I love the thought of being in my very own house again–although I’m daunted by the toddler-proofing challenges! The last time we were there, Jacob looked like this:

Now, things are a little different.

(Yes, he’s hiding something in my shoe.) What do you all like most about the place you’re living?

I have some secret knitting going on right now, but lucky for me I’ve also got a small backlog of FOs to share with you. In the “It’s kind of cruel that a knitter should have two boys” department, I present the matinee coat:

Pattern: Debbie Bliss’ Matinee Coat, from the first Baby Cashmerino pamphlet

Yarn: Baby Cashmerino, dusty rose, just over 3 balls for the smallest size

Time Elapsed: The knitting took less than a week, but it waited at least 2 for blocking and finishing.

Notes/Modifications: I changed nothing about this pattern. Given my track record with stupid knitting mistakes lately, that’s probably a good thing. Although now that I’ve done it, I should say that I think casting on in moss stitch and picking up the picot edge later seems a bit silly.

(Amelia did the sensible thing and just used a picot cast-on, and it looks great.)

The sweater has the usual collection of sweet-but-not-saccharine Debbie Bliss details, including the picot, the moss stitch, and the adorable little ribbon.

I made the coat for our babysitter’s daughter, but we haven’t seen her since the birth so I guess there’s a chance it will be gifted to the next person around me to have a girl! Jacob will admit that it’s cute, although he’s very excited to be getting a brother this summer.

Next up: A proper baby boy knit!

Though the blog posting is very late, my March installment of the year of socks was done pretty much on time.

Pattern: Anastasia socks, from the incomparable MintyFresh

Yarn: Sunshine Soft Sock Yarn, in colorway “Emerald Isle”

Time Elapsed: A couple of weeks, including a major rip-out. Pregnancy brain strikes–these are actually very quick.

Notes/Modifications: Given the colorway of these socks, and the fact that I started them at an Irish pub, I have been calling them my St. Patrick’s Day socks. It’s fitting, don’t you think?

About the only major modification I made to the pattern was to use Wendy’s fantastic toe-up gusset pattern for the heel.

I suspect I could have gotten away with doing even more increases, but these are SO comfortable, and my ankles are so swollen already, I can’t be too sure. Wendy’s pattern is saving toe-up socks for me–only with the comparison did I realize how poorly short-row heels fit my foot.

I also added a few stitches to the pattern, going to 66 from 60 since I have a wide foot. This was trivial to do–I just added a stitch or two between the spiraled eyelets. And that’s it for modifications. The pattern is just fantastic–I love the way the eyelets add interest without interfering with the yarn’s variegation. I’m likely to use it again.

The yarn is also gorgeous and soft, and beautifully dyed. Dani is really a wonder woman, because I’m about the hardest possible person to please in terms of variegation. But this yarn was perfect: evenly blended color that was so resistant to pooling I could even get through the gussets without splotches. The only thing I’d do differently next time is knit the yarn on size 0 needles instead of size 1, but your mileage may vary since I like a really firm fabric for my socks. (I find that the firmer the fabric, the longer the sock life.)

There were some predictable troubles with carrying out our photo shoot:

Jacob likes to play around with all of my socks, but these seem to be a particular favorite. Probably because they’re softer than clouds made of concentrated kitten fluff? (Seriously, I can’t think of any sock yarn I’ve used that feels more wonderful against my feet. I’ll let you know how it wears, as time goes on.)

There were also a bevy of unpredicted troubles with the photo shoot. Well, one problem, really, manifested in several different ways.

I wonder how long it will be before I need to enlist assistance?