Knotty Mom

I wrote three new patterns!  They’re all on Ravelry (or will be, shortly after this is published).  

Basic Baby Tee

Basic Popover Skirt

Another UFO roundup post.  There have been some changes. 

First, though, the FO.  Cute little baby soaker.  Lucky for me this was not a project intended for the baby I miscarried.  I started it quite some time ago.  I wanted to make baby bloomers, basically and get a free pattern onto Ravelry because there are several that are paid and this is actually a really fucking simple pattern to make.  And that pattern is here.

I kinda like that photo, too.  Almost hides my continuing inconsistencies with tension.  Almost.  It could be slight color differences in the yarn right?

Don’t answer that!

Also, an update on that orange skirt.  Esther found it in a bag under some other yarn.  Who’da thunk it.  Anyway, it’s uglier than I remembered so it is frogged and dead and gone.

A similar fate met the Garter Pelerine.  Turns out I’d barely gotten four inches done in it  I just do not think it is a shape that will work with my shape.  And so, frogged.

Meanwhile, I remembered something I was making--a square shawl/baby blanket from Knitter’s Almanac and probably 10 other EZ books.  It wasn’t in my Ravelry projects, which is weird because it was, so I guess at some point I’d decided to frog it?  I’m giving it another run, though.  Mostly to pretend I don’t need to finish that afghan I’m crocheting.

New list!

Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)

Little White Dress #3

Squares & Rectangles afghan

Lanesplitter Skirt

Butterfly Shawl

Thrift Skirt frogged, dammit

Garter Pelerine frogged, because fuck that

Finally, another pattern!  I had almost forgotten I could do this.

OK, not really.  In reality I’ve felt terribly guilty for not writing anything up in forever.

This pattern was born partly out of a niggling desire to make a certain bubbly baby outfit on Ravelry paired with an utter unwillingness to pay $10 for a single pattern.  

Anyway.  I know how much people hate scrolling to get to recipes, so I won’t bore you much more.  My usual caveat applies here--I’m not a great knitter, so there’s always the chance I borked something up.  If you notice any glaring problems, message me on Ravelry, not here.

Picture!

Materials:

3.25 mm 16″ circular needle 

3.75 mm 16″ or 24″ circular needle

DPNs for one of those sizes; it doesn’t really matter which (for the ribbing on the cuffs)

100% wool yarn, worsted weight (I used Fisherman’s Wool from Lion Brand); if you don’t plan to use this as a soaker, material isn’t important, just weight, and this wool is a pretty light worsted

The usual array of stitch markers, yarn needle, etc  I use yarn to hold big piles of stitches, which you’re going to need to do at the legs.

Gauge: 5 sts/in on the bigger needles, stockinette in the round, but as Elizabeth Zimmermann says all babies are differently sized and this is aimed at a wide age range.

Size: up to 6 months at least, but keep in mind it’s going to be adorably oversized on a newborn  The waist is 16″ and so is the rise (when measured as given in pattern).  The idea behind such a large bit of ribbing at the start is for you to be able to fold it down.

Directions: (finally, right?!)

Cast on 80 stitches with smaller needles and work 10 rounds in knit 2/purl 2 ribbing.  

Eyelet round: Knit two, yarn over, purl two together around.

Rib 10 more rounds the same as before.

Now.  You can change this part up stupid easy.  You can leave out the eyelet round.  You can only knit 10 rounds total, or five.  You can do a different pattern in your ribbing, like knit 3, purl 1.

Change here to the larger needles.  Knit one round even.  

Increase round: knit one, knit front & back around.  (Or knit 2, make 1.  Whatever.  You’re just turning every two stitches into three.)  You should have 120 stitches at the end.

Continue on in dogged stockinette (I watched so much Netflix while knitting this) until your soaker measures 8″ from the eyelet round if you did the full 20 round ribbing.  If you did shorter ribbing, measure from the bottom of it.

Next, divide for the legs as such: 5 stitches on some sort of holder.  55 stitches on a long length of yarn, 5 stitches on another holder, the last 55 arrayed on DPNs (I sorted them on four needles with 15 on two and 10 on two).

The 5 stitch bundles are your crotch stitches.  Either Kitchener these together or simply work a 3-needle bind-off.  Your baby won’t care.  You can do it now or wait until the end, as I did.

Each cuff is done the same, like so, using the smaller DPNs if you’ve chosen to:

Decrease round: knit three stitches, reduce the next two however you please (knit 2 together, ssk, etc).  The goal is to end up with 44 stitches.

For the next 10 rounds, you will rib whatever suits you.  I used knit 3, purl 1 because for me it turns out about ten times cuter than the more usual k2, p2 ribbing.  At the end, bind-off using something super stretchy--either Elizabeth Zimmermann’s sewn bind-off (what you see here) or Jen’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off or some other thing I’m not aware of.  You can also, obviously, shorten the ribbing here to just five or 8 rounds.

So best laid plans and all that.  I was going to finish Thrift next, but two things happened: one, I discovered that I did not have enough old skeins of the pumpkin yarn to finish it, and the newer skeins were a completely different shade of orange (like, I know dye lots are a thing but the old ones were actually pumpkiny and the new ones are dan near safety orange) and two--and this is the one that really truly killed it--the two panels that I had completed have completely fucking disappeared.  I was going to finish it off and call it a doll blanket, but I can’t do even that.  I have no idea what happened to the bit I had  It was right beside my chair, but it’s not and I hunted and hunted and it’s just gone.

So I’m going to have to cross it off the list for a weird reason.  It’s gone and not coming bck.  I did frog the partially-made third panel that was all I found, so I am pretty comfortable counting it as a frogged project, but still.  That’s some weird shit, even for me.

Which brings me, belatedly, to the actual subject of this photoset--I really did finally actually make myself a skirt--an all garter version of Lanesplitter.  It’s a seven-year-old pattern with 3389 projects on Ravelry.  Really popular, in other words--it dates back to Knitty’s heyday.  And it’s a good pattern, though of course being me I had to dick around with it some make it my own.  In short, I did the whole thing in garter stitch and changed the waistband.  And I already want to make like ten more.

Best of all?  Total material cost for this skirt was $10.  Usually when you make your own anything, it turns out to be a lot more expensive than just buying one (this is true for sewn things too, by the way, not just knotted), but this is comparable to just going to the store and buying a skirt.  And, frankly, it’s a lot cuter than anything commercially available, so I don’t even care about the cost in time.

Current UFO list:

Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)

Little White Dress #3

Squares & Rectangles afghan

Lanesplitter Skirt

Butterfly Shawl

Thrift Skirt frogged, dammit

Garter Pelerine

This is Butterfly, my version of Lepidoptera.  Really a neat idea for a pattern; on the surface it’s a simple triangle shawl, but you switch between solid and openwork rows based on the roll of a D6.  Not many changes here; the most significant is a different trim, single crochet with a picot every fifth stitch.

The yarn is Bernat Pop!, which is mostly a nice yarn, but these skeins had several issues--I had to cut out knots and one super-frayed spot, and there was a pretty long run of yarn that was coming unplied.  Given that the entire reason for choosing a long color run yarn like this is to avoid having to weave in ends, I’m really displeased with having to cut it and weave in ends.

But it’s another thing off the UFO list.  Here’s the updated list:

Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)

Little White Dress #3

Squares & Rectangles afghan

Lanesplitter Skirt

Butterfly Shawl

Thrift Skirt

Garter Pelerine

First FO from my UFO Roundup.  Finished day before yesterday; I wanted to knock something out quickly.

Now, I never thought much of this pattern when I first came across it and tried it.  It’s poorly-written and honestly looks like one of those baby patterns that’s never been tested on a real baby, but for some reason I made it three years ago or so and realized year-before-last that the pattern was gone from the Internet and this made me really want to make it.  Eventually someone on Ravelry linked the pattern page via the Wayback Machine and I decided to go ahead and make it again.

And I still don’t really like it.  Except for the trim  The trim is awesome.

UFO list:

Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)

Little White Dress #3

Squares & Rectangles afghan

Lanesplitter Skirt

Butterfly Shawl

Thrift Skirt

This is nearly all I use this Tumblr for anymore, sadly.  I need to queue up some photos of previous projects or something.

Anyway, the dirty for this year:

Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)

Little White Dress #3

Squares & Rectangles afghan

Lanesplitter Skirt

Butterfly Shawl

Thrift Skirt

Garter Pelerine

Not very much stuff this year, but most projects are pretty large.  I think I’m going to tackle the baby dress and the shawl first and then go from there.

I wanted a quick project last weekend and wasted my time with a terribly written pattern (I mean, the fucking thing kept saying “next” when it meant “same”) for too long.  Then I decided to break out one of my real pattern books and adapt a mandala pattern into a mandala vest.

I am DONE!

I am tempted to leave it at that, but damn.  It has just not been my year for my UFO roundup.

First, see those paws?  How they’re tan?  The accent color was supposed to be a small ball of carefully-hoarded blue dominant variegated yarn.  And then my little ball disappeared, because putting it in one certain place and not touching it only works when you live absolutely alone.

So I said to myself “Well, I don’t want to remake that leg.  So I’ll just call it an accent and carry on.”  Damn, I’m brilliant.

But this fucking mouse problem we’ve got (which I’m guessing is because they’re developing what used to be the back 40 and the rodents have nowhere to go now) struck again and the leg got chewed through.  So I had to remake it.

And then, I ran out of yarn.  The pattern says 7oz, I had 7 oz.  Still ran out halfway through the body.  No problem, I’ll just swing by the Walmart where I bought the last skein and pick up another one.  The awesome thing about Red Heart Super Saver is that they don’t have dye lots, so they always match.  (The vintage RHSS does have dye lots.)  

Only, there was no fucking cafe latte yarn.  I dug.

Then, a flash of brilliance: there was an end cap with some Jumbo (i.e., twice the size, twice the price) skeins.  I hadn’t seen any of the color I needed when there two days earlier, but you learn things are worth a shot.  And this time, it paid off.  (We’ll just leave off the whole part about how I thought it was a good idea to go out in 48˚ weather in a sweater and then the bus was late both there and back.)

So, this is a lesson in perseverance!  After all the shit I went through with the other UFOs, I was damned if I would let this one get away from me.

Penultimate FO.  A knitted Waldorf doll for Duncan.  It was supposed to be a Christmas present, but now it’s a birthday present.  This is one of my favorite projects; it’s the Wee Folk Art Baby Doll in the Round wearing an EPS Princess Dress.  There are plenty of pattern notes about the mods I made for each pattern on the Ravelry project pages (which I’m not linking ‘cause you can get to them easy enough from the pattern pages on Rav).

Current UFO list:

Esther’s afghan

wool longies for Duncan

preemie dresses to donate

asymmetrical shawl

Duncan’s teddy bear

Duncan’s baby doll

soaker for Duncan

hat for me

BSJ for Doug

Tunisian crochet diaper for Duncan

This has been a most frustrating year, UFO Roundup wise.  Not just the worse-than-thought mouse problem, but UFOs disappearing, and then some projects just not turning out the way I thought.

Take this one, for example.  It’s a freehand soaker based off a vintage pattern.  I worked it flat, because garter stitch is easier that way and I’d have to separate for the leg holes anyway.  And it looked awesome before I seamed it up and still doesn’t look too bad flat on the bed.  But it fits weirdly when it’s on the baby.

(Also, sorry for the terrible picture.  I was going to retake it this morning, but the problem with functional projects is sometimes you put them on the baby and he takes a liquid shit and then you can’t get a good picture until you wash.)

Also, this is my current list o’ UFOs:

Esther’s afghan

wool longies for Duncan

preemie dresses to donate

asymmetrical shawl

Duncan’s teddy bear

Duncan’s baby doll

soaker for Duncan

hat for me

BSJ for Doug

Tunisian crochet diaper for Duncan

Now, that looks pretty good, except for the fact that there aren’t pictures on here for a lot of things.  And that’s because I haven’t been able to complete them.  I did find the partially-finished BSJ, but the yarn--which was all attached to the project since I was carrying the yarn up the side--had somehow disappeared.  The Tunisian diaper was in one of two storage tubs, but now it’s gone.  I found the other ball of yarn, but it’s not enough for that project.  

The UFOs so far have been easy to finish because they’re already mostly done. This dress, for example, is the last of the charity dresses I’d intended to make, and I was already a few rows into the skirt.  I very nearly had it done yesterday, but Sonny woke up when I was on the last five stitches or so that I needed to put the trim in (so, about 20 stitches left to make), and it was nearly midnight by then, so I put it aside until half an hour or so ago, when I finished it up while watching old Top Gear episodes on Amazon Prime.

Then I grabbed the shawl I was going to finish...and found out that the mice had gotten to it, too.  Yeah, we’ve got a mouse problem.  I’m about to pour poison into their fucking holes, because it’s scorched earth time.  Anyway, I had to toss that shawl (and the needles it was on!), but I will definitely remake it in the future because it’s a lovely pattern.

I’m going to do the Tunisian diaper next, because it’s actually an older project than the toys and the soaker, and I’m just going to pray that I have my notes somewhere because otherwise I am borked and will have to frog that one too, which I am not looking forward to.

So this is how the list now looks:

Esther’s afghan

wool longies for Duncan

preemie dresses to donate

asymmetrical shawl

Duncan’s teddy bear

Duncan’s baby doll

soaker for Duncan

hat for me

BSJ for Doug

These were supposed to be pants, but a mouse got into the yarn and chewed up most of the green yarn.  So they morphed into a soaker that is somehow long enough on his legs to count as shorties.  

No pattern used for these.

Also, I found a UFO I forgot about, so this is the current list:

Esther’s afghan

wool longies for Duncan

preemie dresses to donate

asymmetrical shawl

Duncan’s teddy bear

Duncan’s baby doll

soaker for Duncan

hat for me

BSJ for Doug

First UFO completed!  Afghan-sized afghan for Esther.  Perhaps weirdly (though not, if you’ve read my posts on baby blankets), I’ve never made a full-sized afghan before.  I started one back in 2001 or 2002 for my ex-husband and finally shrugged, declared it done enough, and gave hit to my second husband...in 2009 (yes, he knows its origin).

I’ve promised all three older kids their own afghan, and Doug’s getting one as well, though his is probably not going to be a full-sized one.  But then again, it might, because damned if I want to have to make him a full-sized one when he moves to his own full-sized bed.

Projects now:

Esther’s afghan

wool longies for Duncan

preemie dresses to donate

asymmetrical shawl

Duncan’s teddy bear

Duncan’s baby doll

soaker for Duncan

hat for me