Flint Knits

With apologies to my niece Claire, who is all that is perfect and joyful and full of goodness and light. And who, judging by this picture, has a healthy mistrust of acrylic fibers.

Enough! Enough with the babymaking, I say!

It must be a late twenties thing, because I swear to blog that all the straight ladies I know who didn’t get knocked up as teenagers (and even some of them who did) have had babies in the last 3 years. But now, for the first time in what seems like forever, I appear to have a brief and shining window of time where none of my friends is pregnant. And while I love my friends dearly, I will not miss the long conversations about hemorrhoids, or choosing the right doula, or the embarrassment of inconvenient breast leakage.

I have to admit, though, that I will miss knitting teeny tiny gifts for teeny tiny newborns. They’re so cute, and so satisfying, and so fast!

And so I give you the last of them. The last of the wee handmade infant duds.

pattern: Offset Wraplan, by Sara Morris [pdf]
yarn: Knitpicks Shine Sport, in “grass”
needles: US 3 and 5
[raveled]

pattern: none, just a hat and some tube socks with leaves attached.
(If folks want a tutorial, I’ll post one–let me know)
yarn: Knitpicks Shine Sport, in “leaf”
needles: US 4
[raveled]

And that’s it! The end of the teeny tiny knits for the foreseeable future.

But stay tuned for totally adorable toddler clothes, obvs. And I think Claire might need a collection of knitted cephalopods…

The Failure: I didn’t win that contest. I didn’t even make it into the semi-finals! Since I had waaaay more votes than everyone else (thanks, guys!), I can only assume this is because I didn’t follow the rules (big surprise). When one of the people organizing the contest sent me a Flickr message inviting me to submit my picture, I just did it. What I did not do was bother to read the terms of the contest, which apparently include a rule declaring that photos must be head-to-toe. Fail!

On a happier note, Laurynn (who just knit a thong, by the way) is the lucky winner of a $20 woolgirl.com gift certificate. Woo hoo!

The Success: The stripey/pooley Charade sock? Turned out gorgeous.

Just a tiny bit of pooling around the instep, which I think I can live with. In fact, I was so thrilled by how lovely Sandra’s pattern is in variegated yarn that, instead of knitting the second sock, I immediately cast on for another pair in a different variegated colorway.

The Robot: My niece Claire had her first birthday this week, and she obviously needed a wildly inappropriate gift from Cool Aunt Pam.

pattern: Bender Bending Rodriguez, by Soph Viklund
yarn: Plymouth Dreambaby DK and Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Baby 
ravelry link (includes list of my mods to the original pattern)

If you aren’t familiar with Futurama, Bender is a foul-mouthed, cigar-smoking, poker-playing robot who bends metal and is fueled entirely by booze.

Perfect for an infant, no?

Fortunately, Claire’s parents are Futurama fans, and were thus superjazzed about the gift,

and her grandparents don’t watch the show, so they just saw a cute robot toy,

and Claire herself discovered immediately how flingable wee Bender is, with those long, grippable arms and legs.

So everyone wins. Happy Birthday, Claire!

Wow, has it really been a month since my last post? Oh, but the semester! It is almost over! I’m into the home stretch now, with just a stack of exams to grade and some final math to do.

And even though I’ve been feeling like the semester wasn’t very productive in the academic/professional sense, when I think about all I did, it’s kind of exciting: teach two new classes; finish and submit an article for publication; re-construct a draft of one of the lost chapters of my dissertation; go to two conferences… I am quite not as lazy as I thought! Or at least, not as unproductive.

But now there are 857 (857!) unread blog posts in my Bloglines. I love you all, but I’m taking three precious words of advice from Laura, who heard them once from Rachel: “Mark. All. Read.”

Done.

And moving on. As soon as you all gave your input about the best baby knits (thanks again!), I started another Baby Surprise Jacket.

The Twisted yarn is fantastic to work with. Meg hand-dyes it here in Michigan, and there’s always a massive pile of it at Threadbear Fiber Arts in Lansing (seriously. massive. I call it Twisted Mountain). It’s one of my favorite indie self-stripers, because she does several different styles of striping/fading, and because it comes in heavier weights, along with the sock yarn.

(Also, I think she just updated her shop. So, go!)

I alternated between the self-striper and a solid brown merino, then did the trim and edges in brown. If it’s possible, I might be even happier with this BSJ than I was with my last one.

But I’ve also bought another supply of Hello Yarn Fat Sock, so a third is definitely on the way.

p.s. these photos were taken in November, after the first snow of the year. There’s not a trace of any of this greenery (or ground) left. Happy Winter to those of you in my part of the world!

Some dear friends are expecting a baby. Okay, LOTS of dear friends are expecting babies right now — at least six people I know are pregnant or have recently given birth.

Luckily most baby knits are insanely fast.

Isaiah, who was born last week, got a pair of wee socks, and has a Baby Surprise Jacket on the way.

For Lucy, who’s expected to arrive in January (observers unanimously agree, however, that Lucy’s mother is so enormously pregnant already that she won’t make it through the month of December), I used the bonnet pattern from Hello Yarn.

After picking up 12 stitches for the ears/eyes, knit one round.
Round 2: K1, M1, K4, M1, K1
Round 3: Knit
Round 4: SSK, K4, K2tog
Round 5: SSK, K2, K2tog
Round 6: arrange remaining 8 stitches on two needles (4 on each)
Graft stitches using kitchener stitch.

Using black yarn, single crochet into knit stitches in a circular pattern.
With tapestry needle, white yarn, and chain-stitch, embroider a circle around the black.

So my question for all of you is this: What are your favorite baby knits?

(Yes, Nova, I know what yours are!)

Keep in mind that my priorities here are:

1. Speed: there’s a lot of gifts to be knit, so I’m not interested in fingering-weight colorwork jumpers here. Quickness is key.

2. Simplicity: easy on and off — most of these folks are first-time parents, and have too much on their minds to fiddle with dozens of wee buttons and bows.
3. Functionality: I want to give gifts that will actually get some use.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions and insights!

You probably already know that Ashley is totally awesome, and superbly talented, right? But have you seen her fabulous patchwork scarves? Because they’re, well, fabulous.

She and I spent Sunday afternoon together, in matching Rowanspun sweaters, and did some serious burrito eating (Chipotle) and yarn shopping (Threadbear). And she gave me one of her brilliant new scarves. I might be in love.

Check out her post, because she took all the sweet photos, and both her camera and her prose are vastly superior to mine.

Threadbear has a great stock of Dream in Color worsted weight right now, and just happened to have the color I needed to finish my Elizabeth Zimmermann baby sweater. So I spent my Sunday night not preparing to teach on Monday, but watching two new classics of American Cinema (Slingblade and Ghostbusters II), and finishing up the sweater.

pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann, baby sweater on two needles, from The Knitter’s Almanac

yarn: Dream in Color worsted, in Cool Fire
needles: US7 Addi Turbos

Then I cranked out a pair of two-hour booties. I don’t much like the look of worsted weight booties, but jeez, they’re fast.

pattern: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, from Lion Brand.
[PDF from Dreamweaver Yarns]

Both the sweater and the booties are for my wee, adorable niece Claire who, as a twenty-first century baby, has her own blog.

They’re shown here on a table (actually one of a set of 5 TV trays) that my late grandmother Pamela Wynne (yep, I’m her namesake) made 30 years ago.

She was a photographer in the UK during WWII, and was one of the most talented artists I’ve ever known. She did everything — painting, sewing, knitting, sculpture, ceramics, home renovation, furniture building, dollmaking — and she did it well.

She was always game for any new thing (this led to some unfortunate periods in the 1980s that included plastic canvas needlepoint and puffy paint art), and she taught my mother and me everything we know about crafting.

This sweater is totally my grandma’s style — exactly the kind of thing she would have made, were she still around, for her great-grandaughter (though she would have used pale pink yarn and much frillier buttons, and probably added some matching satin ribbon).

Thanks for teaching me how to make stuff, Grandma. My life is much better for it.