Acorn Hat . . . FOR MY NIECE (!!!)

I have a niece! Katherine Anne (Katie), born 10/10. Is that a great birthday or what? Pretty hard for friends and family to forget. ;) I'm thrilled beyond measure. I would've been just as happy with a nephew too, but there was a tiny voice inside me saying I hope it's a girl.

My brother surprised me last week. I told him the cable baby hat was in the mail and he asked, "Didn't you say you were going to make a hat that looks like an acorn?" How did he remember that? It was around 6 months ago that I told him about the acorn pattern and I thought it went in one ear and out the other (you know how non-knitters tend to drift off if you talk about knitting stuff). Apparently he was looking forward to it! So I cast on for the adorable hat. I told him it would be a little big right now but it'll fit eventually. The smallest pattern size is 19" and I adjusted the gauge so it'd be a little smaller, but I didn't want it newborn size (so it'd fit longer).



The rolled brim uses 4 strands of fingering weight yarn (or two strands worsted), the rest of the hat uses 2 strands (or one strand worsted).


yarn: Patons Kroy sock yarn


Here is Snoopy's little sister Belle in Katie's blue hooded sweater (it zips down the back). I can't wait to see her in it:


yarn: Plymouth Encore

new buttons, why needle size matters, and new soles

The perfect buttons for Baby K's green and blue sweater were found at Pacific Fabrics. I'm not sure if it's obvious in the photos but the buttons and green yarn are the exact same color, it's like they were dyed to match. (I can't get the colors in this sweater to look accurate in photos, not even in natural sunlight -- argh.)

It's hard to get across how cute this is without including something to indicate its size. I'm not at all baby crazy but little baby clothes are so sweet, there's something about them that makes me go awwwww.

I've already posted photos of the two pairs of booties I made for Baby K but this time they're shown together and the soles are revealed. The following is a photo I'll show beginners when I'm teaching them about gauge. The bootie on the left was knit with size 0 needles, the bootie on the right used size 1 needles. Both were made with fingering weight yarn following the same pattern (but I made the green bootie's leg twice as long so it'd fold over).


Left: about 3.75" long (size 0 needles)
Right: about 4.25" long (size 1 needles)

click here for larger image

This is the improved sole, I took it from the Fiber Trends Felted Clogs pattern. When I changed the pattern a few years ago it occured to me that I needed a sole with 84 sts and the women's medium sole ends with 85 sts, so I simply ignored a M1 in the 6th row. If you've ever made a clog from the FT pattern you'll also be amused that it can be used for something so tiny -- those clogs before felting (knit on size 13 needles using bulky weight yarn) look like giant floppy clown shoes.

Speaking of the FT clogs/slippers, I just finished another pair and I hope to have them in the washer this afternoon. Pictures of before and after once they're dry. Ha, I'll put a bootie in the before picture to illustrate how goofy it looks.

Newborn Hat for Baby K

This hat for Baby K (my niece or nephew due in 2.5 weeks!) looks like it was meant to match the socks in my last post, but the cable and yarn are both different. I used the blue leftover yarn from the Ullared hat I made in March.

Yarn: Brown Sheep Naturespun Sport - 100% wool (color: Bit of Blue)
Pattern: from the book Knitting for Baby by Melanie Falick and Kristin Nicholas

YO Cable Socks

socks for grandma

pattern: based on the YO cables from Sensational Knitted Socks (by Charlene Schurch)

yarn: Cascade Fixation (98.3% cotton / 1.7% elastic)




I wasn't crazy about the yarn at first -- it's a little too nubbly for my tastes -- but it sure makes a comfortable stretchy sock. Even better, the elastic allows me to knit for hours without pain. Knitting with other cotton yarns makes my hands ache.

I want to mail these off tomorrow (grandma's birthday was last month) so I steam blocked them instead of doing my usual wet block. First I made a blocker using a wire hanger, which makes a lot more sense than dropping $25 plus s&h on commercial blockers. I found easy instructions here (not my page). Blockers aren't really necessary though, I've always found that gently patting the fabric into shape works too.

Baby items and my publishing debut

I thought this baby sweater would be done by now, the last stitch was knit a few weeks ago, but it's still waiting on a zipper. That'll have to be ordered online, I went to four fabric stores and nobody had a separating zipper in the right color.

The front:


I love the pointy elf hood

The back:



It's pinned together where the zipper will go. I'll probably seam the hood and stop the zipper at the neck so the baby won't have his/her head pressed against a hard zipper. Of course the colors look much better in person (more jewel like and vibrant), my digital camera kungfu is not the best.

Some knitters praise Plymouth Encore over Lion Brand Wool-Ease (both are 25% wool, 75% acrylic and OK to machine wash/dry) but they don't feel all that different to me. It still feels like knitting with acrylic, though not really gross acrylic. Encore is available in better colors, which is a definite plus, so for that alone I'd be more likely to use Encore again -- if I could buy it in local yarn shops. Maybe Encore wears and washes better than Wool-Ease. I'd much rather use a nice superwash wool but this Encore was so cheap, the jewel blue color is fantastic, and it'll survive multiple trips through the dryer.

Pattern is free, located here: http://knitting.about.com/library/blbabyswe4.htm
I don't recall finding any errors in the pattern, it's pretty straight-forward.

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Right now I'm working on a bootie using leftover Lorna's Laces sock yarn, here's the first one in this pair:



I'm knitting these on size 0 needles so they're smaller than the size 1 booties posted last month. The leg is also a lot longer (40 rounds) so they can be folded over or left up to keep the leg warm.

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I've been published! Apparently they'll give a book deal to anyone nowadays. I'm kidding, I didn't write a book, but my website made it into one. Some time ago Judy Brown asked permission to include my website address in her book so I said sure and promptly forgot about it. As a generous thank you (which I wasn't at all expecting) she sent the final product, a knitting journal titled Knitting Notes.



One thing I really like is the spiral binding, which makes it easy to cleanly tear out a ruined journal page. The full page size is an advantage over the smaller knitting journals I've seen in book stores. I also like the Canadian flavor, because I have a crush on Canada.

A knitting journal isn't the sort of thing I'd buy myself (I'd be more inclined to make one, I'm cheap) but now that one is in my hands I can see myself using it. I'm trying to decide if I want to start the journal with my current projects or backtrack by entering in data for projects completed years ago. It's nice to have that info in my blog but I can see the advantages of keeping it all in a paper journal as well.

Something Judy wrote struck a chord: "Use [the journal] well and it will be a treasured gift to hand down." She's right, I wish my grandma had kept a knitting/crochet journal, I would've dearly loved to look through it every so often. I have her crochet hooks and knitting needles, but I don't know anything about what she made with them.

St. Paul MN yarn shops

I was in St. Paul, Minnesota last month and visited three yarn shops: Three Kittens, The Yarnery, and Borealis Yarns.

1) Three Kittens Yarn Shoppe has a lot to offer the serious knitter (oodles of yarn crammed into every available space, large selection of buttons) but they had a temporary? odor problem. I'm not a delicate flower about odors so it had to be pretty bad if it chased me out of the store early. Otherwise I could've easily spent an entire day looking at all the yarn -- and boy do they have plenty of yarn -- and daydreaming. Don't pass up an opportunity to visit this shop if you're in the Twin Cities. (I'm assuming the problem is temporary because nobody else has mentioned it in their online reviews.)

2) The Yarnery is smaller but easy to love, they were having a 20% off everything sale! I left with a few skeins of super-cheap Plymouth Encore DK to make a zip-up-the-back hoodie for my brother's baby. (Photo coming soon, I just need to block it and sew in the zipper.) The shop interior is clean and organized, which isn't what I expected from a yarn shop that's been in business for 30+ years -- you know how cluttered those can be (see Three Kittens). I'm assuming they moved or remodelled in the recent past because really, the shop looks like a new yarn shop located in an old house. My only complaint, and it's not a deal-breaker, is the pattern closet. They have about two-three dozen pattern binders, which is a lot more than the average shop, but they're stored in a tiny closet. This makes it hard for more than one person to browse the patterns at a time. Ideally people would grab the binder they want and look through it at the nearby table to free up closet space but some people are oblivious to other shoppers breathing down their necks.

3) Borealis Yarns was the third and final shop we visited. By then my desire to look at yarn I can't afford had been sated (and I was eager to see my brother) so we breezed in and out and didn't give it a fair shake. They had the cutest Fiber Trends hedgehogs on display, which is the best use of novelty yarn I've seen. I dare you to click on that link to see just how cute. I wouldn't mind going back to Borealis but it'll be the first stop so I'm not yarned out by the time I get there.