awayuq

in a rush.

As usual I have a zillion and one pages to read before I sleep, but I wanted to post a picture of the finished baby sweater. Finally, a completed baby object! Well, except for buttons--I must not be too hasty. I have the buttons though, that's a start. At least I have something to offer the new arrival, even if it turns out to be a "he" and he never wears it. I think it is too big for a newborn.

Did I mention I have a hangup about baby things? Can't figure it out. On this one calculating the decrease spacing gave me no end of trouble. I'm supposed to be good with numbers! Every decrease row (between the body and yoke, for example) I had to rip at least three times. The underarm increases are also slightly odd--later I realized that I could have had a stripe of plain reverse stockinette going all the way up, I don't know why I didn't do it that way. The yoke itself was bothersome, first because the underarm cast off is so small that putting the whole thing on circs strained the edges of the pieces and it was tight and fiddly to work. More critically, I didn't have a picture of the sweater to hand when I got there and I started doing the yoke in stockinette until warning bells flashed when the directions said to decrease every four rows. Had to rip that back too. There's more ripping represented in this little jacket than in just about any other thing I've knit.

I'm trying not to get too metaphorical (or do I mean metaphysical?) about this. I can think of many subconscious reasons why I'd have trouble completing baby things, but maybe I simply had a rough couple of weeks and was preoccupied. Does anyone else out there have a certain category of item that's particularly hard to deal with? Not because of technique or difficulty, but just because, somehow... know what I mean?

what are the odds?

A huge piece of news that hasn't yet been announced here: I'm going to be an aunt! Very soon, in fact. Beginning of April. When I first heard the news back in the autumn, I was of course filled with visions of all the perfect baby sweaters, caps, booties, quilts and toys I would lavish on the youngster. (Sex still unknown). To date, baby projects completed: 0.

To be sure, other stuff has been going on. Sometimes I wonder how I have time to breathe much less eat. And I have a habit of not following through on good baby intentions. I can't tell you how many friends and acquaintances I have meant to make baby things for. In my life thus far, I have not completed a single baby anything. Even though I seem to be able to eventually complete adult-sized sweaters, shawls, and clothing, baby stuff throws me for a loop.

To give myself some credit, I have started plenty of things for this niece or nephew to be. I have begun Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby jacket from "A Knitter's Almanac" at least three times, with various yarns. I tried a free baby jacket pattern from Garnstudio with some blue alpaca I had lying around. I knit it during classes and when I finally got around to measuring it it was several inches too long and rather than rip out and pick up a zillion tiny stitches (it was knit on size 0 needles) I frogged the whole thing.

But now I am getting seriously down to the wire. Friends may forgive me--or not--for neglecting a handmade baby gift. They may consider my limited time and non-existent finances and shrug it off. But I only have one brother. So I'm trying again. I bought new yarn especially for baby endeavors. I chose another pattern from Garnstudio (number 13-2, isn't it cute?). I dug out some needles in an appropriate size and cast on. The jacket bottom is moving along nicely. Reading ahead to the sleeves, they are knit circularly up to the armholes and then the whole thing is joined together. Very sensible in my opinion. Obviously, I need a set of bamboo dpns in size 3, to match the circular bamboo #3 needle on which I'm knitting the jacket body. No problem. I go to my needle keeper bag and look in the little pocket which should have my set of #3 dpns. Not there. Ok, so they got stuck in some other pocket. With the help of a needle gauge, I check various sets of unlabelled dpns that look 3-ish. Nope. Plenty of size twos and ones, plenty of size 4s, no threes. They must have gotten stuck in some other forgotten project. I go back to the studio and start rummaging through drawers of yarn....

An hour later, no size three dpns have surfaced. ??? How long have I been knitting? Is it really possible that I don't own a set of size 3 dpns? How can this be? Where the **** are the number threes?

LYS to the rescue. And would you believe, I got the last set of bamboo dpns in this size. Not even my favorite brand at that. Oh well. Thank goodness I got there in time.

The good news is, I found an unabridged audio version of one of the books I have to read this week. Assigned book in audio form = many hours of listening time = many hours of knitting time. Multitasking rocks! And, if it's sunny in the morning, I might even have progress pictures to share.