FO: Alpaca baby raglan cardi

On Dec 4th I said "I'm in the process of finishing a cardi for Jens (...). I hope to have photos of it tomorrow." Haha, the best laid plans and famous last words and so on - it took me another 20 days to finish that little cardi, mainly because I hated the finishing. I used Nøstebarns basic raglan baby cardi as a guide so to speak, as discussed before, which featured an unusual way to make the button bands. You basically ignored them until you had finished the rest of the cardi, and then you had to pick up ten stitches at the bottom edge and knit the buttons bands which you then had to sew on - I didn't like this method, it was very fidgety, and why sew when you can knit????, and I don't understand what makes it more useful that just knitting your button bands as you go along.

I used the same lovely alpaca for this cardi, as I used for his sideways striped cardi, and although it worked very well for that pattern, it wasn't the best choice for this cardi. Firstly because it's a very skinny yarn, and takes forever(an entire season to be precise!) to knit up in stockinette. Secondly, alpaca isn't a very bouncy yarn, and the finished cardi doesn't seem very stretchy or flexible - unlike the garter stitch one - so I guess garter stitch makes a more stretchy fabric?

I love the heathered color though, and I don't think I could have found a similar colorway in a more traditional baby wool. And I just LOVE the manly little leather buttons with this color and style cardi - doesn't he look just like a little man wearing it?!

Spec

Pattern: Nøstebarn stripete raglanjakke

Yarn: Garnstudio/Drops Alpaca

Started: 7th Oct 2011

Finished: 24th December 2011

baby knitting

I'm in the process of finishing a cardi for Jens, which is a good thing, as he is outgrowing his Dale cardi. I hope to have photos of it tomorrow. n the meantime I'm posting some photos of him wearing the Dale romper that goes with that cardi. Except it seems the cardi and the romper are different sizes..Anyhow, I figure he needs to wear this romper everyday to make up for how boring it was to knit!!

etsy friday: toys

With a new baby comes new etsy categories to explore! I have bought some gorgeous play silks from BeneathTheRowanTree, and a taggie from Razzberrygiggles. The taggie is obviously a baby toy, but the play silks are great for both the baby and the 8-year old, so it's their first shared toy. Nene had a play silk already, but it was practically disintegrating, so I decided we needed a new one. Except I couldn't stop at one when I saw the gorgeous hand painted ones offered at BeneathTheRowanTree! I bought a set of three, one mossy green, one aqua-greenish and one custom dyed red, inspired by their idea of an elements trio, but I made my own collection chosen from their multicolored range. I also bought a really beautiful, extra big one, from their inspired-by-the-arts range - this one is inspired by van Gogh's Starry Night.

With the baby, I'm using the play silks for peek-a-boo-games, for him to explore (chew!) and for songs about the oceans. Nene uses them for dress-up, and for games involving the ocean, the forest and volcanoes. Here's what BeneathTheRowanTree says about play silks:

"Playsilks are open-ended.As your child grows, their silks grow with them, becoming capes and landscapes, blankets and tightropes~ soft, warm, colorful~ lead by the child’s imagination into worlds of wonder.Playsilks make wonderful decor~ canopies, sheers, nature table backdrops...Perfect for dress up, too"

- and here's Jens with his taggie:

new meitai

BF and Jens testing our new Babyhawk meitai. I love how you can choose
between a gazillion different fabrics to make your own individualised mei tai.
This one is reversible, with this butterfly fabric on the reverse side:



The owl side was my attempt to choose something a tad more masculine
(ok, let's say less feminine!), so BF would be comfortable using it too

Babywearing is included in the eight principles of attachment parenting.
It's also very practical, not to mention sleep inducing - just look at this sleepy face:

wip: phoebe

I'm working on Phoebe from Rowan Kids, for Nene. I just started a new cardi for Jens, which is three in a row for him, so I needed to make something for her too. It's probably a waste of time, because although she loves it when I knit for her, she never wears any of it. She just doesn't seem to feel cold, ever. Phoebe i a short sleeved cardi, good for layering, so that might actually work for her, besides it means less useless knitting time for me. The pattern is written for Rowan Calmer, but I'm using Pure Wool DK instead. I had one ball in my stash, and ordered 3 more thinking I could alternate them if I didn't get the same dye lot, but the newer 3 balls seem a little thinner and finer than the first one, so I don't think I'll be able to the the one from stash at all.

Cowl

I've used the beautiful handpainted silk-merino yarn I bought from Hedgehogfibres on etsy last year to make a cowl for myself. I like the way garter stitch shows off hand painted yarn, but I didn't want garter stitch all over, so I've alternated between stockinette and garter stitch, which gave the added advantage of stretchiness. I wanted a cowl that would be quite snug around the neck, and long and wide enough to pull over my head. I also wanted it to flare a bit at the bottom, thinking it would sit nicely on the shoulders that way. I started at the top, deciding that a 60 cm circumference around the face would be good, so I simply cast on the number of stitches needed to fill a 60 cm circular needle, and didn't bother to count them, kept knitting for a while, increased a random number of stitches a random number of time, and cast off when I ran out of yarn. It' beautiful, but a bit short when I pull it over my head, so I blocked it, but then it lost its stretchiness. It's not snug like I wanted it around the neck, so I guess the jury' still out on this one.

duh!

There were some interesting comments to my post about the drops cardi failure, particularly the one from Silkesauen where she politely mentions that it's possible to make the neckline fit better by following the instructions at the very end of the pattern.

Huh?

In my defence I would like to point out that it did occur to me that something could be done by picking up stitches and decreasing and what not, but it did NOT occur to me to look for page 2 of the pattern to see if perhaps there was a suggestion as to how this could be done. Well, what do you know! I hadn't actually finished the cardi - no wonder it was such a failure!

Still big and kind of girly, but at least it's wearable:

Silkesauen also made an interesting comment about the many versions that exits of the sideways baby cardi, and agreed that the Drops pattern makes a very feminine A-line shape, whereas Nøstebarn has a version that is more square and masculine. Like I said in my first post about this project, I did in fact plan to knit the Nøstebarn version, before I came across the Drops pattern and liked it better. I don't know what my problem with Nøstebarn is - I have the book, and it's packed with basic patterns for kids' clothing and it's very popular among Norwegian knitters. I just find it boring, and all the photos of uneven knitting just don't appeal to me, and I guess I just don't have it in me to see its potential. Which I know is there, because I have seen a lot of really nice knits from this book on various Norwegian blogs. Here's a particularly good example of a lovely project that looks boring in the book, and here's another.

So I'll give it a try, and have taken the rest of the leftover brown alpaca from the Drops cardi, and cast on for a very boringlooking basic baby raglan cardi from the Nøstebarn book. No photo today, but later this week perhaps.

Instead I give you this, to prove that Mr. Grump does smile once in a while: