Helena sweater

Babies must be warmly clothed, I’m sure you will agree with that, gentle reader. And when a baby is expected by a knitter who has knitterly friends, one can be assured that said baby will be warmly clothed, indeed!

Rachel (aka trtlgrl) has been sporting a baby-bump for quite some time now, and I was afraid that trtlbby would arrive in the world before I could knit something for the poor wee tyke, because, as we’ve already established, babies must be warmly clothed. So a couple of weeks ago I spent all of my free, non-sleeping minutes frantically knitting.

I started with this little sweater: the Helena sweater
by Alison Green Will from knitty.com. I changed it just a little bit. I liked the picot edging so much that I made it go all the way around the sweater, instead of just at the bottom. And I have only one tie – an I-cord tie that looks like an extension of the purl ridges at the top of the skirt.

little booties

When I managed to finish the sweater with time to spare, I also whipped up these little booties. In flipping through the book 50 Baby Bootees To Knit by Zoe Mellor, I saw that these had the same picot trim as the sweater. It almost seemed like they were made to go together.

The booties were a fun, fast knit – hardly any time to knock them out. I used the same yarn to edge the booties as edged the sweater. I made just a few changes — see the particulars below.

Contrary to appearance, the booties are both the same size. Perspective is a funny thing.

trtlgrl and trtlbby-bump

Rachel seemed happy with the sweater and booties. Can’t tell if the trtlbby-bump is happy or not, but we’ll assume she is. (Just outside the picture to the right is a pile of hand knit trtlbby swag that guarantees she will be neither cold nor naked.)

And I just made it, as trtlbby will be here sometime in the next week, guaranteed.

The Particulars:

Sweater:

• Yarn: the sadly discontinued Ella Rae Silkience (41% cotton, 39% Modal, 12% Silk, 8% Rayon), 119 yds/108 m per 500 g skein, in colorways 16 – Grass Green and 20 – Berry
• Needles: a pair of Addi Turbo 24″ circulars, US#3 (3.25 mm) and a pair of Addi Lace 24″ circulars, US#2 (3.00 mm)
• Pattern: Helena sweater by Alison Green Will
• Modifications: Instead of having a garter border around the neck and front, I made the picot edging go all the way around. I made a single I-cord tie rather than two garter-stitch ties.

Booties:

• Yarn: Dale Of Norway Baby Ull (100% Merino wool), 180 yds/165 m per 1.75 oz/50 g skein, in colorway 0020 – Cream — I used maybe 1/2 of the total. The trim is leftover Berry Silkience from the sweater.
  
  
• Needles: US#6 (4 mm) Addi Turbo and Addi Lace circulars
• Pattern: From the book 50 Baby Bootees To Knit by Zoe Mellor
• Modifications: I used different needles so that the size is more like 6-month. I used Judy’s Magic Cast-On to start so that the bottom of the foot could be grafted together. The booties were to have little bunny ears and bunny face, but I decided they were too cute as-is and left those off. (Besides, these were supposed to be newborn size. The thought of a 6-month-old trtlbby possibly jamming an ear into her little mouth and maybe choking gave me the heeby-jeebies.)

double-knit moebius

I just found out that there are two World Wide Knit In Public days this year! Find out why at this link.

Also, if your access to the interwebs suddenly slows to a crawl at 10:00 AM PDT on Tuesday, 05/26/09… registration for Sock Summit opens then. (Are you coming?)

And, finally, Deb Accuardi of Mount Hood Fibers and the wonderful podcast At The Kitchen Table is starting a Community Sock Club. Participants need to be close to Portland, Oregon, because every other month there will be a meeting at Gino’s Restaurant for lunch, sock knitting, and a chance to meet the dyers, designers, and knitters. I was thrilled when Deb asked me if I would like to design a little sock for the club. Can’t wait, because it sounds like so much fun!

The picture is a second double-knit Moebius Klein bottle that I finished last month and gifted to a special friend. It felt too weird to have a blog post with no picture. So there you are!

Larissa Brown and Martin Brown, authors of the lovely book Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together are hosting a Barn Raising Quilt charity knitalong. During Sock Summit 2009 the finished works of art will be auctioned or raffled as a fund raiser for Doctors Without Borders.

The Barn Raising Quilt pattern is being offered free during the KAL. They are looking for volunteers to knit squares and then sew them together. This is a really fun, quick to knit pattern, and what better thing to do with all those bits of leftover sock yarn? Squares must be mailed in by June 9th, or local Portland knitters may drop them off at Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks.

You can find out more information on the Knitalong site, or on Ravelry in this discussion thread. (If you’re not on Ravelry yet… why not?)

Of course, the pattern is also available in Knitalong. If you have not had the chance to look at this book, I really encourage you to do so. Not only does it have 20 fun-to-knit projects, but it’s a warm, loving celebration of knitting together; how our knitting brings us closer; and how it connects us with other knitters near and far, past and present. It’s one of my very favorite knitting books.

So… #1 Son had this little mishap with his car (everyone is OK, car is not). Work sort of blew up into this massive amount of… well… work (go figure). There’s this little book thing that’s sort of taking over every spare minute of my waking life (and much of my sleep, as it turns out). And I’m frantically trying to get ready to teach two classes I’ve never taught before (or are at least in a new format) before the lovely Sock Summit organizers (bless them for taking that on!) email me and ask for stuff that I’m not ready yet to give them.

So… I guess it will come as no surprise that I’m sort of on hiatus here at PI. I mean, it’s kinda obvious that I’m not posting much. So I’m making the hiatus official. For the next three months, I will be posting on a very infrequent basis, and only when something special comes along that I really want to talk with you about. I am managing to tweet a bit, so feel free to follow me on Twitter, where I can be found as JudyBecker (I’m so clever with names, aren’t I?). I do try to check Ravelry every day. And the old e-mail in box is always open. I will return. I just need one part of my life to calm down just a little bit.

But today, I also have something special to tell you about!

And I’m doing that in the next post, so it doesn’t get mixed up with this one.

Oregon beach

This coming Saturday is the 25th annual Oregon spring beach cleanup, organized by
SOLV (Stop Oregon Litter and Vandalism).

The very first beach cleanup in the nation was held in Oregon in 1984. Since then, beach cleanups have spread to all of the US States and Territories, and to countries around the world. (Oregon is like that. We had the first bottle bill, too.) Visitors often comment on how clean our beaches are.

There are two beach cleanups every year: spring and fall. Last spring, the 362 miles of Oregon beaches were cleaned of some 111,000 lbs of trash. That’s a lot of garbage, gentle reader. There’s usually more in the spring because the winter storms bring icky stuff to the shore.

This Saturday’s cleanup starts at 10:00 AM and goes to 1:00 PM. The SOLV site has a list of the 44 different locations you can report to, spread from the Washington border all the way down to California. It’s a great family or group outing. SOV asks you to give the Zone Captain a heads-up if you are bringing a large group. Otherwise, just show up at one of the check-in points to receive a collection bag and instructions. The out-of-the-way location typically have fewer volunteers than the ones in town, so consider going to one of the lonelier spots if you can.

Dress warmly in layers with a waterproof outer layer because the forecast says rain, wind, cold, March. And be sure to wear gloves! And have fun!

fossil tree

This flu thing… it really got me down, gentle reader. But I am finally on the mend, and heartily glad! Hopefully I will have energy now for little things like, well… blog posting. I was even too sick to go to my 40th 8th grade graduation, which bummed me out to no end.

And it’s been hard, you see, to talk about knitting. This project — can’t talk about it because it’s secret. And I can’t tell you about that project either because — it’s secret. And there’s a third project I can’t tell you about because (do I sound like a broken record?) — it’s secret. So I am having to wait until secret projects get finished and to their intended recipients before I can show them to you. And that makes for boring blogging.

I did go to the annual auction with my MIL a while back. But, alas, the economy held me back. I bid on only a few items in the silent auction this year, and I didn’t bid at all during the out-loud auction. Of all of the things I bid on, this little tree is the only one that I was high bidder. It was my favorite thing I bid on, so I’m glad it came home with me. All of the little leaves are pieces of petrified wood, and the base is a fossil ammonite. It makes my inner geek feel all warm and fuzzy.

blue Spirogyra

There is one secret project that I am able to show you. These mitts went to my friend L last Friday. She’s modeling them. She wears several rings, so gloves are out. But fingerless mitts just fit the bill. And she loves glittery, shiny things. I wish that the Glam Sock sparkles photographed better.

Yes, it really is that blue!

The Particulars:

• Yarn: Stitchjones Glam Sock (63% superwash merino, 20% silk, 14% nylon, 2% silver), 420 yds per 3.5 oz/100 g skein, in colorway Marine — I used a fraction of the total and have tons left.
• Needles: a pair of Addi Turbo 24″ circulars, US#3 (3.25 mm) and a pair of Addi Lace 24″ circulars, US#2 (3.00 mm)
• Pattern: Spirogyra by Lynne Vogel
• Modifications: none. Really.