stitch marker

trellis

This is the sweater that impresses everyone. If you have a baby in your life and want to impress EVERYONE, knit trellis.

I did it in the actually-called-for yarn (gasp), which is Rowan All Seasons Cotton.  I was a Rowan virgin (besides a few swatch attempts with Kidsilk Haze), and I must admit this yarn is nice.  Very thick, and it hurt my wrists to work even on the 7s.  But very nice, good structure and excellent stitch definition, soft, didn't come unraveled when I cast on, nor did it snag or split.  Good stuff.  And I got it on ebay for 2.50 a skein because this color - Safari - was discontinued.  Since the trellis pattern is free, and the leather buttons were $4.50, this little gem of a sweater cost just under $15. And it's sort of a little sampler of simple knitting stitches and cables, so it allowed me some knitting interest for that low, low price and high, high impress-EVERYONE factor.

It has soaked up its first round of spit up admirably as well.

Others are knitting this sweater, in the exact same color too. A few here and there have noted that there's a lot of shaping and finishing for such a small garment. I didn't mind either of those things. I actually like doing mattress stitch and watching the pieces line up together. But I did make one mistake.

I had learned on my last little sweater that using sock reinforcing yarn to mattress stitch gives a less bulky seam and less bulky armpits - crucial when the interior space of the sweater is so tiny and the little person who's going to wear it so sensitive.  I'd also learned that a good mattress stitch gets hidden in the ditch. That is, when you pull your wool edges together, the edge - and your stitching - disappear. So it doesn't normally matter what color stitching yarn you use.  Here's an example of how I used bright red yarn to mattress stitch on a light brown sweater.

However, this Rowan ASC is so damn thick (part of it's charm, granted) and so, well, cotton/acrylic-y, it did not pull together like I expected. And since the pattern has you block after finishing the seams, and this time I actually followed the effing pattern, uh, the brown sock reinforcing yarn is showing in some places around the arms and neck, where no sufficient ditch was created.

Sebastian doesn't currently care.

But if - after pumpkin-getting and his first Thanksgiving squash puree - this is still in good enough shape to go to State Fair 2006, I may have to refinish.

p.s. Looking around for other peoples' trellises, I found this post with an ADORABLE baby modeling a knitted scarf.  Ugh, she's so cute.

no offense to the baby whisperer

Yesterday afternoon I knit a seamonster.

But truly it's a cute little baby sweater. It's just that at one point trellis has 2 fronts, 2 arms, 2 collar halves, 1 back, lots of stitch holders and pins, threads, tentacles, and monster googly eyes. Today it looks a lot neater. I sewed the collar on and tucked in ends.  Soon it'll be ready to decide on buttons!  And worry about sewing them in well enough for anti-choking standards.

Yesterday was super sunny.

We went to the farmers market and got sweeeeeet peaches, aged cheese with herbs de provence, and giant oatmeal cookies.  There were fiddlers there, and a bunch of babies of all ages dancing with their moms and dads and aunts and uncles.

M & I had been trying the E.A.S.Y. method of baby caring, from The Baby Whisperer Book. It goes Eat, Activity, Sleep, Yowling You.  Sebastian is in a habit of reversing the first two, which The Baby Whisperer warns will cause him to grow into a 2-year old who has to eat in order to fall asleep.  So we spent the day trying to change his order.  This shall henceforward be known as How To Take a Happy Perfect Baby and Make Him Miserable.  He cried more yesterday than he did the entire month prior.  We had to keep picking him and putting him down and shushing and patting and reasoning.

I left him home with M to go to Mabel's and knit. There were 3 babies there, all his age.  I felt like an ass for missing mama baby yoga and not bringing him to Mabel's, only because we were torturing him for some ideal order of his functions.

Later at the farmers market, as I snuggled into the back of his neck and watched him watch the fiddlers and dancers and people and dogs go by, I was the baby whisperer. This is what I whispered to him:  You are a perfect, beautiful baby. I love you. You don't need to go changing yourself because of some lady's dumb book.

(For the record, okay the book's not dumb and we are still trying today to give it a few days.  But we are going only for the order of things, not a certain time period for each.  And The Baby Whisperer is a very nice lady, may she rest in peace).

a lot of creatures camped

The knitting...

The espresso...

The doggie...

The hubby, the baby...

...and me.

Whew. We went to Wallowa Lake in Eastern Oregon.  It was the Hilton of campgrounds, with truly clean showers and bathrooms, volleyball, a pizza and ice cream place, bumper boats, croquet, videos such as Baby Animals Grow Up!, and an arcade with LOTR pinball (picture Sir Ian McKellen in a sound studio with big puffy headphones booming "Bonus One!")  It was not so hard, and really fun at times, the stars staggeringly beautiful from out there.  We feel closer now to our funny, big Grape Ape of a car. It carried all of us.

I got to read.  Ahhhhhhhhhhh.  And work on trellis; it's more than halfway finished now. This focusing on one project at a time, while not being adhered too all that strictly, in a general sense is going very well.

balancing the guilt since 2005

Sarah wrote a while ago about balancing our guilt, a game during which the guilt is inevitable but placing it properly is all the fun.  She felt guilty when she went to work shortly after her first son was born.  But she didn't feel guilty about doing crafts.  "That's fun!" she says (and tells me again the comforting story of how she designed and made her wedding dress and bridesmaids' dresses when Everett was about 10 months old. Wow. I love how she has a wedding picture of herself in her full bride getup breastfeeding. But I digress.) 

I guess I feel oppositely guilty for the exact same reason.  The thought goes something like, "Crafts are fun so I should feel guilty, but work is necessary and helps the family so I should feel okay or even good about doing it," even if Sebastian seems to want me and only me at the moment.

The other day I just needed to knit.  I needed to knit on trellis and get to an end point, as a break after money-working all day. I handed B over to his papa, and I sat in the garage and worked on trellis for 30 minutes, all the while thinking "What my baby wants is not a little green cabled sweater, no matter how cute.  What my baby wants is me, my body and my voice and my warmness and nearness.  And I'm depriving him, by making something 'for' him."  Turns out I was right and he was crying desperately the whole time. When I got inside and picked him up he had liquid tears on his chubby face and he clutched me with his little hot body. I cried too.  But what he wants and what I need to keep sane are two different things sometimes, and I know he is safe with papa for half an hour so that this can happen and make me feel somewhat normal.  What to do?