Something Fishy

Summertime in Alaska, and the thoughts of the citizenry turn to fish. Look here what's turned up in my FO net---a school of fish!

A fishing family of my acquaintance is expecting a new minnow, and I've long wondered if an adult hat pattern could be adapted to make a baby cocoon, specifically that cute Knitty fish hat that looks like it's eating your head.  What if it could eat a whole baby? Would they name him/her Jonah?

Anyway, here it is:

Not a real baby. It's a stunt double.

The opening is the regular hat size. That turned out to be the diameter of various baby cocoon patterns that I checked out. Then I just extended the body length of the hat and finished with the prescribed taper and tail, adding a little extra to the fins to keep it in better proportion. Now, I know this is a little weird-looking to normal people, but, trust me, Alaska fisherpeople are going to think it's the height of cool hilarity to stuff their darling in a big wooly fish maw to snuggle down for a nap.

But wait, there's more.
The minnow has siblings that we can't leave out. Besides, I've got plenty more yarn!

There's a pink salmon hat for toddler big sister:

Made with a scaled-down version of the original Knitty hat. Thanks so much Emma Lindberg for doing all the hard work!

And we haven't forgotten Big Brother, who looked to be about the age of the kids in the Knitty pattern. For him, it's the original pattern size. He was most emphatic that his hat should also copy the x-ed out dead fish eyes, so here it is, dead fish on yer head.

Details of yarn, etc are on my Ravelry project pages.

Caution: the end of this blog post will install a nasty earworm if you dare to click on the video.  You have been warned.

 

Yum!

Dry Dock

My Sixareen Cape is in dry dock for the time being. I have overcome a bunch of obvious errors in the pattern, but this last one is a deal-breaker. The pattern says to decrease the top until you have 82 stitches. Seriously? Can a normal human being get their head through such a tiny hole? Adding insult to injury, the pattern illustration shows a loose, flow-y top more like a cowl than a constipated turtleneck. Something is very wrong here. Is it the decreasing? My gauge is OK. WTF???  Sadly, the discussion on the Ravelry group hasn't been much help. Most of it is about misunderestimation of yarn quantities--been there--and there is an entry from Kate saying that a corrected pattern is available for those who downloaded it on Ravelry, not much help to those of us who purchased a hard copy through MagCloud. I have emailed Kate requesting a way to get corrections, but she is in the midst of her house/business move and will not be available for a response for some time. Hence the dry dock. I'm sure a solution is forthcoming, just not for a while. And I think some frogging is in my future.

But does the knitting stop just because one project is on the rocks? Certainly not.

There's the dark Kaffe Fassett stripe sweater, for one thing. And I found some cheesy acrylic yarn with sequins (sequins!) that makes really darling "dress-up" baby booties. And is that more Sour Cherries sock yarn I spy? Mm hmm. Because you don't have to have an actual baby in the pipeline to knit a cute baby sweater. If you build it, they will come. I think I know the right baby for it, but it's pretty hard to tell the exact size until a Baby Surprise sweater is nearly done.

80 Booties!

Here they are--80 baby booties for my daughter's 40 babies. No, she's not one-upping the octomom. She's a midwife in training that will have to deliver 40 babies to complete her clinical training. And there's a pair of booties for her to give to each one. You can read the saga of the booties here and subsequent posts, or you can click on the bootie tag below.

But, hey, first feast your eyes on their bootie beauty:

 Go ahead, click on the pic and blow it up bigger. Count 'em. They're all there. All 80. All 40 pairs. All unique, as each little person will be.

Every brand-new person landing safe in the world in a brand-new midwife's hands.

Bitten

Mosquitoes are biting, but I'm not sure what kind of ambition bug just bit me. I've got a massive case of startitis and this is what has happened--

I got an email from KnitPicks promising a hefty discount and I ran off and ordered pattern and yarn for this:

A Viola blanket. I've been smitten by this design for a very long time; love the almost abstract look of the giant flower, love all the shades of red, the crazy garter-stitchy plan of it, the sheer massive SIZE of it (about 4 x 5 feet, if you're asking). 4-inch garter stitch squares, 206 of them, sewn together in this great big cosy bloom. There are plain straight squares, mitered squares, diagonal squares, and one 4-miters square, most with stripes, just about everything you could do with the form. Here's where I've got so far:

Started with the plain squares, of course. Gauge is pretty close, certainly nothing blocking can't sort out. Did I mention each one of these guys has to be individually blocked before sewing? The blanket of 206 squares begins with the first piece.

But hold on, there's more! My idiocy knows no bounds! My daughter, the nurse, is in the midst of graduate studies on the way to becoming a midwife and Advanced Nurse Practitioner in womens' health. The clinical crowning glory of this is to deliver 40 babies. 40! That's more than a classroom of children.  Enough team members for just about any kind of sports match. The population of a small hamlet. And the first thing that will happen to all these people when they enter the world, will be to land in my daughter's hands. Something to make a mama proud, that's for sure.

So I have decided to knit a pair of booties for each of her babies, 40 pairs, 80 booties total. A celebration of the achievement of the making of a midwife, the making of a new person, and the making of a new mother. Handing on the love.

I've got a secret, though. Because I've been caught on the hop before by the sudden appearance of babies in my circle of acquaintance, I worked up a bootie stash:

That's 9 pairs right there, nearly a quarter of the way to the total, provided there are no other surprise deliveries along the way.

Let the madness begin!

Sunny Boy

The sun/star/giant yellow doily baby blanket is done and ready to come down from blocking. In spite of how the points are hemmed per instructions to keep from curling, they still curl. Nothing to be done about it, I'm afraid. A little attention with a steam iron may temporarily tame them, but they'll be back to the curl soon after. In spite of that detail, I think this is pretty cool, don't you?

And to go along with it, I have employed the Cheat-Toes yarn (it's going for toes after all!) for my standard booties and a hat. Said chapeau is a trial of the Breast Hat pattern in monochrome and a much finer yarn than the DK of the original.  Because it's top-down, it's very adaptable to all manner of sizes and yarns to top the crania of babes (and adults) who are not as tickled by the boobular color scheme as those of us with skewed senses of humor and more than a little tendency to breastfeeding evangelism. No worries--there will be actual breast hats eventually. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, bright baby things certainly cheer up the Alaskan winter gloom!

Finished with Some Objects

Various Finished Objects for show & and tell.  There's the graphic stripe scarf...

And a Baby Surprise jacket and booties for the new granddaughter of a colleague. The yarn is Socks That Rock medium weight in My Wild Irish Girlie, a skein from this year's Rockin Sock Club.

[Aside: I wonder how many warped people like me there are who love sock yarn but aren't keen on wearing handknitted socks.  How crazy is it to belong to a sock club and then knit anything but socks??]

The Surprise Jacket is always a minor miracle.  You knit this very strangely shaped rectanguloid object--

And then sew up two seams and it magically turns into a little jacket.  Awwww.  With little pink heart buttons.  And enough yarn and buttons left over for a darling little pair of booties:

I also managed to resurrect another item from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble, the Willow Tunic from Jamieson's Shetland Knitting Book 2.  It had been knitted and just needed sewing up and the neckband added.  Putting it together showed me why I let it slide in the first place--the neck is enormous.  Not so terrible, I guess, because, being made of Shetland yarn, it would be too scratchy to wear against the skin anyway.

Now it's onward and upward with the Christmas knitting!  And the Grandboy needs more mittens.  And his dinosaur sweater.  And a couple more intriguing projects are whispering in the wings...

Slice a Steek and Start a Sleeve!

I'm off on my first Winter Sunset Cardigan sleeve! Even though the yarn is "wooly" enough to hold together on its own, I decided to be super safe and machine stitch the steeks before I cut. Nothing calls for confidence like taking the scissors to your knitting. Picked up the stitches around the armhole and got going. There was a small disappointment that the pattern match at the fake seam decrease on the bottom of the sleeve isn't symmetrical for the big motifs. If you notice how the pattern works on the body of the sweater, two of them alternate, an X and a snowflake. I'd like it better if the motifs were the same on both sides of the decrease, but that's not how the stitch count works out. Also an error in how many rows to do before starting the decreases that isn't mentioned in the errata. The biggest size has the fewest rows and the smallest has the most. Lucky I'm making the middle size. Sleeve length in the pattern is the same for all sizes. This may be because the dropped shoulders add length to the arms, but I'm sure I'll be doing some measuring when I'm halfway down this sleeve. Everything's going so well that I want to be sure I'm making sleeves for neither a seal nor an orangutan!

And here's a little item from the Heap. A baby sweater made from sock yarn that was too pinky for socks that I'd actually wear, but a bright fashion statement for a friend's wee girl who should arrive any day now. Bonus booties from leftover yarn--just enough to eke out the newborn size!
All together now--AWWWWWW. So cute.