Some Finishes to Start With

Happy New Year, one and all! As part of tidying up the old year before bringing in the new, behold some Finished Objects:

The Baby Surprise Jacket with the booties that inspired it, and a little hat to finish it all off (both the outfit and the yarn). And sure enough, though there wasn't a baby in mind when I started this; if  you knit it they will come--a colleague was blessed on December 26 with a new granddaughter. Welcome to the world, Lani Pearl!

And finally, at last, eventually, the Sixareen Cape is finished, blocked, and launched! As I had hoped, just the thing to keep the shoulders warm on long chilly winter nights, yet stay out of the way of the reading and knitting. And, hey, you could have knocked me over with a ball of quiviut, but that seed stitch bottom border came out pretty flat in the blocking.

It fits differently from my original intention because I am a smaller size than when the keel was laid, so thank goodness it's a style that can be a bit loose. If it bugs me enough, I may rig some kind of seam inside to make the shoulders fit better.

I'm sure you realize that the photos have suffered from the seasonal lack of light at this latitude. Normally knitting and reading is not an outdoor activity, but that's where you have to go (at mid-day) to have even half a chance of success. And it's still a flash photo. The main color of the sixareen is closer to the reading picture. The Baby Surprise was either a choice of washout pale or overdone enhancement. Sigh. Photos can only improve now that we're past the solstice and the light gets longer and stronger every day.

Finishing Some Objects

Visual quiz--what's this?

A strange blob of strangely shaped knitting?

 Let's turn up a corner and see what we can do with it....

Oooo...a sleeve and some wee buttons appear if you fold up the corners...

 Goodness! It's a Baby Surprise Jacket! Always a test of faith in Elizabeth Zimmermann while knitting it, always a surprise even to its maker when you fold it up and actually have a garment! This is more of that Paton's Stretch Socks in Cherry Sours. I love this colorway so much. This is especially notable  given my usual feelings about pink, but this stuff looks so much like cherry blossoms, not candy. See, you've got the green leaves, the blossoms in several shades of pink, and even traces of the brown branches. It's all so perfect. And there's enough left over for a wee matching hat!

Nor have I forgotten the dark striped Kaffe Fassett sweater. It's all blocked and now in the process of getting seams sewed up:

The neck was kind of small, so I had to frog the original castoff and apply myself to learning Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bindoff. It's very well named and very much worth learning. Changing just the bindoff row led to an opening that will actually fit over my head. Hurrah! And d'you see what I found for "pins" in my seam? Those teeny weeny little hair grippy doodads that were so popular a few years ago!

But we're not done yet! The Churchmouse Inside Outside Cowl is also finished and awaiting the frozen winds of winter:

And all this is just to keep the needles busy while I await the arrival of the Shepherd and Shearer...

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.