Friday, July 9, 2010

Catching up Part the Last

Finally, well not quite finally, but for now, I made duckie-themed baby clothes for the first baby of my college RA. He'll be arriving anytime in the next month, and the shower was the second Saturday in June. The duck theme has a little story behind it: The first few weeks of school the first-year students tend to follow the RA everywhere - to dinner, community events, etc. - and someone joked that we were all following Marta around like her baby ducklings. The idea stuck and she got called Momma-Duck Marta. So now that she's having a baby it only seemed right to my roommate and me that our gifts be duckie-themed.

I don't have any completed pictures of these items because this was one of those finish-at-the-last-minute projects. I'm very glad it was a surprise shower and we got there a while before Greg and Marta got home, because I was sitting on their living room floor sewing on buttons and weaving in ends!

I'm also glad that I had just read and followed the Yarn Harlot's advice on blocking sweaters before sewing them up -- otherwise I might not have any pictures of this little sweater at all.


Here is the Puddle Ducks cardigan in the process of blocking on my Sun Room floor. This pattern is from the Knitting for Babies and Kids book by Jeanne Stauffer, as so many of my recent baby projects have been. This is an very good and useful book; maybe I'll review it sometime soon.


Here is a close up of the little puddle ducks. There're also supposed to be embroidered raindrops around the ducks, but that didn't happen. The sweater got buttons instead.

This was made in the six-month size out of DreamBaby DK and Dale Baby Ull. I'm collecting quite a little stash of DK/baby weight machine washable colors. I intend to make good use of them if I ever get through this summer's slate of projects.

To go with this sweater I also made the duck socks from the recent Spring/Summer issue of Knitty. No pictures of those at all, but hopefully Marta will send me some later, when they are being worn. I'd include a link, but the Early Fall issue just went up today so the Knitty site is too slow at the moment. I must be a pretty ambitious knitter because here are all the new techniques I learned just for these little baby socks: (1) toe-up socks (2) Magic Loop (3) Judy's Magic Cast-On (4) Turkish Cast-On (5) applied I-cord and (6) Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off. I think I just don't let my lack of knowledge and experience get in the way when I find exactly the right pattern. Also, other people figured out how to do all these things - reading and following their directions doesn't seem to me to be the hard part.

I just realized at this very minute that I forgot all about the knitting guild meeting that was last night. Shoot. I really wanted to make that little beaded Christmas stocking, too. Bummer. Well, it was probably for the best - we're going camping this weekend and had tons to do last night.

So now we're all caught up with the news of my early-summer baby knitting. Next, there'll be an update on what I knitted on vacation, and probably more baby knitting.

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