Yarn Along - Baby Blanket Progress

Well June has been a crazy month this year.  The husband took a 17-day motorcycle trip across the country with my dad, then three days after they got home I left for a five-day church conference.  (You can read all about the motorcycle trip on my dad's blog In Search of the Weird.  They found some.)  I've been trying to catch up on a lot of things and re-establish some order and routine around here.

I finished the first baby blanket of the year on June 1, right on schedule.

This is my second time making the Mitered Crosses Blanket from Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting.  I still really like this pattern, and would like to do another variation of it.  Also, I love it when I can knit a whole blanket from the stash.

I love the look of i-cord edging.  It takes forever, but it isn't hard and is so worth it.

This blanket is for a baby I wouldn't "normally" knit a blanket for.  Blankets are usually limited to nieces and nephews, especially since there are so many of them.  But I felt moved to make a blanket for her, I had an idea, I had the yarn, and I make the silly knitting rules anyway, so I did.  I'm not sure yet if this will wait around until her first birthday (when I usually gift blankets), or if I'll give it when the weather starts to turn cold.

During this crazy month of June I've been working away on Nephew E's blanket.  Rendition #4 of the Tell Me A Story blanket.  All 42 squares are done now, and I've started in on edging them.

 Actually at some point during the church conference I lost count and ended up with an extra square.  Whoops.  I'm trying not to look at all the ends already in that picture.  So that's more than half done, running a bit ahead of schedule.

As far as reading goes, there hasn't been much of it with all the other things going on this month.  I do have My Grandmother's Knitting by Larissa Brown out from the library.  It's a great book with stories from some well-known designers.  They tell stories of the knitter who first introduced them to knitting, or the one who really inspired them.  Then they share patterns inspired by these (usually) family members.  I have it more for the stories than the patterns right now, but both are quite good.
Check out Ginny's Yarn Along for more books and knitting.

More to come from me, hopefully soon.  Washcloths are on schedule, and I'm working to finish another Christmas stocking this week.  I need to show you the most recent finished baby sweater, and there's been one more birth this month, so one more sweater to start, too.

Yarn Along: New Baby Blanket

I'm joining in Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out her blog for lots of links to lots of great projects and books.

I haven't finished anything recently, but that hasn't stopped me from starting the next baby blanket.  This one is for Nephew E.

I've knit this same pattern, Tell Me A Story, three times before: Nephew S (in the pre-blog, pre-Ravelry days), Nephew R, and Nephew O.  This time I'm using Plymouth Encore Worsted yarn, and this is the first time I've used grey as the neutral color instead of cream.  Six squares done so far, out of 42.
This blanket has been accepted as my Defense Against the Dark Arts OWL in the HPKCHC. Stranded back-and-forth knitting, fourth time through a big project, and all the ends to weave in -- I think any one of those elements would have qualified this project for "Practice Repelling the Cruciatus Curse."  But it's not that bad, and while I'm still knitting the squares, it makes good portable knitting.  Staying on schedule with this is taking almost all of my usual knitting time.

For reading, I recently started Ireland's Pirate Queen:  The True Story of Grace O'Malley by Anne Chambers.  My dad picked this up for my husband, but he left it on the dining room table one day too long and I'm reading it before him now.  This is the kind of non-fiction my dad and I absolutely love.  It sounds like Granuaile was a truly amazing woman.  I can't wait to read the rest of this, and I hope to get to go visit the O'Malley lands sometime in the next few years.

Yarn Along and Extra Winter Washcloth

Joining Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out her blog for lots of knitting and reading fun. 

Apologies for the picture quality.  It's been very grey and wintry, and opportunities for pictures in sunshine are rare.  This is the +1 washcloth for the first quarter of the year.  Still in Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Cotton, this time in a navy blue.  The pattern is Ribbed Slip Stitch, the pattern for February 19 from my pattern-a-day calendar.  February 19th is the day our newest nephew was born!  He of the navy-yellow-orange bsj.

My current reading is mostly through Craftlit.  Right now listening to Henry James' Turn of the Screw, which I have never before read.  Very interesting, and I'm so glad to have the discussion along with it.

Gloves and BSJs

 Finally, a picture of the husband's finished fingerless gloves.  He's been wearing them everyday.  He was showing them off to my dad, and now Dad wants a pair too.  I love it when the handknits are worn and used to full capacity.

The Baby Surprise Jacket Assembly Line continues work apace.  The brown-green-blue sweater has been gifted, and the navy-yellow-orange one is getting sewn up and having buttons added today.

Since my sister-in-law is in labor today, I call that pretty good timing.  This one has stripes of five rows each, which I think helps it look more like a striped sweater.  With only three-row stripes, the colors seem to blend a bit as you look at the sweaters.  I couldn't keep the stripes continuous around the shaping, though, so I may go back to three-row stripes.

 Next on the needles is a bleu-blanc-rouge sweater for a friend who now lives in France.  For these stripes, I'm using the Fibonacci Sequence (1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55).  Gotta keep it interesting now I'm on my seventh BSJ in the last eight months.  I ran out of white about 30 to 40 stitches short, but called that plenty close enough.  I'm hoping the blue holds out for the final wide stripe.

I am knitting something very fun for myself in the midst of all this, too.  That deserves its own post.

Yarn Along - Flood and BSJ

Joining in for Ginny's Yarn Along again this week.  Check out lots more knitting and reading on her blog.

My brother found my size 3 needle tip!  He was riding in my car, where I had been sitting and knitting before the tip went missing, and it somehow revealed itself to him, because he just picked it up off the floor.  Hooray!  With this find added to all the wonderful knitting Christmas gifts, he is in the lead for doing the most to facilitate my knitting this year.

So now that the tip has returned, I'm knitting away on the next Baby Surprise Jacket.  For this one I'm trying five-row stripes.

This year marks 100 years since the Great Miami River flood of 1913.  My senior thesis was on this flood and the response to it.  Hamilton and Dayton, Ohio, were worse than decimated -- estimates are that one out of three Hamilton residents were homeless (at least temporarily) after the flood.  75% of buildings flooded.  (Way worse than one out ten.)  Afterward the people in this valley created the Miami Conservancy District, which is still a national model for regional flood control.  None of the areas designed to be protected by the massive works of the MCD has flooded since.  The flood was the last week of March, and there are going to be lots of commemorative events this year.  I'm preparing by reading through the books I still have from my senior thesis days.  The one in the picture is "Through Flood, Through Fire:  Personal Stories from Survivors of the Dayton Flood of 1913" by Curt Dalton.  There is a real wealth of first-hand accounts of the flood.  Personal stories are a very powerful way to study history.

Little Sweaters

I know so many people expecting babies (or who have just had them) between December and April, that I've had to start a list to keep track of them all.  Fifteen babies.  Fifteen.  Not all of them are close enough to receive knits, but many are.  So I've been making a lot of Baby Surprise Jackets.  These are all being knit from my stash of the much-lamented Reynolds' Wash-Day Wool (except for two of the shades of blue in the first picture below).

First there were these two, for Alisha's identical twin boys (born early January):

Shades of blue - one sweater dark-to-light, the other light-to-dark.  With adorable navy blue car buttons from my LYS.

Then there was a Neapolitan ice-cream-striped sweater for one of the few girl babies in the bunch (born late December):

And early in the new year I started the next batch of sweaters.  I'll have two new nephews, both probably arriving in February, so their sweaters were at the top of my list for the new year.  Here is the first sweater, with my lovely new yarn bowl hard at work:

I really like making three-color striped BSJs.  I got the idea from Alisha a while back.  Three colors, each stripe is three rows wide, and the next yarn you need is always ready right where you need it.  One little modification on the BSJ - 18 rows instead of 20 on the section to make the back longer - and the stripe pattern is continuous throughout.  It also keeps me entertained through all the garter stitch, and helps me keep track of how many rows I've knitted.

I finished the brown-green-blue sweater January 18.  Here are some before and after folding pictures:

 I realized that with all of the BSJs I've made, I'd never taken any "before folding" pictures.

 Ready for sewing up and buttons.  I ran out of blue in the middle of its last row, but I just started the brown stripe a bit early.  I was impressed it lasted that long.  These babies don't know how lucky they are, getting the last of my Wash Day Wool stash.

I started the next BSJ right away, but have run into a problem.

I was knitting in the car, and when I pulled the project out of my bag after getting home, one of the interchangeable needle tips was missing.  Not to be found in the bag or anywhere near it.  I still have to do a thorough search of the car, but I fear I have lost one of my size 3 tips.  I don't think I even have any other size 3 needles.  NOT GOOD.  I'm not sure what I'll do -- order replacement tips, buy one size 3 circular the right length for BSJs, or long straight 3s -- but babies are coming, and I can't get behind on their sweaters!