Startitis and Spring Cleaning.

I had been doing really well at finishing things and clearing up my piles of UFOs. It started in January when I whipped out this pair of socks for Martha as part of our Epiphany Stash Gift Exchange at the store.The pattern is Burning Rings of Fire by Kirsten Kapur, a free Ravelry download.

Then I realized that I had a bunch of projects that were at least 75% completed, and it would take little effort to finish them.

I hauled out my never ending Damson by Ysolda Teague in my cursed yarn and finished it. Once you get going on the lace, it doesn't take that long at all.

I finished my Honey Badger Socks, a Socks that Rawk KAL (and another free pattern) from last fall. The yarn is BMFA Socks that Rock in a Mediumweight Rare Gem. I don't have a picture of the completed pair because I gave them to my mother.

And I got out my Owlet, thinking I better finish it before the baby gets too big for it. I consider it done, even though I still need to put buttons on for the owl eyes.

But after that I petered out and then came down with Startitis. Two years ago, I did not cast on during the month of April. I toyed with doing the same this year, but with Startitis raging all around me, I could not promise the same this year. But I will try to control myself and work on older projects.

It's April 1, and I have FOURTEEN unfinished projects. Let's see how I do.

 

Christmas Cables of Doom

Apparently I needed over a week off to recover from National Blog Posting Month.

The next time I chirpily announce that I am going to knit the children matchy-matchy outfits for Christmas, ask if me it is July. If it is past July, tell me it is too late for this year. The plan was to make coordinating vests (the Pembroke pattern from Petite Purls) in Christmas colors.

Originally I envisioned the children wearing these for artfully posed photos to send out as Christmas cards. At this rate, I will be lucky to get them done by Christmas day.I have almost the back of Henry's completed. This means I have the front, the finishing, and all of Michael's to go. Michael is real small, so that should go quickly, right? Right?

I might need an intervention

For the record, the first day of DEAR was a failure. I got into bed, opened the book, and fell asleep. This morning, I woke up with a migraine, so reading was out for that window of time as well.

This month, I finished two garments for Michael, a Beau by Cosy out of Malabrigo Worsted, and a Baby T-Shirt Vest out of Madelinetosh DK. The first is totally whimsical; the second is a project I made to fill a hole in his wardrobe. I love vests on babies: they add warmth without adding bulk and there are no sleeves to get sodden when babies stuff them in their mouths.





The problem is, of course, that babies outgrow these things quickly. I have a bunch of knits that I've already had to put away, and I think Michael may have reached capacity on his knitted wardrobe for now. I think it's time to focus on projects for bigger people...like myself! It's almost the time of year when we set knitting goals, and it will be interesting to see how mine shake out for 2012.

Baby Sophisticate

I've been wanting to knit this free pattern forever, and last year around this time when I found out that I was having another boy, I put this in the "babybrudder" tagged section of my Ravelry queue. Then I started reading that the pattern ran small, and I realized that the specified gauge of 15 stitches over 4 inches in aran weight would result in a loose fabric that I wouldn't be happy with.

I finally cast on for this sweater at the beginning of October and decided to try my luck with chunky yarn. I cast on for the 0-3 month size in Dream in Color Groovy in Cloud Jungle (one of my all-time favorite colorways), using 10.5 needles and 10.75 needles for the sleeves in the round.

After several false starts (I blame the sleep deprivation -- we're going through a really rough patch right now), this was a quick knit, and a well-written pattern. The only downside to using heavier yarn is that this will function more as a coat than a sweater.

HEXAPUFFS!

Isn't everyone in the knitting universe making these addictive little puffs for the Beekeeper's Quilt by Tiny Owl Knits? I haven't seen a pattern go this viral since the February Lady Sweater.
Other folks seem to have elaborate themes and color schemes for their quilts. I'm just taking a mindless "knitter's life" approach and using up the scraps I have. It's the perfect knitting for the short spurts of knitting time I have while the baby naps.

I'm glad to have this cheerful project because my other main knitting has been chemo caps for a friend who was recently diagnosed with Very Bad Cancer. These are a Meret in Malabrigo Worsted and a Tretta in Vintage DK.

Meet Michael Francis

On May 10, I went to the hospital for my scheduled c-section. Because of the pre-eclampsia, the birthdate had been moved up from May 24. The only cure for pre-eclampsia is to deliver the baby, so it made sense that any potential risk of being born three weeks early -- and 37 weeks gestation is considered "term," not premature -- would be outweighed by eliminating the very serious consequences of full-blown pre-eclampsia.

The surgery went really well. My OB is a family friend who actually delivered my sister 28 years ago. The only hitch in the pre-op period was that I was too swollen for an IV, so the anesthesiologist had to come in and do it. While the spinal block was much scarier than the epidural I'd had with Henry, my blood pressure was low enough that I didn't need the magnesium drip I'd also had at Henry's birth. (The mag drip is to keep a pre-eclamptic patient from seizing and going into organ failure; it makes you nauseated, sleepy, and completely out of it, and I was glad to avoid it this time and be more present at the birth.)

Michael Francis was born at 2:21 PM. He weighed 6 pounds, 12 ounces, and was 19 inches long. He started crying right away and my thought was "Well, there's nothing wrong with his lungs."

But there was something wrong with his lungs. When we got back to the PACU, the nurses remarked that the baby was wheezing and grunting as I tried to get him to latch on to initiate breastfeeding. I didn't think anything of it, as I thought babies wheezed and grunted. I made the nurse tell me what was happening. He was making those noises because he couldn't get air into his lungs quickly enough. He couldn't latch on because it interfered with breathing. After two visits from a resident from the NICU, they made the decision to take him to the NICU for evaluation.

At the same time, I started to bleed heavily, so what happened after that is still foggy. I'm so glad that before they took him to the NICU, we all got to hold him and be with him.

Later than evening, the nurses got me in a wheelchair and we went down to the NICU. Michael was in triage, on a ventilator, which was very hard to see. They treated him with surfactant, and took a culture and x-ray to check for pneumonia. I won't go into all the details -- I'm not sure that I'm ready to talk about the details -- but in summary, he did have pneumonia and spent seven days in the NICU on antibiotics.

The NICU is a scary place, but it's full of amazing nurses who I'm pretty sure are angels in disguise. If the Rapture HAD happened yesterday, I know they would have been taken instantly.  While Michael had some setbacks (for example, we walked in on Thursday to find he was put on a feeding tube when he'd been taking a bottle just fine the night before), he improved almost every day, and I knew that we were much, much better off than pretty much every other family in that NICU. Slowly, I got better as well, after a frightening incident on Wednesday where I almost fainted in the NICU as a result of my heavy blood loss.

We brought Michael home a week later. Because this is a knitting blog, I have to show you that he came home in not the romper I'd knit (too big!) but with the sock yarn scrap blanket I made.

Pin It

Well, this was unexpected

So about two weeks ago, I went in for a routine OB visit and mentioned that I had a headache and that my hands had swollen up to the point where I looked like I was wearing Minnie Mouse gloves. Because I'd had pre-eclampsia with my son, the midwife took one look at me and ordered a barrage of tests. Suffice it to say that I took a day off work and spent it voiding into receptacles. I stopped by the hospital on Good Friday to get more tests done and then I went off to work, only to be called back to the hospital two hours later. I spent Friday, Saturday, and half of Easter Sunday in the hospital under observation for pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia can be some pretty scary stuff.  Fortunately, the doctors determined that my case is mild -- so far -- and sent me home to rest, while moving up the date of my c-section. I'm being monitored pretty closely, and with a few exceptions, I've basically moved back and forth from my couch to the hospital for the last ten days.

This leaves a lot of time for knitting, which you'd think would be great! My first response to the new due date for the baby was to panic, not because the baby was coming early or because I couldn't get the room ready, but because I had no hat for the baby to wear. Hey, we knitters can compartmentalize like nobody's business. So I made a Sweet Baby Cap out of Baby Ull and some sock yarn scraps:

Then I had to finish a bunch of other stuff. Ordinarily, I think this would manifest itself by scrubbing out some cabinets, but since I'm not allowed to do that kind of thing, I have to sublimate the nesting instinct into knitting.

I'm almost done with a test knit for Cosy:

 

I finished another In Threes for my friend's daughter's birthday:

I put buttons on the Rhino Romper I made for Malabrigo March:

And I finished the knitting portion of the Baby Albert KAL I'm doing with my mom:

 

No, I'm not freaking out or anything. Nope.

Deepest Stash

I have, inadvertently, been knitting from my deepest, darkest stash lately. I bought one solitary skein of Brooks Farm Four Play, a wool and silk blend, at the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival at least three years ago. The put-up at 270 yards per skein is generous, but the "perfect" project never came along, and it's been languishing ever since. The yarn has a delicate sheen from the silk, and the tonal dye is beautiful and subtle.

On Oscar night, I decided that I was just going to use this yarn, and I cast on for 198 Yards of Heaven.  Because I had extra yardage, I did an extra pattern repeat, but ran out halfway through the edging. I also realized one row into the edging, that the pattern made no sense, and when I checked Ravelry, I saw that the pattern I'd printed out a year ago had been revised with a completely different edge. So much for printing and organizing patterns when I see them. I ran out of yarn halfway through the edging, but I like the final results better than the original edging, which looks heavy and takes away from the main motif.

iPhone photo

The whole thing

Obligatory Hipstamatic Shot

Unfortunately, because it's only 270 yards, it doesn't count for 11 Shawls in 2011. Still, other than the pattern discrepancy, it was a quick and easy project and an excellent match of Deepest Stash to pattern.

Baby Boys

It's baby boy season around here. Everyone I know is having a boy this fall, and of course, these boys must be outfitted in handknits.

Baby Boy #1 is the son of my sister-in-law's sister (did you follow that?). SIL's Sister is pretty conservative, so I went for a traditional baby shape and color. This is the Garter Yoke Baby Cardigan (sort of, as lately I catch myself casting on according to the instructions but then just going off in another direction) in Socks that Rock Mediumweight in My Little Color Brain. The slight variations of the yellow shading is about as wild as I felt I could get. The sweater went off to the baby's Christening party before I could get a picture with the buttons on.

Baby #2 is the baby brother of The Preschooler's betrothed (we have arranged their marriage and have already planned out the cookie table). #2's mother is a knitter, and I knew I could get crazy with the color. I chose three colors of the brand new Malabrigo Rios, a superwash yarn. I'm generally not crazy about superwash worsted, but the Malabrigo broke the stereotype of lifeless superwash: it's crazy soft and springy and still has all the depth of color of regular Malabrigo worsted. The pattern is Cosy's Baby Beau, with a smidge of Super-Natural Stripes thrown in.

Finally, Baby #3 is a serious matter. My good friend from high school went on vacation over Labor Day at 30 weeks pregnant. Apparently her body took the "Labor Day" concept seriously, and her water broke as she stepped off the plane. She's been in a hospital over 1000 miles from home for almost a month in the hopes that Baby Boy will stay in a little longer. He's set to arrive this Friday at 34 weeks, and I started a Baby Surprise Jacket in the fingering weight Mini Mochi, hoping it will be a good size for him to wear in the chilly fall to come. I also thought it was appropriate because I made my very first Baby Surprise for his big sister.

We're Here

So we’ve been coming out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the Grand Teton Summer Music Festival almost every year since our honeymoon (by the way, we’re celebrating five years of marriage on Friday!).  Jackson is located in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, south of the Yellowstone Plateau, and surrounded by the Grand Teton National Park and several National Forests. It’s kind of hard to get to. The first year we flew to Denver and drove up, ending up going over non-existent roads in the dark. The second year we flew (did you know that the Jackson Airport is the only commercial airport to operate in a national park?) with newborn Henry. The third year, I flew with barely a toddler Henry while my husband drove our car. Then we skipped a year, and last year, we all drove, breaking the trip with a visit with family in Oklahoma.

This year, my husband declared we were going to make the trip in three days, not four, which would require ten hours of driving per day. Okay. I can get a lot of knitting done. The Preschooler is generally pretty agreeable in the car, as long as he has his dvd player. We should have been fine.

That is, until we blew out a tire somewhere in Iowa. Fifty miles east of Omaha, we heard a dreadful noise. Thankfully, my husband was able to pull halfway up an exit ramp before the tire completely gave way. It was still a dangerous situation as he struggled to put on the spare tire while avoiding exiting trucks, but it beat the alternative. I was able to walk Henry up to a truck stop – because of course at the moment of crisis, he pipes up “I have to go potty!” – while my husband worked on the tire. He put the spare on…and then the car wouldn’t start. The car repair place by the truck stop did not have the tire we needed and moreover, didn’t have time to come out and jump our car.  Mercifully, the car insurance has roadside assistance and within half an hour, someone had come to jump the car and locate a tire.

Three hours and a pretty scary tire shop later, we were back on the road.  I feel lucky; it could have been so much worse, but we still had to drive for another six hours to make our deadline. We made it through severe lightning storms in the plains of Nebraska before we reached our hotel in Ogallala at midnight. Henry slept a little in the car but woke up crying and distressed to still be in his car seat. My husband was bummed out that he didn’t get his Runza, apparently a staple of his Nebraska childhood.

And to top it all off – since this is a knitting blog after all – this year is the year that I get carsick if I knit. Carsick! I completed Kelli’s Sunday Swing Socks and listlessly did a few rounds on a plain sock, but this was not to be the year I speed through projects as we drive through the Midwest. Co-workers, I cede the Summer of Socks and Lace to you.

Campaign of Intimidation

So it's Summer of Socks and Lace again over at the store. Last year I got kind of....competitive and ended up wiping the floor with my co-workers, one of whom got pregnant and the movement of her knitting needles made her sick, so that wasn't exactly fair. This year, I said I wasn't going to be that way. But I am. I persuaded Martha and Kelli to make a new category called "Doublethreat" so I wouldn't have to choose between socks and working on my 10 Shawls in 2010. In my defense, this has proven to be a really popular category, and I think everyone is really enjoying it. Then I vowed that I was going to WIN, and in a really twisted move, my two main competitors, Steven and Yvonne, and I started making things for each other. Steven made me a new February Lady Sweater. I made my new go-to pattern, a Traveling Woman, for Yvonne, out of Pagewood Farm Alyeska:

What else have I finished that I haven't shown?

A slightly modified Helena for a dear grad school friend's new baby:

After many, many, many false starts and a nasty tangle, my March 2010 Rockin' Sock Club Slip Jigs:

In the Land of Oz shawl, out of Malabrigo Sock in Rayon Vert. I'm calling it my "Wine and Thunderstorms" Shawl because I made it mostly during a spate of bad thunderstorms around here recently. It's also so simple that you can drink a lot of wine and watch chick flicks while you knit it.

And finally, these baby booties out of leftover STR Garden Daze from last year's sock club. I keep telling myself I made them to test out the Signature Needles DPNs that I got at Maryland Sheep and Wool, but really, I have to confess, I am building up a little hope chest. It's been over two years since my miscarriage, and I'm hoping for something good soon.

 

Malabrigo But Not March: Textured Shawl

Yarn trends may cycle in and out, but at least for 2010, I'm turning back to my old friend Malabrigo. I mentioned during snOMGpgh that Malabrigo Silky Merino was turning into my drug of choice: so soft, so shiny, such depth of color, and such great value for the price.  With just two skeins of Silky Merino in Indicieta, I made a version of Orlane's Textured Shawl. I used the garter tab set-up for Feministy's Yvaine, then knit sixteen rows of stockinette, sixteen rows of the texture pattern, eight rows of stockinette, four rows of garter stitch, eight rows of stockinette, another sixteen rows of the texture pattern, eight rows of stockinette, four of the texture pattern again, and then garter stitch for four rows (or, in other words, until I ran out of yarn and the gold medal hockey game was over).  The finished project is now on display at Natural Stitches for the Show Us Your Shawl Extravaganza this weekend.

A Monogamous (and Ruffle-y) Malabrigo March

An odd thing has happened. In the past few weeks, I've become, mostly, a monogamous knitter. It started with the Knitting Olympics, but I have been pleasantly surprised by how I've been able to stay on track with projects. Yet truth be told, the two projects I've completed so far for Malabrigo March have been done because I hesitated to put them down, fearful that I might not be able to bring myself to pick them back up again. These projects feature an awful lot of stockinette, and an awful lot of, well, stitches.

Laura Chau's Just Enough Ruffles, in Malabrigo Worsted in Velvet Grapes:

Citron from Knitty, in Malabrigo Sock in Boticelli Red:

What are you knitting during American Idol?

Last year I chose one project that I would work on while I watched American Idol. I figured it would be a good way to work on Project Knitting: one of those things that I might find actually pretty tedious to knit, but I wanted the final result of the knitting. Idol, fortunately or unfortunately, is a huge timesuck; even watching on tivo and fast-forwarding through commercials means a commitment of at least two or three hours a week. So long before the finale, I had a completed Garter Yoke Sweater and a Wrenna. Woo!

This year my project is my resurrected Mr. Greenjeans from Knitty, knit in Brooks Farm Solana.

Inspiration

It's hard to single out the most inspirational thing on Ravelry, but one of the best, knowlegable, and enthusiastic groups on there is the Socks that RAWK! group. Every quarter, they host a KAL of two sock patterns. Each member is encouraged to use a different colorway of Socks that Rock in order to showcase the amazing diversity of the yarn. It's a fabulous group, and I've gotten lost for hours looking at the photos.

For the first time, I'm participating in the quarter's KAL for the Edwardian Boating Socks. Mine are in the Flower Power colorway. I just cast on yesterday and can't stop knitting!

Hat Trick

When the weather turns colder and you're mired down in large projects, sometimes the best thing to do is knit a hat. I made three last month.

Windschief by Stephen West, in Cascade Eco Alpaca:

Hurricane Hat, a free pattern, knit in Malabrigo Worsted:

And finally, Habitat by Jared Flood, also in Malabrigo Worsted. In my next post, I'm going to talk about challenging myself and learning new techniques, and this project is my first foray into a complicated cable chart.

Finish It Fall?

I had it in my head that I was going to work on the backlog of projects I'd let pile up over the summer. I had a bunch of projects that were close to completion when I flung them aside in favor of the sock contest. The shawls in particular cried out to be finished.

Springtime Bandit, in Malabrigo Silky Merino, waiting to be blocked, looking all manta-ray-ish.



I borrowed Yvonne's blocking tools: interlocking foam playmats like they use in daycares. Genius!




The completed shawl, hanging out on my neighbor's bushes (yes, they probably do think I am crazy).


And another shawl, The Simple Yet Effective Shawl using one ball of Noro Silk Garden Sock.


Great! I finished two projects! If only I hadn't cast on for three more this week...

I think I won

I think I won the staff portion of the Summer of Socks and Lace contest. Here are my entries from the second half of the summer.


Top left: No Purl Monkeys in Creatively Dyed Calypso.
Top right: Yarn Harlot's Plain Sock Recipe in Mini Mochi
Middle left: Completed "Don Draper Socks -- Kristen Kapur's Ampersand in Socks that Rock Mediumweight.
Middle right: Synesthesia Socks in Pagewood Farms Denali.
Bottom left: Completed Waving Lace Socks in Pagewood Farms Denali.
Botton right: More Circle Socks in Socks that Rock Lightweight.

Plus:


Slip Stitch Rib Anklets from More Sensational Knitted Socks in Socks that Rock Lightweight, July 2009 Rockin' Sock Club colorway.

Overall, I completed eleven pairs of socks and made a little progress on three more pairs (two of which are Cookie A patterns, hmmm). My total yardage, including the double scores for using Natural Stitches yarn, was somewhere in the 4000 range.

Summer of Socks

The Summer of Socks and Lace is ON at the store. We're having a separate contest for the staff, and here are my entries, both in progress and completed. From left to right, top to bottom:

- Waving Lace Socks, from Favorite Socks, in Pagewood Farms Denali in Really Red
- Ampersand in Socks that Rock Mediumweight in Eggplanted: I'm calling these my Don Draper Socks because we're watching Mad Men, and surprisingly, one can knit this pattern even after a few Manhattans and still not screw it up.
- Circle Socks in Socks that Rock Lightweight in The Incredible Shrinking Violet.
- Nutkins in Pagewood Farms Denali in Maple Leaf.
Child's First Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks in Tess Super Sock and Baby in Pewter
- Embossed Leaves from Favorite Socks in Dream in Color Smooshy in Chinatown Apple.

Malabrigo March, reloaded

You didn't think I was going to let Malabrigo March pass by? Unlike last year, though, I am not casting on for any old thing (I mean, how many Calorimetries and neckwarmers does one need? Don't answer that.). I've picked three rather substantial projects using three different weights of Malabrigo yarns (so substantial, in fact, that I'm longing for a hat project).


Shalom Cardigan in Malabrigo Chunky in Applewood.



Ingenue, from Wendy Bernard's Custom Knits, in Merino Worsted. This was originally supposed to be my American Idol Selfish Knitting Sweater in Steadfast Wonderful Wool, but it just wasn't working out for me.

And finally, Ishbel in Malabrigo Sock, in the. most. perfect. red I've ever seen. Inspired by Franklin, I am going to make a lace shawl, at last.