Today is the first true rain of the season in Northern California which means one thing: Serious Knitting Season has officially begun. It could not have arrived at a more perfect time for me. I just finished a summer of weddings, baby showers, bridal showers and other events that had me traveling all over California and throughout the country. My husband and I have jokingly dubbed the year from here on out “Stay at home 2009.” We are both homebodies at heart and are looking forward to some serious couch, cooking and even cleaning (clearly we are going insane) time.
The end of the events has signaled the temporary end to my gift-knitting as well. This past weekend I had two gift deadlines and, true to form, completed one at 1:00am the morning before the deadline.
My sister-in-law is pregnant with my first niece, and back when she and I formed a Stich-n-Bitch, before I learned the mind-numbingness of blanket knitting and before she moved to Texas, I promised that when she had a baby, I would fulfill my Auntie role and knit a blanket. When she announced her pregnancy, I scoured Ravelry for the perfect pattern that would not make me want to stab myself with a knitting needle and I must say, I was rather successful.
Check it out:
Pattern: Maude Honeycomb Blanket
Source: Vintage Baby Knits by Kristen Rengren
Yarn: Knit Picks Comfy Bulky in Flamingo and Fedora–2.5 skeins of Fedora and 2.1 skeins of Flamingo
Needles: Size 10 circular
Final measurements: 32″ x 30, casting on the number of stitches called for the in the pattern.
If I could go back in time, I would add one or two repeats to the length, but at the time, I was worried about running out of brown yarn, and I didn’t have time to order more. FYI: Turns out that I would have had enough to do the extra repeats.
My second project began as test knitting and ended as my nephew’s first birthday gift. I truly became a Knitter shortly after he was born so he never received a significant knitting gift from me. And there was no way I could deny this face knitty wonderfulness:
So he became the new recipient of a very cozy, slightly modified hoodie that I made as a test knitter.
Check it out:
Pattern: Wild Thing by Homero Luna
Yarn: Plymouth Encore Yarn Worsted color 1415
Needles: Size 7
I started with the intent on making this hoodie the full Wild Thing hoodie with the ears and the tail–after all, that is the purpose of a test knitter, right? Well, I failed that role mainly because my hood turned out kind of funny (due to user error, not pattern error) and I didn’t want to call attention to it with ears, and then without ears a tail would be a little strange, so I left it as a plain hoodie. I love the Wild Thing pattern however, and may have to make the full ensemble one of these days soon. But as a plain hoodie, it is pretty fabulous.
My nephew is still too small for it, so there are no pictures of him in it, but I have to say, when the gift was opened, a three-year-old party attendee shouted “WOW, that is SO COOL!” which I thought was pretty awesome.
