Textured poncho

Recipient: Quinn Lieu-Ashthorn
Designer: Meself
Pattern: Haven't named it yet - might call it 'Ashthorn'
Completed: February 20, 2005
Colours: Baby blue
Yarn: Zellers 100% acrylic, sportweight
Completed status: Baby due February 2005
Pictures: None

2005-Mar-1

Dropped this off with my mom last night - she's going to package it up with the blanket she crocheted for the baby and send both presents off together so I don't have to. (Thanks, Mom!) So, I now consider this project 'given'.

2005-Feb-21

Done! Blocked it yesterday - it's now drying.

2005-Feb-10

Knitting is complete! The poncho is done and the ends have been woven in. I just have to block it. It looks quite good.

2005-Jan-30

Turns out I do have a circular 3.75mm needle. So I picked up the stitches around the edge and did up a pattern. Unfortunately, I'm not pleased with it. So I think I'm going to rip most of it out and do a simple garter stitch border instead, plus I'm going to do increasing around the corners so that the whole thing will lie flat. I also tested the neckline to make sure it would slide easily over a baby's head by trying it out on my daughter. Result: it's frickin' huge. This will be fun. I guess the neckline will be getting a very thick garter stitch border, maybe with some decreasing!

2005-Jan-28

This is coming along very nicely. I've got the entire body of the poncho done. Now I just have to do the neck and hem edging. What's holding me up, other than the fact that I'm not totally sure what pattern I want to do the edging in (minor detail, eh?) is that I don't have a 3.75mm circular needle (the body was done on 3.75mm straights). So I'm probably going to end up doing the edging on a 3.25mm circular. Stay tuned.

2005-Jan-25

I was all the way up to starting the border pattern under the neckline and suddenly decided I wanted to do the poncho in baby blue (which it wasn't) instead of mint green (which it was). Why? Well, it occurred to me that, these days, ponchos seem to be mostly a girl thing, plus the intricate texture pattern of what I'm making...my thinking was that a girl could pull off a blue intricately-patterned poncho, but a boy might not have the same success with a poncho of any colour other than that ultra-masculine of hues (read dripping sarcasm here), blue. Changing the colour would probably reduce the chances that people in public would gush over what a cute little 'girl' a boy is. (The parents of this baby are a lesbian couple, so I don't think for a moment that they have gender issues, but I know from experience how annoying it is to have strangers assume the wrong gender for your child because you haven't dressed them stereotypically according to their sex. So why add to the parents' annoyance, I say.) Could I have thought of this earlier? Yes. But I didn't. So I started all over again, and this time in bigger needles so that the resulting fabric wouldn't be as stiff. I'm now almost to the neckline and I think it's looking really, really good. I'm very stoked about how this will look when it's done.

2005-Jan-23

I wanted to design another Book of Kells themed item for my book. So I looked over my notes for the quickest, easiest project I could do, since this baby is due next month. The poncho idea seemed to fit the bill, so I started on that. I've gone through a few iterations of ideas to experiment with how the pattern lies on the poncho, and how the increasing will go. The idea I'm working with now may be the winner. It ain't easy, though - for the first time ever, I've been using a row counter in order to be able to keep track of which rows I'm supposed to do increasing on. But when it's done I think it may turn out very nicely indeed. Stay tuned.

As of 2004-Nov-08

I will have to do a think on this. I suspect I will take advantage of the project to design another Book of Kells themed something for my book.