Hat/mitts/booties set

Recipient: Baby ? (originally for baby MacPherson-Henderson)
Designer: Moi
Pattern: As yet unnamed
Completed: June 8, 2006
Colours: Various
Yarn: Various acrylic or acrylic/nylon blends, sportweight
Ungiven status: To give to someone's baby
Notes: Pattern to be for my book. For next iteration, to rejig pattern with stranding and fingering/sockweight yarn.
Pictures: None

2007-Nov-23

We got a call yesterday from my MIL, who told us that DH's cousin's wife had recently given birth to their second daughter. I had originally intended to make overalls for them, but I procrastinated on that way too badly, so instead I'm going to send them a hat-and-mittens set of my own design that I finished a while back but haven't given to anyone yet. It's very cute and I hope they'll like it.

2006-Jun-9

At last. It. Is. Done. I now have a completed hat/mitts set, and I have to say, they are pretty freakin' cute.

Carrie K asked if I would be showing pictures of them, and the answer, unfortunately, is no, although I would really love to. Y'see, I'm putting together a book of baby patterns which I hope, ultimately, to be able to publish. And I'm not comfortable with the idea of showing pictures of patterns that I intend to sell before I actually try to sell them. :)

As pleased as I am with how the hat and mitts look, though, I am really, REALLY going to have to change the pattern significantly before I ask other knitters to shell out money for it. There is just way too much duplicate stitching on the hat the way I just did it. Moreover, I think the motifs would look much more spectacular done in smaller stitches. So for the next iteration of the pattern, I'm planning to switch to stranded knitting instead of intarsia, so that the duplicate stitch is mostly eliminated (although there will still be a little bit to avoid torturing knitters with having to strand five colours over a single row). Also, I will be using fingering/sock weight yarn instead of sport weight. Hopefully I can pull it all off without driving other knitters totally crazy.

2006-Jun-5

Duplicate stitching on the hat continues.

I am SERIOUSLY going to have to come up with another way to get all these colours on the hat. This duplicate stitching thing was okay on the teeny-tiny mittens, but on the hat (which has ten motifs requiring embroidery) there is NO WAY other knitters will do it. (And even if there are knitters stupid driven enough to do it, they will curse me to oblivion during the process.)

The hat is looking good, though.

2006-May-29

This week I decided to suck it up and keep going on the hat. So I did...only to discover that, ONCE AGAIN, I had put all the intarsia in the wrong place - it was all shifted over by one stitch. Again, riiip, restart, sigh.

And then, after that, it actually went smoothly. [Insert soundbyte of a chord sung by a heavenly choir of angels.] I cast off yesterday. Sadly, the most intense work was yet to come. The weaving in of eighty gazillion ends, for one thing. I still can't believe I finished it, but then, that is one of the advantages of having your daughter nap for eight and a half hours straight.

Now I'm in the process of duplicate stitching the brighter colours of the motifs all over the hat. Boy am I glad this is a small piece. But it is looking really, really good. I'm probably a little over half done all the embroidery. After that, it will just need to be sewn up at the sides and given a wee pom-pom. And then it will be done, beautiful, out of my hair, and off The Schedule.

2006-May-20

Monday night I started up on mitten #2 and had it mostly knitted by the time I went to bed (at a decent hour, too, I might add). Tuesday night I finished the knitting and started in on the weaving in of the ends and the duplicate stitch (again, not going to bed too late). Wednesday morning in the car I finished the duplicate stitching on one side, and by the time I got off the train at my work, all the duplicate stitching was done, the ends were all woven in, the tops were grafted together and the side seam was all sewn. I now have a pair of mittens. (The Schedule was pleased - I didn't have to finish them until tomorrow.)

I like 'em a lot. I really want to post pictures of them, but once again, because I'm hoping to ultimately publish the pattern in a book, I don't think I should. (Rats.)

Later in the week I started the matching hat. And this is where the stuff started to hit the fan. First, I cast on too many stitches and did all the ribbing before I realised my mistake. Rip. Then, I did too few rows of all-black prior to the start of the first intarsia pattern motif and didn't realise it until I was half done the motif. Rip. Then after I'd fixed the problem and was working on the first intarsia row, I messed up my counting and put almost all the intarsia in the wrong place. Rip.

Needless to say, I am sensing a theme on this $@*#$&!!!-ing hat.

Hopefully I will do better from hereon in.

2006-May-11

I decided last weekend that I needed to kick-start my ass into gear on this one. Thus, I made a decision: I would purchase the colours I was missing at a certain evil corporate empire that only gets my money when I can't reasonably find a product anywhere else. I don't like doing this, but Zellers didn't have what I wanted, Lewiscraft is out of business, Michaels' online catalogue revealed that they had every kind of acrylic but sock yarn, and a phone call to the biggest yarn store in the city determined that they did not carry any acrylic yarns (duh, I know, but it was worth a try), and from this I surmised that the other yarn shops in the city were unlikely to do so, either.

This left me staring at the only option: The evil corporate empire. So on Saturday evening, off I went.

Total.
bust.

Usually they have lots of different colours of Bernat Sox, but naturally on the day I decided to go and was desperate for specific colours...they had almost nothing that I needed.

So I'm standing there, looking despairingly at the shelves, trying to will the yarn I want into making a sudden appearance in front of me, when suddenly the obvious hit. Why am I so keen on doing this project with sock/fingering weight yarn? Why can't I use sportweight? If I switch to sportweight, I already have all the colours I want, with the fibre content I want, SITTING RIGHT AT HOME IN MY STASH. Plus, my swatch of the motif in sock/fingering weight yarn (with the wrong colours) was smaller than I wanted it to turn out to be.

That was a classic 'Urania Moment'. Logic slapped me upside the head, pushed me out of the damn store and sent me home to my stash. I pulled out the colours I needed and got to work. Sunday I finished the swatch. I was quite pleased with the outcome, and I got lots of compliments on the design from my parents and husband, so I started on the mittens.

The first mitten sort of worked the way I wanted to, but I still wasn't happy with it. As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of colours in this pattern, and the best way to do it without driving myself (or anyone who tries the pattern, since I eventually hope to sell it) nuts is to do intarsia with just two colours and then duplicate stitch the other colours on. The problem with the first mitten is that I duplicate-stitched the black colour on. This, since duplicate stitching is more raised and prominent, caused the black to overpower the other colours, which was the opposite of the effect I was going for.

So, I did a second first mitten (if that makes any sense), this time using black as one of the intarsia colours, and then duplicate stitching the brighter colours on after it was all knitted up. This worked really, really well and I now have myself one small, cute, multicoloured mitten that more or less looks like I'd envisioned it. Yay me. Next up: mitten number two.

2006-Apr-30

Yesterday we packed up the whole family and went shopping. The most important item was to get DD a safety helmet for tricycle riding and some shoes for her ever-growing feet. However, I was also going to look in the craft section of Zellers for the colours I need for this thing.

No.
Such.
Luck.

There was one glorious, shining trip I made to Zellers once where they had copious amounts of Bernat Sox yarn available, and in many different colours. I was a frugal fool and did not stock up on everything my heart desired. This was a mistake. Every time I have gone back since there has been nothing. A few trips to other Zellerses, further away from my house, have yielded pathetic amounts of colours I already possessed, but that's it.

Curse ye, Land of Zed.

Anyone know where I can get Bernat Sox - or any other acrylic sock yarn in funky colours - in the Toronto area without selling out to evil megastore empires?

2006-Apr-21

This project (which is on The Schedule, so I'm being good) is part of the larger ongoing plan to write a book of knitting patterns. As usual with a pattern I want to sell, I won't be displaying pictures of how it's coming along, but I can tell you that it's a matched set of baby-sized scratch mittens and a hat, with lots of nifty-lookin' colourwork. I worked up the design some time ago but hadn't sat down and actually swatched it...until yesterday.

Sadly, I don't yet have the actual colours I want to use, so I improvised with some substitutions. It didn't turn out half-badly, but I'm definitely going to have to do another test swatch.

The original swatch (which I tried to take to work with me today, but accidentally left on top of the car this morning while getting DD into her car seat, thus leaving it free to fall off the car and sit in the driveway until DH came home and, thankfully, rescued it) was knitted with all the colours stranding across the back. Since I am a masochist, my pattern called for multiple colours per row - often four, and in some spots, as many as five. Fortunately, swatching revealed to me that this was an INSANE thing to ask other knitters to do, to say nothing of how stupid it is to have tons of floats on the back of baby mittens, perfect for getting little fingers caught in them. So I will be doing another swatch - this time with just two colours in each row, and then I will be duplicate stitching the rest of the pattern on. I would never ask knitters to duplicate stitch a motif onto a huge adult sweater pattern, but for baby hats and mitts I think it's reasonable. Added plus: this will add extra thickness to the pattern in some spots, which (given what the pattern looks like) should work really, really nicely.

Next step: getting the right colours of yarn to work with.

2006-Jan-9

This was originally supposed to be for an ex-co-worker of mine, who is/was due around November/December/January (yeah, I know, that's not very specific for a due date - but the person who told me about the pregnancy was not very clear on exact dates, so I only have a very rough estimate to go on). However, in line with my new philosophy of not knitting baby things for every person I have ever met, I am recognizing the fact that I have not spoken with or seen said ex-co-worker for years, not to mention that I don't really know how I would deliver the gift to her. And therefore, I am saving this project for another baby.

2005-Aug-12

So I sat down last night and worked out what I want the pattern to look like. It looks great. However, actually achieving it in real-life knitting is another question. Many rows in the pattern use four or five different colours throughout. Eep. I've charted it all out and it looks like the most efficient way to pull it off (without going completely crazy trying to figure out where to anchor eighty-gazillion floats) is a combination of intarsia and stranding. Aiee. If I can pull it off, though, it's going to look really damn good. I am loving the pattern, although I suspect I will love it much less when I start knitting it. I particularly suspect I will lose my sanity when I start trying to figure out how to knit a bootie without ripping off someone else's instructions (I don't seem to be able to visualise something three-dimensional like that very well).

2005-Aug-11

A few years ago, one of my co-workers went on mat leave, and her replacement for the year was a very cool lady with whom I got along splendidly. Said cool lady has since gotten another job with another employer, but her new job is such that one of the groups in our department gets to work with her from time to time. So yesterday, one of my co-workers was at a meeting with her, and came back to tell us all that she is expecting her first child! Whee!

That's the good news.

The bad news is that she's due (like everyone else in the entire world, apparently) around December/January. Thus, if I want to knit her something (which I do), the project must be piled up on top of my already stupid Christmas knitting stressload.

Despite this, I am planning to design the project myself, because this is the perfect opportunity to create something else for my book. However, in deference to the impossible Christmas knitting project list, the gift will be small - a matching hat/mitts/booties set. I'm thinking a fair isle of some kind. And if I run out of time, I can give her just part of the set (hat and mitts only, mitts and booties only, etc.) and she'll never know there's anything missing.

However, I am seriously thinking of taking a week off in October to knit.