Onesie

Recipient: Eve Mirabelle Lalonde Lounsbury
Designer: Zoe Mellor
Pattern: All-in-one
Source: Double Knits
Completed: January 7, 2006
Colours: Mint, lavender and cream
Yarn: Zellers 100% acrylic, sportweight
Completed status: Given January 11, 2006, baby born January 23, 2006
Pictures:

front


back

2006-Jan-11

Gift is wrapped and sitting in the front hall for me to take to work today. Two nights ago I had a nightmare that I showed up at the party and had completely forgotten the gift. I have been obsessive ever since over making sure that doesn't actually happen.

2006-Jan-9

I took a few minutes on Saturday morning to sew on the two remaining buttons and fix some gaping holes around the pick-up edges. Therefore, it is now done. It looks great. Pictures forthcoming. We're having a little celebratory get-together at work for the papa-to-be on Wednesday morning, and I will give it to him then.

2006-Jan-3

Driven by the desire to finish something on the urgent list, I concentrated on this for most of the weekend and got almost everything done. I finished the back, I did the front, I did all the edgings, sewed all the seams, wove in all the ends, found buttons for the crotch and sewed them all in.


Just one thing couldn't be done: I couldn't find good buttons in my collection for the shoulder straps. (Curses! Foiled again...) So this evening while visiting my parents, I mooched off of my mom's button stash. I found the perfect button. It was a precise match to the lavender in the onesie and the exact right size for the buttonhole. Behold:

(enjoy also the extreme closeup of my kitchen floor tile)

See the problem?

(Hint: there is only one. I went through the entire flippin' box of buttons one by one and could not find this a mate. Clearly I have not built up enough good knitting karma for myself. Alas, I shall have to content myself with less-perfect-but-still-acceptable cream-coloured buttons.)

Sadly, the shoulder straps are still button-less because I forgot to bring the cream yarn for the project along to actually do the sewing of the buttons with. The lights are on but nobody's home, I tell ya.

2005-Nov-7

I think it looks terrific:

Just two more decreases to go and then I can start the neck and shoulder shaping. (Okay, the decreases are 8 rows apart, but still.)

Last night this was sitting on the kitchen table while DD was eating supper, and she asked about it.

Her: "Is that a onesie?"
Me: "Yes, it is."
Her: "Is is for a baby?"
Me: "Yes, it is!"
Her: "Is the baby going to wear it?"
Me: "Yes!"
Her: "It's too small for me."
Me: "You're right!!!"
Etc.

No, the child is not psychic - I had mentioned what that knitting was all about earlier in the weekend. I was just astounded that she remembered it all. (The exclamation points from me are not meant to indicate escalating annoyance at all the questions, but rather my enthusiasm about her recall abilities.)

2005-Nov-4

I spent a lot of thought on this yesterday. I had decided to make the all-in-one from Zoe Mellor's Double Knits. It's a very cute little pattern - nothing stand-out, but very sweet and appealing. My problem was deciding upon what colours to use. The instructions call for a two-colour stripe pattern - one thick stripe, one thin - with an edging the colour of the thin stripe around areas like the neckline.

I considered ignoring the stripe instructions and doing the onesie in a solid colour, with a second colour to contrast at the edgings. This would certainly speed the project up, which is highly desireable since I really don't have the time to do it in the first place. On the other hand, the stripes really do make the whole thing quite charming.

I also had a few colour scheme possibilities in mind. What I wanted originally was to do the thick stripe in lavender and the thin stripe in cream. However, I don't have nearly enough lavender in the stash to be able to do this, and no faith at all that my local Zellers will have any more. So I had to come up with a different colour combination. I was thinking of green and yellow, but I didn't think they would look very nice together in this particular pattern, plus we all know that I knit too much green stuff anyway.

So what did I do? Typical me - I made things more difficult by deciding to do the thin stripes in cream, and the thick stripes in, alternatingly, mint and lavender. I know, green and purple sounds like an odd combination, but I think it works extremely well:

The only question is, will I have enough lavender? Naturally I went ahead without figuring it out or taking a trip to Zellers to see if I could get more before casting on. What can I say, I live on the edge.

For those that are curious, the rumour mill says that the baby is a girl. However, I have trouble believing this. First of all, ultrasounds are only right about 80% of the time. And second of all, this department saw the birth of ten girls in a row, and then the next two babies were boys. By my reckoning, that means that this next baby (and the next seven departmental babies after that) will all be boys. It's Fate. So no girlie and/or pink stuff for this baby. However, since there is always the slight possibility that I am wrong, I would be wise not to make the gift too boyish, either. Hence the gender-neutral colours.

2005-Nov-1

Today at lunch, one of my co-workers happened to mention in passing that another of my co-workers and his wife were expecting their first child in January.

January.

Does nobody think to tell me this stuff?!? How am I supposed to knit baby gifts if I don't find out about the existence of the baby until seven months into gestation? Sheesh.

I sure as heck don't have time to design, test drive and knit a pattern, so I will be picking something from one of my baby pattern sources. Probably my new Zoe Mellor book.