Anouk

Recipient: Baby Mendez
Designer: Kate Gilbert
Pattern: Anouk
Source: Knitty
Completed: September 9, 2008
Colours: Light yellow, not-so-light yellow, baby blue, pink
Yarn: Let me get back to you on that
Ungiven status: I love it. But I think my director is going to tag me with organizing the party for my co-worker. :)
Pictures:

2008-Sep-16

Done! And IloveitIloveitIloveit, it's really sweet. I especially like how all the pastel colours work together.

2008-Sep-1

No progress, but I did finally take a picture:

2008-Aug-27

This is coming along very nicely, considering that I only work on it in front of the computer. This is because I started the project when I had a laptop right next to me on the couch, so I was able to knit it without needing to print out a copy. At first, only working from the online instructions was just a well-the-laptop's-right-here-why-not thing, but now it's turned into a bit of a refusal-to-give-in, save-the-trees kind of deal.

But this hasn't hampered my progress so far - both sides and pockets are finished. I decided to duplicate stitch the flower motifs onto the pockets after the fact rather than go through the hassle of knitting intarsia with cotton as I go. (Ick.)

It's turning out really adorably, and is such a cute and fast knit. My only complaint so far has been that the shoulder instructions are completely mixed up and thus rather incomprehensible. Left, right, back and front labels seem to have been assigned randomly, so it took me a good deal of back-and-forthing between the instructions and the garment to figure out which instructions should probably be applied to which shoulder sections.

2008-Aug-4

One of my co-workers is expecting #2! (November.) And on Thursday, I found out that the ultrasound says it's a girl. Their first baby is a boy, so they already have a lot of boy things, and therefore have had to go shopping for some new stuff. So I wanted to make them something girly. Usually I go with gender-neutral stuff, especially for first babies, because many people have more than one kid, and that second kid might well be a different gender from the first kid, and if that's the case, and I've made something gender-specific for the first kid, that gift won't see the light of day the second time around. But in this case, the circumstances are different, so I feel quite free to go as girly as I want.

I first considered my leafy baby poncho pattern. It's quick, fun, sweet, and uses something that's really easy to get: sock yarn. Added plus: it's easy to find machine-washable sock yarn (machine-washable is key for baby knits). Second added plus: it's easy to find sock yarn in nifty colours. However, I don't think I have enough sock yarn in appropriate colours in the stash, and I'd prefer to use stash yarn (I'm running out of stash storage box space). So instead I went with something I've been itching to knit for years: Anouk. This is a frightfully sweet pinafore dress that can double as a tunic top as the baby gets taller, and it will work equally well worn by itself, or over a shirt. Plus, I have a variety of cotton yarns in my stash that are either the right weight, or which can be doubled to produce the right weight. Winnah.

This is what it looked like this morning:



Now, however, it's much bigger - I'd guess I'm about an inch away from starting the neck shaping. It looks adorable.

Labels: anouk