FO: Teddy Cardigan and Silly Little Hat

What's the fun of having a baby if you can't dress him/her funny while they're helpless to do anything about it? This is the Teddy Cardigan from Lion Brand, and the hat is the Child's Ear Hat with Tassels.

Knit seamless with grafting the underarms. Could have tweaked the raglan seams some more, but after ripping and reknitting them 3 times, decided to give them to the baby before he graduated high school. Enough said.

Okay, so I bought yarn..

But, it's not my fault, honestly, a baby made me do it! Some friends of ours were made unexpected grandparents the other day, and all I can say is that I hope that that situation doesn't happen to us with our boys, but if it does, I hope we handle it with the grace and practical determination and acceptance that our friends have shown.

But on to the knitting. I cast on for Lion Brand's free Teddy Cardigan last night. It calls for Vanna's Choice Baby yarn, which I went to 4 different stores looking for. Hint: Hobby Lobby, Joann's and Hancocks do not carry it. Michael's has limited colors, and after finally getting to see the ballband and realizing it's not fingering weight, it's the same weight as regular Vanna's Choice, I quickly made a couple of color substitutions and ran with it. But here's the part that ties in with my resolution to not be a mindless sheep when knitting (tee hee). I am going to convert the pattern to a seamless raglan using Elizabeth Zimmermann's percentage system out of The Opinionated Knitter. I figure I'll learn a bit, and if I really screw it up, it's just a wee cardigan after all. I'm making the 6-12 months size, since it's March and the baby won't be needing a sweater in the summer.

Knitting from the Stash

The good news: I haven't bought any yarn lately. The bad news: the reason the yarn stash exists is because I couldn't figure out what to do with it when I bought it in the first place, and so moved on. Fickle, I know. And for a person who likes, no, needs to complete one thing before starting another, it's been bugging me for awhile. So I'm using Ravelry to come up with uses for it. The flip-top mittens I'm working on are from stashed Lionbrand Cashmere Blend (I'm going to have a ball leftover, which I'm now stressed about, I was trying to use it all up). It's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it.

The lace ribbon scarf has another 12" added to it, but since it's supposed to be 80" long when finished, it's going to be a "knit in between projects" project because it gets boring.

I have come up with ideas for the odd leftover balls, I have a book of knitted toys (have to hide them from my youngest, his bed looks like a stuffed animal rescue farm already) that I could knit for charity, there's baby items for charity, mittens, hats, you name it.

We'll see how long I can take this, lacy spring things are calling me...

Magical Flip Top Mittens

One Magical Flip Top Mitten down, one to go. I think these will come in handy next hockey season. The inside is like a fingerless glove, with an outer mitten that flips back out of the way when you want to use your fingers. Yarn used is Lion Brand Cashmere Blend in black. I used slightly more than one ball for one mitten.

A visit to the FROG POND

Well, despite successfully blocking the Sideways Spencer and beginning the finishing on it, here's one last pic before it visits the frog pond (rip it, rip it):

It had too many things wrong with it to continue. The main thing was that the armholes were too tight. Second, was that despite blocking it to measurements, there was no way that you could add 3" of overlapping ribbing down each front and get the 40" measurement described in the sizing. I am nowhere near 40" in the chest, and I would have been popping the buttons off trying to close it. Combine that with uncomfortable armholes, and it was a show-stopper.

Now, normally, I would forge ahead, finish the sweater, then promptly stick it in the back of my closet to await the next donation call from a local charity (somewhere there's a charity worker thinking, "Man, I wish that chick would quit sending us these ugly sweaters"). But I have reached a turning point in knitting. It's no longer about quantity, it's about quality. I frogged half a mitten the other day because I didn't like how the cast on looked. Today, I'm frogging an entire sweater. Soon, I may work up the nerve to frog a sweater I finished last year that I hate wearing because the shawl collar is too heavy and pulls the sweater down (I didn't give that one to charity, that was EXPENSIVE yarn!).

Also, I bought a new book, Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard (author of the blog Knit and Tonic), and she is basically saying the same thing, stop making sweaters that don't fit, knit from the top down. However, I may be too much of a follower to do that, I get inspired by other's designs, converting them to top down might kill the joy. Although, wasting 3 weeks of your life on a sweater that doesn't deliver is a real bummer, too.

I think it's time to regroup. Instead of spinning my wheels churning out sweaters, it's time to do some stash reduction and knit some things for charity. I have a lot of odd balls of leftover yarn and I'm running out of space. Hopefully the next post will show items that are for someone else. And that I actually like!

PS- I survived frogging the sweater, although I confess to self-medicating with a cookie afterward.