Meanwhile, in the Land of the Lost

Let’s talk about something other than my dental angst, shall we? Oh yes, do let’s.

I finished the baby sweater last weekend! Well, except for the buttons, because once again – I don’t like any of the fourteen million I already own and must make a special trip for them. (sigh):



I love the color pattern. I love the look of the seed stitch.

And I never, ever want to do that much seed stitch again. (Seed stitch is knit one, purl one – like ribbing, only on the other side you do the opposite of what you would have done to get a rib so instead you get something that looks like little ‘seeds’, hence the name. Got that? Good. You speak ‘Tama on Dental-Angst-Mitigating-Vicodin’ quite well. Quiz later. Carry on.)

Construction-wise, this was a fairly easy knit. Classic neck-down construction, with the sleeves picked up and knit straight from the body in the round. I like that on baby sweaters – it’s a small thing, but I like not having a seam down the arms. Seams can rub, even when you’re using soft yarns. No seam, no chafed baby arms. Good deal.

But I don’t know I if I’m actually going to make the other two on the list to this same pattern. The seed stitch got very tedious after a while, and frankly…well, I like the ‘clean lines’ look of this, but suddenly I have a wild hankering for more color. We’ll see if it passes…if not, I’ll come up with a Plan (Pattern?) B for the twins.

That done, I finally got back to the Celtic Lattice vest and by golly have cranked out a bit of yardage today. Seeing as how every time I stand up and move around my entire head threatens to explode, just sitting in my chair watching the television, trying to avoid being smacked by a rampaging toddler (he isn’t “hitting me”, by the way – he’s just enthusiastically showing me things) and quietly knitting seems like an entirely sensible thing to be spending the whole entire day on. (Whoops. Sorry. Angst showing again.) (Here look! A picture! Not of a tooth! Or imploding head! YAY!)



Now, this little darling is pure pleasure to knit. The pattern is just interesting enough to keep me awake (even though I slept like @*^& last night and feel rather droopy today), but not so interesting that I can’t find my place when Captain Adventure pulls my post-it note placeholders off the pattern.

This one involves steeks. That funny non-cable down the front is the front steek – I’ll be cutting that right up the middle to make it a ‘vest’ rather than a ‘sleeveless sweater’. There are also steeks for each arm, and in about four hours (or so) I’ll be putting in neck steeks as well.

The neck steeks make me happy. They mean that, instead of going to ‘flat’ knitting (knit across, purl back), I can continue in the round. While I wouldn’t say that purling is my sworn enemy or anything the way some knitters do…it’s not my favorite, either. I find that my hands tire more quickly with purling, and when I’m doing color work it becomes a pain in the tookus. I have trouble seeing what color ought to go where and then when I’m knitting back, I’m constantly having to drop-n-fix stitches (this is where you intentionally drop a stitch which is the wrong color, and pick the stitch back up with the correct color from the strand – another great reason to make sure you strand loosely across the back of your work!).

You know what else would make me happy? Pizza. Pizza sounds really, really good right now. Hmm. I wonder if I have any cash to pay for a delivery...because see, not only does pizza sound good, it also sounds like ‘not cooking’, which sounds like ‘not getting out of my chair more than absolutely necessary’ which sounds not just good, but great.

Ah, sloth! What a marvelous state to be in…