Meanwhile in knitting news

I finished the baby blanket this morning. The colors are most emphatically not as eyeball assaulting as they appear in this photo – my cheap digital camera just can’t seem to handle “subtle” very well – remember how my black and white sweater kept looking blue? Someday, I swear to Dog, I will lighten up and get a real digital camera. One that cost more than thirty bucks. Or came free with something else. Which is, uh, where this one came from. So I suppose I really shouldn’t kvetch too terribly much about the picture quality.

But I digress.



It measures 36” by 32” and is very soft and warm. The color is Red Heart Soft #7962, ‘Gem’. Which I do believe is discontinued, no surprise since it came out of that box of decade-old stuff my Gran brought back home to the stash.

I am exceedingly glad it is over now. Endless stockinette stitch is why the knitting machine was invented. Knit-knit-knit-knit-knit {flip!} purl-purl-purl-purl-purl {flip!} Lather rinse repeat until thank $DEITY you are out of yarn.

I do actually have one of those manual knitting machines, and about one skein into this project I was grousing to myself that I should have used it for the middle and then done some kind of knitted or crocheted border on it. Of course, first I would have had to find the knitting machine, which is another whole ball of angst-ridden screaming about why I can’t be more organized around here, so we’ll just pretend I didn’t want it in the first place some more, shall we?

It went fast and it is actually a sweet color for a baby or toddler. Some baby will love this blankie. Actually, a couple Denizens have hinted that they like it (Captain Adventure kept trying to pull it over himself last night while I was working on it), but it is going to be washed in Dreft and sent to Warm Hearts, Warm Babies, along with the preemie blankie and booties.

Booties are my personal mission until the end of May. Booties, booties, everywhere. I have an entire ball of random sock yarn – not enough to make even a pair of anklets for a grownup, but it will make a ton of booties. And a fairly good-sized remnant ball of nice, soft, fine-weight baby yarn as well. BOOTIE ATTACK!!!

I’m using a marvelously simple pattern for these, which produces a pair in roughly one movie’s worth of knitting (a pair and a half if the movie is boring and/or stupid, not quite a pair if it is fascinating or subtitled) – click on the picture to be taken to the pattern:



These stay on little feet pretty darned well – the one thing I always hated about booties was the way they never, ever and I mean NEVER stay on those wildly thrashing little tootsies. The crocheted chain is the key to success on these. And all my whining aside, it is a very simple thing to crochet a (unevenly tensioned) single chain 16” long.

Now that I’ve talked about actual knitting…OK. See, after I’ve finished a project, I like to completely empty out my knitting stand and “reset” the contents for the next project. It gives me a feeling of control, you see, and also my knitting stand has a Junk Magnet in it. Not only my own junk, but that of the children ends up in there. I have found entire sets of magnetic building toys, Capri Sun wrappers, sippy cups – you name it.

But I was still a little bit taken aback by what-all came out of there this morning. Check it out:



Some made sense. I mean, there was way too much of it in there, but at least it had something to do with projects I was either actively working on or had recently worked on or had worked on in living memory. There were eight sets of knitting needles. Two balls of miscellaneous green stuff that a burn-and-felt test indicates is probably wool. A big purple ball of Wal-Mart ‘Mainstays’ acrylic. Three patterns out of my pattern binder, encased in nice, neat plastic sheets. One ‘rogue’ pattern. Two pattern books dating from 1968 (those were from the box Gran brought back). Eight stitch markers. Four clips designed for holding together knitting while you are seaming it. Three random buttons. Several used-up post-it notes (used for keeping track of chart patterns). My wrapping-paper-cutter-turned-yarn-slicer, which I like to use on yarn because if Captain Adventure gets his mitts on it and starts running wildly through the house with it, he can’t fall down and impale himself on it the way he could even with a small pair of scissors. Two pens. Two sets of DPNs, one in size 8, one in size 0. Ball bands from at least four different projects. Two stitch holders. One measuring tape. The obligatory Susan Bates Knit Chek (the thingee with the holes in it, for checking gauge and needle size – important when one “somehow” ends up with EIGHT SETS of knitting needles in close sizes in one’s knitting stand).

And then…there were the ‘hmmmm’ things.

A piece of red felt (no idea).

A medicine dropper.

And a hat from somebody’s doll.

Artwork from Boo Bug. A picture of Boo Bug dressed up like a bunny.

FIVE CROCHET HOOKS. (Reminder: I don’t crochet.) (ONE I could understand. But FIVE?!)

A grocery list.

A spelling test Eldest brought home.

An embroidery hoop. (C’mon. Whence? And more importantly, Why?)

And, my personal favorite, a three page long flyer begging parents to consider taking one of the many, many, MANY positions currently open on the parent-student association. They only need a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, sergeant at arms, fundraising coordinator, volunteer coordinator, and donations coordinator.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but does that not pretty much cover all possible board positions?

So, it is perhaps a bit possible that I have been less than diligent about cleaning out the knitting stand after each project lately. But it is now nicely cleaned out and has only what I need to make a whack of booties.

Because no baby should go home with cold tootsies.