Done!

Oh, it turned out beautifully.

The yarn was a bit heavy for the pattern, so I had to do a couple of little modifications. And the crochet edge was a royal pain in the arse with the yarn, it kept splitting and the size 2.5mm crochet hook was...well, there are no words. It's done, it wasn't perfect but at the end of it all, I had no time left and it was really, really sweet.

I tacked the front of the dress together, because it kept flopping over, again a sign to me the yarn was too heavy. I added ribbon to the garter stitching at the waist. I added ribbon to the wrists as well. It turned out absolutely gorgeous. Once Katja was wearing it for a while, though, she got hot and uncomfortable. Bummer.

Pictures tomorrow. They're on the camera but it's upstairs and I just don't want to get it!

So close....

The dress is 91% done, by my calculations. The second sleeve is finished, and the crochet edging around the sleeves and the bottom of the dress is complete. Today I started doing the scalloped crochet edging along the neckline and I'm finding it difficult. I realized I was doing my yo's backwards, no big deal on the edging, but doing it backwards on a dc makes the stitch impossible.

So once I figured that out, things started going ok, but K was impeding my progress. I'm finished the SC row, and am now doing the scalloped edges. I think it looks ok, but I'm so not a crocheter. It looks cute so hopefully no one will notice if it is totally screwed up.

K snuck in a micro-nap in the van on the way home from mom's (fooled me - I really thought she hadn't slept, increasing my frustration). So she was up until almost 10, and woke up again at 10:45, erg. By then I had to get to work, but was desperate to do some knitting, so I started a soaker. I realized yesterday that K is going to need a light-coloured soaker for under her baptism dress, and her existing soakers are colourful, and felted, and bulky - the sad soakers for overnight use that looks gross but are functional.

I make gorgeous longies, sweaters, etc, but soakers just defeat me. All three K wears overnight are misfits. One has gauge issues, and so I felted it to make it less massive, but it's huge in the width and normal rise, it looks weird. Boy is it absorbant though! The second soaker is actually a pair of shorties that I felted (DH put them in the wetbag and I chucked them in the diaper wash on hot. I caught them before they hit the dryer at least so they work as soaker. The last soaker is the one I knit in Minneapolis. It's a curly purly pattern and I don't know why I made 3 soakers with this pattern, I absolutely hate it. I think it would be awesome on a skinny baby or an older baby or over trim fitted diapers, but on my chunky baby it just didn't work. She needs a lowwwwwwww front rise, tons of short rows in the back, big thighs and a drawstring.

So I'm trying the punk knitters pattern this time, it looks trimmer than the other soakers I've made. I will use some of the modifications I've made to the picky pants, like extra short rows and lower rise, as well as doing ribbing only above the eyelets in the waistband. All of these things make them fit better.

It's strange casting on a new project though, after 3 weeks of knitting just the one pattern and yarn, using the one size (2.5 mm) of needle. Using a 3.5 mm needle with a worsted weight yarn is so strange now, though it used to be all I used. It feels bulky, and I'm kind of scoffing at the 80 stitch rounds (the dress had 240 at the skirt), and I found myself wondering if I could knit a nice trim soaker (almost interlock thin) using a wool fingering weight yarn. Then I thought about how many stitches I would be casting on for this little experiment and thought, "um, no, that would not be fun at all!)

Getting close.....

So close in fact, that I already bought my reward yarn for my reward scarf. But don't tell anyone, because I'm actually going to get myself some really extra nice yarn for a second reward scarf. This one's just practice. Shhhh.

The cap is done, the booties are done, and the dress is done except for the second sleeve (I'm about 1/4 done this, and the finishing. I've woven in a LOT Of ends so far. On the booties alone I had about 10 ends each. The hat had quite a few as well. And on the dress...OMG. Lots of work to do, and I understand the finishing involves crochet. English crochet. How hard can it be, right?

I got the stitch n bitch books from the library over the weekend, they're great! I learned how to do proper seaming, on bootie #2. There's a definite difference, and I'm really glad I got these books, they show the techniques really easily. I love the silly references - smily faces and umbrellas for garter stitch, for example. They really helped me figure out the technique quickly. I also learned how to correctly pick up stitches, I honestly had no idea I was doing it wrong - of course, I had never looked up how to do it RIGHT, so how could I?

The modified sleeve looks great - here it is (unblocked of course)

I did a gradual decrease, every 5 rows along with the eyelet pattern, two stitches per row skp at the start and k2tog at the end, then doing it every other row for the rest, once I realized I was 10 cm into the sleeve and still at 50 sts, trying to get to 24! When I got to 24 sts, I did K1, *k2, m1*, then two rows stockingette, then three rows seed stitch. I'm really pleased at the result.

It looks a bit wonky in the photo, but it's lovely on.

To reward myself for finishing the sleeve, I moved on to the cap. It's done too, except for a few stray ends and weaving a ribbon through the eyelets.

Next, the booties - here's a view from the side before seaming. Note the wicked number of ends. I can't even explain what a dumbass move I did in order to accomplish that. But I did improve on my technique for the second bootie, and thus only had about 6 ends to weave in. It still seemed like a lot of ends for such a wee thing.

The finished product, times two:

Now off to finish this stupid second sleeve.

Oh, before I go - a word to the wise. When modifying a pattern such that one will have to replicate one's modifications, such as on a second sleeve, it is best to write down the modified pattern as one goes. Lest one spend countless precious minutes counting rows and stitches on shiny white yarn in bad light. I'll never make that mistake again. Ugh.

oh crud

Another boo-boo detected in the baptism dress. I screwed up the chart on the skirt, making the eyelets on the dress 5 rows apart instead of 4 - I thought I was off, but by the team I'd realized it I was about 10 cm into the skirt. At 240 stitches per row, and 32 -ish rows at that point, I was

Let's see - frog and re-knit approx 7680 stitches of this pattern, plus finish the dress, sleeves, bonnet and socks. By October 21. Riiiiight. So I just went to the land of knitterly denial and kept on knitting. My denial is so deep (or I am so pooped) that I forgot all about my little self-deception until I was 89 stitches * 17 rows = 1513 stitches into the cap. After having already frogged once for a really dumb mistake.

I am leaving it. My knitterly mind tells me no one will notice the lace on the cap doesn't match the pattern on the skirt, or they will think the down-sizing is intentional.

The sleeve is completely modified - I knit from the shoulder down because I wanted to do a fancier cuff - I did this ruffled cuff for a more 'special occasion' kind of look. I might frog and re-knit after the baptism, or even before if I have enough knitting time left.

I have been weaving in ends as I go, too, which I've never done before, but let's face it, my hardest pattern has been picky pants which have precisely 4 ends to weave in provided you have a big enough skien. Maybe 6 ends. This dress had 6 ends in the first 10 cm- Lots of knots in the yarn itself (disappointing considering skein length is 50y) and lots of balls of yarn (I've used 4 thus far), plus four seams for waist and collar, ugh, that's a lot of ends.

But so far so good. I got oohs and aahs from my family today, and my daughter when looking at it exclaimed, "wow, that looks just like the picture!" in true and utter amazement.

I have decided since I've been so single-minded on this task, and may even finish early, I get to knit my next project for myself. ME. I haven't knit myself a single thing! I think I would like to do a fun long skinny scarf, or something lacy to wrap a few times around my neck. Or my first socks. Or all three!

Max wants socks, so I'll probably do the first socks for him. He won't mind if they don't fit, the love.

Off to Ravelry to queue some projects!

xoxox

Moving right along....

The baby dress is really fun to knit, and I would say a good introduction to charts and a somewhat more complex pattern.

The entire body is now done, it took me about 3 hours in total to do the two front pieces (with a false start on the second piece, which I started knitting inside out....honestly, how long do I need to be knitting for before I stop making these idiotic mistakes?).

I did the seaming up today while playing dominoes with the kids after supper (bad mom moment, but the baptism is the 21st....of this month...and apparently it's already the 6th. Oops, the 7th). I did up the shoulders and the waist because of the way I want to do the sleeves.

I started the first sleeve, and I'll have to try it on baby to see if I like it. I decided to pick up stitches and knit it from the top down instead of the bottom up, because I hate seaming that much, especially sleeves. The last one I did was disastrous.

I just realized the pattern as written calls for a gusset type thingamajobby at the underarm, but I'm going to knit it up without (mainly because I couldn't visualize how the gusset would work, but of course NOW it's coming to me that I would just...well, no matter, I'm committed at this point).

I'm stalled now, just trying to figure out if I want to do the cuff that the pattern calls for, or if I want do so something a bit fancier and skip the crochet.

And I just realized yesterday the crochet finishing is kind of mandatory. The dress will really look ordinary if I don't do it. Oh well, what's a fourth trip to the yarn store for the one project really going to matter at this point?

Pics tomorrow. Yawn. Katja doesn't realize all the work mommy is doing on her dress late at night, and has decided to wake hourly recently. The joy of mother-daughter bonding at 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 am is beginning to wear off.

Catastrophe

Well, not so much a catastrophe as a major setback. Well, more of an annoyance, actually.

I made a totally dumbass mistake on the baptism dress. I read the instructions

Back piece: = 56-63-70 (77-84) sts. Knit in M.2 – sts not fitting into pattern are knitted in stocking sts. At the same time when the piece measures 22-27-31 (36-40) cm bind off for armhole each side on every other row: 3 sts 1 time, 2 sts 1 time and 1 st 2 times = 42-49-56 (63-70) sts

to mean I should be measuring from the waistband. This is totally counter-intuitive because the skirt is only 26 cm long, and the dress is actually a bit of an empire waist, so the back shouldn't be longer than the skirt. But thanks to knitterly denial, I kept on knitting - 70 stitches across for about 35 rows before I decided I had to start over. I ripped out about 25 cm of knitting. Thankfully the chart wasn't a difficult one. Then I started over, and now we have this (ignore the desperate need for a pedicure please):

The back is done. I have done two rows of the front right side, but that stuff underneath the dress is what some people call "work" that apparently needs to be "finished" before I can get paid. I know, I know, people are so unreasonable.

So the dress gets set aside while I finish a mediation brief and draft a response to the Labour Board on an application and so on and so forth.

I wonder what this nagging feeling I'm having is? Oh right. Impending doom.

Busy!

I've been dying to update, there just never seems to be the time. Katja's having a nap, but I should be doing about 30 things besides this. So this is a quickie.

Reason I'm busy #1 - I have a couple of upcoming trials, and they're both screwed up in some way. The first one should be resolved, but the Crown is in Thompson and hasn't gotten back to me. The second one is apparently scheduled for the wrong day, adn I don't know how to deal with that.

Knitting - I'm doing a baby dress for Katja - it's from Drops Design. I'm using Sirdar Baby Bamboo, and it's beautiful, but as I said on Ravelry, I'm intimidated. Basically I'm only allowing myself to knit this for the next 3 weeks.

Update #1 - The skirt is now done, as well as the waistband, and I have about 10 centimetres of the back finished. This yarn is dreamy to knit with, it's so soft and springy, and doesn't fall apart like cotton does. The dress is quite hevy, it will probably weigh about a pound when it's finished, but the drape is lovely. I'm feeling better about the pattern now, too.

Max took the bus to school today, which is a pretty big milestone. It will save me about 45 minutes a day to have him do this, which is really nice.

New pics - Katja's getting so big, here she is in a pair of longies I made using a picky pants derived pattern, it's got a crotch gusset but beyond that everything is cobbled together from other patterns I've done, and here is the result - I've added extra short rows and reduced the rise in hopes these will stay up, and I've changed the waistband, eliminating ribbing below the eyelet row. I used a ruffle finish from the sheepy pants pattern, but I will modify it next time to reduce the ruffle's length, this is a big unweildy for a crawling baby.

And finally a photo of the outfit Memere made for Max almost 12 years ago. She would have been 85 at the time, and her eyesight was really starting to go, so I imagine knitting this in white with tiny needles and doing a fair isle yoke would have been a challenge to say the least. I really miss her, I wish I could tell her "I get it! I get how much you loved me!".