Thursday, October 18, 2007

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!)

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