Friday, August 31, 2012

Never ending surprise.



This is my latest Baby Surprise Jacket -- Bamboo Baby Surprise. I am guessing that my math was off. The arms ended up really skinny. This picture was taken before I finished the second arm and before I sewed up the shoulders. The arms look even thinner now.

So how to fix it? My thought is to remove the seams from the shoulders and pick up and knit about 8 or even 10 garter ridges across the entire length of the wingspan. I will most likely use the faded denim color to do the ridge, but I am also weighing using the navy.

Aren't the buttons really cute? I thought they are perfect for a little boy's sweater. I had been planning on purchasing some brown wooden ones, but finding these was a welcome "surprise"! (Pun intended!)

Happy Knitting!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Girly Girl Finished, Now on to Next Surprise

My Girly Girl Tunic is upstairs on my spare bed blocked and drying. I used my lace blocking wires (Blockit) to block it out. It worked really well and I was able to use a minimum of pins and had it blocked in less than 5 minutes. Nice! I wasn't sure how I was going to block something that is knitted in the round, but the blocking wires worked well. That was an investment well spent.

Now that Girly Girl is essentially finished, I cast on another Baby Surprise Jacket only this time, I want to make one that will fit a baby between 12 and 18 months, so I am going to use Elizabeth Zimmerman's [K] method to get the size. I knit a swatch on US size 9 needles with Hobby Lobby's Bamboo Spun which is a boucle-like yarn made with 77% Bamboo and 23% Polyamide. My gauge came out with 4.5 stitches to the inch. I used the size chart from the Craft Yarn Council to determine the measurements I needed.

I cast on the number of stitches I calculated and am working on the first few rows right now. I will post again  when I have enough to photograph.

Happy Knitting!