Play Ball!

Last time, I mentioned that I was working on one other round thing. It's time for the big reveal...

It's a knitted baseball that I made for my friend Staci for her birthday. The pattern is Play Ball! by Dagny Heidig. It's really quite clever. It's simply two hourglass shapes seamed together, which when you look at a baseball, is basically how they're constructed. The knitting doesn't take too long - I estimate about 1.75 episodes of Dr. Who - but it does take a while to seam up. I didn't do as well with the seaming as I would have liked, but the red "stitching," embroidered on afterwards, mostly masks the seam line anyway. Not being an expert, I'm not sure if I got the stitching right, but I think it's close.

Staci is an excellent knitter and a great friend. Those of you who know Pona will appreciate that she basically nursed him back from the brink of death for many months before handing him off to us. We have the easy part, as evidenced by his snoozy, relaxed self snoring gently next to me on the couch as I write this. Such a sack of lazy contentment, bless him.

Work progresses on the Hillhead Slipover, although not much this week. I'm still quite happy with the process. It's definitely a project to keep one on one's toes. As worried as I was by the amount of yarn I used in swatching, my fears of running out of yarn are mostly behind me now. I'm about a repeat-and-a-half from the armhole steeks. I really don't remember how those are handled. Of course, I could just study ahead in the pattern, which might allay those fears. I seem to remember a bit of an issue with decreases that didn't match up near the shoulders when I did the Vaila Slipover, which is basically the same construction. Must remember to compare the two.