Monday, March 14, 2016

Out With the Old, and...

As of two weeks ago, I had reworked one of the sleeves on my Sawyer Sweater and was beginning the second. Today, on the eve of the Ides of March, I've finished the second sleeve and sewn everything back together. Much better now. But not as much room to conceal knives...

The sleeves are still longish -- with my arms at my side they hang to the base of my thumbs. But rolled up they look and feel fine without all the sags and bags of the earlier iteration. The overall effect is much more to my liking. I'm glad I took the time to correct this, and did so without letting it languish until our next cold snap. While taking theses pictures, here in the last week of winter (technically), the temperature was 92°.

It feels good to finally put this project to rest and move on to the next knitting theme: babies.

I've heard many knitters remark on this phenomenon. Babies arrive in batches. It never seems that you have just one pregnant friend, relative or coworker. As soon as you hear about one, the news of impending blessed events just cascades. So I have at least three bundles of joy in my scopes, and I want to make a little something special for each of them.

I wrestled with whether to post anything about any of these projects, so as not to spoil any surprises. I hope to keep things vague enough so that any of the expectant moms that stumble across these will still be left guessing as to my plans. Plus, I just can't not share these.

First up is a baby blanket pattern called Vivid designed by Emily Wessel and available at Tin Can Knits. It's made with little square panels that are knit in bright colors and sewn together. The total number doesn't matter, but I've chosen 16 separate colors and am planning a 32"x32" blanket made up of 16 8"x8" squares. I'm using Knit Picks Swish DK Superwash.

I'm still playing with color placement, but I really liked what one Ravelry knitter did, aligning color families from most saturated to palest. I had to substitute an orange for one that had been discontinued -- you can probably tell which one from the photo. But I like having a column of red-oranges, blues, yellow-greens and purple-pinks. I'm almost to the halfway point and have enough yarn leftover for a very Steven-ish variation on these. The panels don't take as long as you might think to knit up, and the pattern is surprisingly easy to memorize.

Vivid, no? Just the thing to be knitting as we head in to spring, I think.