Samantha Shipped

Not exactly. But almost.

Yesterday afternoon, as planned, I sewed on the buttons that I'd purchased earlier in the day. It went fine. Then, in the evening, I thought I'd run it through the washer just to make sure that the buttons didn't fall off and all the seams didn't undo themselves, which I was quite certain would happen. These disasters, miraculously, did not occur, so I think all system are go. I was also pleased to see that it did not shrink. I laid it out on the blocking board to let it dry overnight.

Today, Jeff and I went shopping and bought a gift box, some tissue paper, some gift wrap and a shipping box to make sure this was all done up right. All that's left to do is talk to my aunt to find out here to send this little outfit for her first great-granddaughter, and then run by the post office to send it on its way.

I'm very pleased with how this turned out and I can highly recommend this pattern. I'm pleased with how it turned out in cotton, but I'm going to try superwash wool the next time. It really doesn't take that long to knit up and the instructions are very clear. You do have to pay attention in a few places, but that's what makes this interesting. If there's a little girl that you need to make something for you, you really ought to consider this.

I can't wait to see some pictures of how it looks on my little first cousin, twice removed! When I get some, I'll be sure to share.

Who's Got the Button(s)?

I do. Today, after knitting with friends in the morning, I went to Silk Road Fabrics to buy some buttons for some long-languishing projects. Snowden came to help me, for which I'm very grateful. She has an excellent eye for such things, good taste, and, if you're looking for someone to paw through a bucket of 1940s Mississippi River shell buttons, she's your gal. Thanks, Snowden!

After looking at some cool matte metalic buttons shaped like Mongol shields, and some nice rounded rectangle buttons that faded ever so slightly from dark to light, I chose these translucent metal-edged buttons for the Whitfield Jacket. I like how the lines across the button could be used to parallel the vertical lines of the jacket. And, the semi-see-through nature of them allows the darkness of the yarn behind to peep through. It was hard to decide, though.

For the Samantha Dress, I went with these pinkish translucent buttons with little purple dots on them. At first I was a little leery of mixing purple and pink, but they work for some reason. Very feminine. As Buddy Cole responded when accused by the lesbian softball team he managed of designing uniforms that were too "girly": "As if anything can be!"

So now it's on to sewing these on. I'm no quite ready for buttons on the Whitfied Jacket, but I'm going to try and tackle these with Samantha this afternoon. Snowden walked me through her version of doing so, an illustration of which I found here.

I placed them on the garments just to see what kind of what they'll look like. Wish me luck!

A-Hem

Several actually. I spent a big chunk of this damp and drizzly day finishing the seams and hems on the Samantha Dress. The hems are made with a clever construction. Eyelets along the bottom form the center of the fold, such that when the hem is sewn, the eyelets form little jags across the bottom. The jaggedy edges along the bottom hem (shown here) are broader than the ones at the neck and at the sleeves, because I misread the directions earlier. Still, it doesn't look nearly as Wilma Flintstone-y as I'd feared.

But it took a lot of time. I wish I'd been smart like Julia and knitted the hems together as I went up. It would have saved a lot of time. But by the time I remembered, I was halfway up the dress.

Now all I have left to do is get some buttons and sew them on. The word on the knitting street is that Silk Road Fabrics is the place to take care of this in Austin. I've never been there before, and sadly for me, it's closed on Sunday. So I plan on making a trip there soon for buttons for both Samantha and Whitfield. I'd also like to wash this dress to make sure it doesn't fall apart during the process. If something bad happens, I'd rather it happen to me than to the recipients.

I dug up my Cordovan socks for some knitting Saturday morning, and ran into an awkward moment when I couldn't remember the simple 4-stitch motif from the Charade sock pattern. It's one of those things that I could do in my sleep several weeks ago when I put this down, but Saturday morning all I could do was stare at it. Weird how that works. I used my phone to get to the pattern and had to laugh at the simple steps that had slipped my mind.

17 Going On 19

I need someone older and wiser telling me what to do. Or just wiser would probably work. Or someone better at math. While working this pattern, I'm required to execute two 3-needle bind offs attaching the front panels to the back. The problem is, following the pattern as well I could muster, I came up with 17 stitches on the front panels and 19 on the back shoulders.

The Law of Binding Off With 3 Needles states that the number of stitches being joined shall be the same. I double-checked the pattern and double-checked, even using a calculator to find out what the problem was. I still came up with 17 and 19. So I tinked back the front panels from the live stitches that were resting on waste yarn and altered the decreases so that the front now had 19 stitches instead of 17. I worked up the nerve to email the designer to find out what's up. Timid and shy and scared am I of things beyond my ken.

I also managed to pick up and knit the neck edging on the dress. Like many things on this garment, I think it would be better executed in wool instead of cotton. This splitty yarn is driving me nuts. However, for the little one that's going to be wearing it, I still think it's the best choice.

On to the sleeves.

Postscript: I just heard back from Kate Gilbert, the designer. She apologized for there being a mistake in the pattern (I'm still not sure that's the case), and she offered some hints as to how I could manipulate the situation should this ever arise again. Talk about gracious and helpful. I just love knitters.

Pardon Me, Your Slip Isn't Showing (Or Is It?....)

I promise this isn't going to turn into a daily confessional column about how I screwed up my knitting on the Samantha Dress. But I have this vague idea that if I share these tragedies with the outside world, they will never happen again. I'll get back to you later about how that works out.

During a shift in pattern at the top of the smocking (a new word for me) on one of the front halves of the dress, I switched from carrying the yarn in front during the stitch-slipping process to carrying the yarn in back. All of a sudden my neat little hyphens of cotton disappeared. And I didn't figure it out until many rows later. This is what I get for watching TV while knitting. Try as I might, I'm not very good at multitasking.

This picture shows where the dashes should have been. Though I've been whining on these pages about knitting in cotton, one thing it has going for it is that it's not difficult to pick up stitches in it if you have to frog back. I had this ripped back and was back on track in no time.

The first half of the front is done, and I've cast on the for the second. Should be a bit easier since I don't have to worry about button holes. I am getting a bit nervous as to whether I bought enough yarn or not...

Watch Your Asterisk

I only recently realized that there should not be an extra stitch between the eyelets along the bottom edge of the Samantha Dress. I don't think it's violating much in the way of copyright to say that this eyelet row, as knitted, is *k1, yo, k2t*. However, the instructions are written as k1 *yo kt2*. Which is totally different.

I only noticed when I started working on one of the front halves of the dress. I couldn't figure out why the eyelets were so much closer together. I stared and stared and stared at the directions. They were identical for front and back. It was my brain that moved the asterisk.

I am not going to be re-knitting the back. So I'm going to continue my mistake throughout the rest of the garment. It won't look all that different, and luckily, this mistake didn't affect the stitch count. Which makes sense. Otherwise I would have caught this earlier.

Today's moral: Watch your asterisk.

Pink & Wink

It seems that if I'm not going to be knitting in one of my dark, drab colors (or non-colors as some of my fellow knitters have dubbed them), it's got to be pink. Hot pink. Must be going around.

Things are going much better with the Samantha dress now that I'm not periodically and randomly kitting into the row below. It's just a question of paying a bit more attention. Still not loving working with the cotton, but more pleased at how it's turning out. Weaving in ends with cotton always makes me nervous -- there's nothing to stop those little strings from working their way out. So I made a knot. I've read several times that knitting should always involve loops, never knots. But I'm doing it anyway for the peace of mind and I can now say that I've never not knotted my knitting. I'll do my best to hide them in the seams.

Although the patterned stitch band across the bodice looks quite different knit in cotton rather than wool, I kind of like the effect. It's a bit see-through, as you might be able to see in the photo, but luckily, 6-month-olds aren't known for their prudishness and modesty. It's going to look so cute on her!

A short while ago, I ran into Amy Wink, a college friend who teaches on my campus some semesters. We managed to get together for lunch Monday and it was wonderful. Amy is an English professor, and thus much better at writing about our catching up. If you'd like to eavesdrop, check out this post at her blog. It was great seeing her again and getting to spend some time together. Pie was eaten.

Amy has a horse with whom (which? -- "which" is probably more correct, but "whom" feels more appropriate...Amy would know!) she practices the art of carriage driving. I loved hearing her talk about it, and I'm looking forward to going for a drive with her and Will. So I've learned a bit about driving, Amy has learned a bit about the needle arts, and in that weird synchronistic way that new knowledge has a way of working into our lives, Amy ran across something on the interwebs about crocheted horse ear bonnets.

I wonder what Will would look like in hot pink...

The Next Generation

Last weekend, my Aunt June called to let me know that she had become a great-grandmother this summer. My oldest cousin's oldest daughter had a baby daughter at the end of June, Whitney Lynne. For those of you keeping score at home, she's my first cousin, twice removed. It struck me that she would have been my grandfather' first geat-great grandchild, born in what would have been his 100th year.

So, inspired by Julia's lovely example, I decided to knit Whitney a little something to welcome her into the world. I'm making Samantha in the 6 month size -- hopefully useful for the winter. But after consultation with some fellow knitters and in consideration of our mild winters down this way, I decided to knit this out of cotton -- Dale Stork, to be precise.

I'm having issues. First of all, it's been a long time since I've knit with cotton. Unlike warm, comforting and forgiving wool, it's cool, robotic and isn't interesting in protecting your feelings. But, I'm committed to making this washable and wearable as long as possible, so cotton it is.

As I was working, I noticed something that I first noticed last fall while working on the Cobra Sweater. Every once in a while, I do something weird while knitting stockinette. I think it happens on the wrong side as I'm purling across, and I think I'm purling into the stitch below. Perhaps one of my experienced readers can let me know? It's not as noticeable in wool -- in wool, you can feel it more than you can see it. But in cotton, boy can you see it! A weird little bump. Here's an example to the left. As I got back to knitting this morning, I saw many of these. I'm talking dozens. How did I miss this yesterday? I laddered down and fixed a few, but then I started inspecting more closely, and decided to just frog it back to the bottom.

What you see in the first picture is my progress after hours and hours of work. Sigh. I'm going to be more mindful of my purling on this from now on to try and avoid this in the future.

Postscript (8:37pm): It appears I was knitting, not purling, into the row below. To keep gauge, I've been knitting very tightly. So tightly, in fact, that I can't see the bar across the bottom of the stitch -- it's hiding behind the needle, making it quite easy to knit into the stitch below. Now that I know what to look for, things are going much better.