More Baby Sweaters

This little Wonderful Wallaby has been around for about 10 years or so.  I originally made it for a girl at the office but forgot to send it off.  It languished in the sewing room for years before it turned up again.  Now it is in the Baby Gift Box.

I have been tinkering with this pattern to make it doable on the knitting machine since knitting this one by hand.  The dark red sweater in the last post is the pattern I came up with.

This next sweater is also an old old sweater.  I made it back when I was knitting items for a Christmas boutique, and it was supposed to have a zipper up the front.  The front edges had been crocheted to get them ready for sewing the zipper, but I never got around to putting the zipper in.  It seemed to me that the zippers now have a section of plastic with sometimes sharp edges at the corners on the top area of the zipper, and I didn't want that anywhere near a baby's face.  Finally, I ripped out the crochet, which was a finicky and lengthy job, and added a regular button band.

A sweater like this is a good way to use up scraps of yarn when there is not enough of one color for the whole sweater.

More Items For The Baby Stash

There has been a little clean up in the sewing room, and I unearthed about five unsewn baby bibs that can be finished off and added to the baby gift stash.  In addition to that, a few sweaters have been finished up.

This was a first design version of a pullover hoodie.  My goal is to use up a lot of leftover yarn scraps.  This version is usable, but the slope of the raglan is too steep and the hood is not tall enough.  The front opening depth is good though.  This was knit entirely on the machine except for the garter stitch border and the ribbing.

 

 

Here's version two, a success except that the front opening needs to be deeper.   I miscalculated the row count for the opening but it still works.  It just made it impossible to hang the whole hood on the machine at the same time, so there is a seam up the back.  The seed stitch was also done on the machine which is possible but finicky though it didn't take as long as I expected.  I always test the baby sweaters (these are all Size 2) by pulling them over my own head.  If the sweater neck opening is big enough for me, it will certainly work for a toddler.

Baby Gift Box

I've always thought it would be a great idea to have a box of completed baby gifts ready to go for showers or new baby gifts instead of rushing around at the last minute.  I've thought about this idea for at least 20 years and am finally doing something about it.  My daughters are at the age when lots of friends or co-workers are having babies, and it can be expensive to buy all those gifts.  I have lots of leftover yarn, lots of patterns, and a current baby item mojo, so I have started making items for the gift box.  First thing completed was a sweater from the book Kids Kids Kids:

This makes a cute sweater and an interesting knit.  The shape of the sweater is very different before it is assembled, but it all works out in the end.  Next I tried out some baby booties patterns and ended up crocheting some accidentally large footwear:

These were from a pamphlet I have had for years, but ended up big enough for a really large toddler.  I tried another pattern and produced a short, fat bootie that was a frogged failure.  After that, I decided on baby socks and had success:

 

This pattern is available free online at http://www.cu-needleworks.com/patterns/kids/baby_socks_1/baby_socks_turned.pdf 

 There are still three pullovers in the sewing room that need to be sewn together and a cardigan waiting for its buttons.

Light Blue Pullover

This pullover still needs some blocking to stretch out the lace pattern and make the sleeve caps smooth, but at least it is finished.

The lace portion should flare out more since form fitting the midriff is not an attractive look at my age, but this yarn usually relaxes quite nicely after a few washes.

In spite of the three unassembled sweaters sitting in the sewing room, I am thinking of making a lot of baby sweaters for the long-planned stash of future shower gifts.  My girls are also at the stage of life when friends are having babies so it would be nice to use up the scrap yarn from all these sweaters in a useful way.  I found a really nice baby sweater pamphlet this week at the thrift store with some nice basic sweaters including a patterned round-yoke cardigan that would be good for using up leftovers. 

One New Sweater After Another

As a distraction from sewing together the sweaters recently loomed, there has been a lot of crocheting going on around here.  I found the purple Soft Serve sweater that has been about half completed for months and thought about working on it.  I just looked at an old post and discovered that I started crocheting that purple Soft Serve in the fall of 2012, so that poor UFO was older than I thought. In order to refresh my memory of the pattern I decided to use up the leftover yarn from the latest afghan, the mint green color, to make a fast bolero version.  There seemed to be most of a one-pound skein left and surely that would be enough to crochet a bolero-type sweater, right?  Not if you change your mind and crochet a regular cardigan, then have to go buy another skein of yarn, use that up and have to buy another, ending up with just as much leftover yarn as you started with.  Stash busting it was not.  And this sweater weighs over two pounds.

In spite of the weight, it is a very cozy and comfortable cardigan and will be great for the cold winter mornings.  I used backwards crochet to finish off the border edges.

Even though it took longer than I thought it would, this did make me work on the purple version, and I managed to finish that off this morning but haven't taken any pictures of it yet.  The purple version has ties instead of buttons.

Sweaters in March

There is a burst of knitting activity going on this month so far.  It's a lot faster to whip up a pullover than a cardigan.  Now all the assembly of the pieces has to happen.

 The picture above shows the pieces of the new pullovers.  The picture below shows a better representation of the true colors of the purple and the pink sweaters.

The pink sweater has a round neckline and all the rest will be V-neck pullovers.  There is also a yellow cardigan that needs its buttons.

These should look a lot better than  my old frayed sweatshirts for working around the house.

Update:  My sister was down for a visit and to go with us to Stitches West, so I had her try on the round-yoke cardigan.  It looked so much better on her than on me that it was soon on its way with its new owner.  I learned a lot making it but it just wasn't comfortable on me.

Pullovers!

The ribbings for a purple pullover had been finished for several months, and I had the back already hanging from the machine, but then came the holidays and I forgot it.  The poor ribbing got all stretched out of shape so I took it off the machine and knit a new one. Now the basic knitting of the sweater pieces is almost finished.

 Above is the back hanging from the LK150.  I am really loving this machine.  It knits the worsted weight yarn like a champ and is so easy to use.

This is a dark and overcast day here in sunny California, so the above picture is pretty bad, but you can see that the front, back and one sleeve are done.  I have already put in a book-on-tape of Sense and Sensibility so will shortly go into the sewing room and finish up the second sleeve. 

I got distracted from the light blue empire pullover because it is a little too dark in the sewing room for dropping stitches and picking them back up to create the pattern I want on the yoke portions, so I am knitting plain sweaters for now until the sun comes back.  Also started are a pink pullover and a delft blue pullover.

Lots of leftover yarn is starting to accumulate here and there in the sewing room, so I'll have to think of some project to use it up.  Not an afghan, though, because I am all crocheted out for the time being.

Four New Sweaters

This was UFO week.  I sewed on so many buttons this week that I will be making pullovers for awhile until I can face a button again.  However, I now have 4 more sweaters. 

The first cardigan I decided to finish off was the navy jacket.  While I was on a roll, I finished the green cardigan jacket with the eyelet borders:

 

 

Then it was the raglan variegated cardigan:

 It seemed at first that it would be hard to find buttons that would go with this busy yarn, but I found some excellent ones at Beverly's.

I always thought that raglans didn't look good on me, but now I have changed my mind.  If the sleeves are 3/4 length and the seams are slightly fitted, the sweater looks very good.  It certainly is easier to sew in raglan sleeves than set-in sleeves.

The last sweater was the fair isle cardigan.  It's nice that this is finally done, but I don't think I'll make any more round yoke sweaters because I don't like the fit on me and how the yoke feels.  I'd like to try more fair isle though.

I'm almost ready to hang the light blue pullover on the machine.  It will be great to finish off a sweater without buttons.

Midwinter Knitting

Well, time has been flying along and here it is a new year already.  Here in California, we are having a very cold but dry winter so far.  Those completely sewn-together sweaters have been making me feel guilty, so one of the first things I am going to try to finish up this January is getting the buttons sewn onto the three cardigans.  I even wore the navy cardigan jacket once with a fancy pin holding the top together, so that is the one I decided to work on first.

 

I think I will get a lot of use out of this sweater because it has a classic shape and 3/4 sleeves.

 

 

The emerald green sweater jacket is the same pattern but has eyelets in the borders just like the pink jacket I made last year (which I happen to be wearing right this minute).  I didn't get the button positions marked  yet, but at least it is out of the stack of unfinished items and ready to work on.  Both of these colors will be very useful.  I have been making an effort this winter to wear my sweaters more often instead of just finishing them and putting them in a drawer.

The current project is a pullover sweater (will not languish unfinished waiting for its buttons) from this book:

I am using the stitch pattern and my TNT sweater pattern, and the finished pullover will have 3/4-length sleeves.  One thing I have discovered is that it is very hard to knit a lace pattern and watch some of my favorite Korean dramas at the same time, because I lose my place in the pattern when I look up to read the subtitles.

The lace portions will be knitted by hand and then hung on the machine for the rest of the bodices and sleeves.