More blogging

In an attempt to keep you blog readers on your toes I thought I would discuss the sideways cardigan.
This cardigan started after last years Knitters Fair, to provide me a with a cardigan that was versatile. The idea when I went to the fair was a basic grey cardigan, that however changed when I saw this Silk Garden yarn. I purchased the yarn and figured the pattern would be decided later.

After briefly contemplating mitred squares, I decided on knitting the cardigan sideways. This way I would not have horizontal stripes (the only adults that can get away with these are pregnant woman and wafer thin models).

I started on a front, the back and then the second front. Here the project stalled for a number of reasons. This fall though I knew I needed to finish it. I finally decided how to do the sleeves - much simpler than I thought it was going to be (Thanks Maggie Righetti!). However, after I knit one sleeve, and went to seam the second front, I noticed a problem. The necklines were different. I had knit the shaping for the second front using the decreases as for the back. This needed to be ripped out before I started the collar. This was fine since it gave me time to think about how to knit the collar.


I am now working on the second version of the collar, and I as I write this post think that maybe it needs to be ripped out again. When I have tried the cardigan on it seems that the neck opening is to big, and the collar is not going to fix this. I was just going to live with it, but I think if I put short rows along the sides it may make the opening smaller and fix the problem? Anyone have any ideas? Maybe I can wear this for Christmas this year.

Knits in the wild

An almost too small Baby Surprise Jacket on a one month old
and a sock puppet.

Details:
Yarn: Leftovers of Soy wool stripes and Patons Kroy sock yarn
Pattern: Skacel Collection Sock Puppet - Bird 1
Needles: 3.5 mm and 4.5 mm

What you can't see in the above photo is the tail (located on the heel). These puppets are for babies not yet walking.
This pattern pamphlet has a bunch of cute puppets to make. I think more will be popping up on the blog.

A Tale of Two Hats

or Part 3 in my series of trying to catch up on my current knitting.

I had two balls of Lana Gatto Baby Soft in my stash that were just begging to be knit up. This is soft yarn and these were colours were muted. The first ball was chosen as a hat for Ali.
This is a simple 1x1 ribbed hat, it took me three attempts to get cast on number/needle size correct for his hat. As I was knitting along and deciding on how I was going to do the decreases, I remembered a series by TechKnitter on how to get a flat top in a hat instead of a pointed top. I thought that would be the best for this basic hat.
I used her instructions for the decreases just modifying the first decrease to accommodate my use of 1x1 rib instead of 2x2 rib that she uses. I liked the final result.

Yarn:Lana Gatto Baby Soft
Needles: 4.5 mm
Pattern: TechKnitting's method of decreases in the 8 trick pocket hat


Next up a hat for me
Back in September I discussed making a hat for myself and even purchased yarn to make myself a hat (and one for NB). As I started thinking about using that yarn for Foliage, and the changes I should do to account for the gauge difference. I remembered the second ball of the Baby Soft. It would work beautifully for Foliage.
I added an extra 1/2 repeat and ribbed till I ran out of yarn (4 rnds)

Yarn:Lana Gatto Baby Soft
Needles: 4.5 mm
Pattern: Foliage by Emilee Mooney

Hedera Socks

In my on going challenge to get some FO blogged, I present finished Hedera Socks. You may not remember but I originally blogged about these socks back in February when I had finished the first one. The second sock slowly languished until the beginning of October when I finally finsihed the second one. After proudly finishing the socks it took until this past weekend for me to finally photograph the socks (since I wanted to wear them).

Project Details
Yarn: Brown Sheep Wildfoote Luxury Sock Yarn
Needles: 2.25mm /US1
Pattern: Hedera by Cookie A
Mods: None

A baby blanket

I am going to try and get caught up with posting some FO and progress shots this week. We will see how that goes, it is great to have goals, it is another to finish them.

Back in June I started a baby blanket out of Rowan Cotton Rope. It went with me on the trip to the Dominican, where the modular nature made it great for beach knitting. In September I put a push on to get the squares done. I started the seaming using a crochet seam and I was not happy with how it looked. I wasn't sure on how best to seam it so I continues on till the blanket was 1/2 done. At that point I tried the whip stitch seam and immediately liked it better so I ripped what I had already done and reseamed the blanket. Hundreds of stitches were picked up around the edges, and the border was picked up and knitted. The octagon shape was chosen as I would not have enough yellow to make the enough squares for a square blanket.

The idea came after going to the Woolly Thoughts workshop hosted by Shall We Knit in May.
Yarn: Rowan Cotton Rope
Needles: 4.5 mm /US 7
Pattern: My own

Baby has arrived

Just a quick note to let you know baby has arrived and we are home and doing well. Details can be found here.

Election results

I stayed up late last night (well late for a pregnant woman) to watch the election results. I was not happy, then when I woke up to go to the bathroom I couldn't get back to sleep since I was so pissed off at Canadians.
Dr Steph sums it up the best here

In 2004, Canadians made fun of Americans for re electing Bush. The first time in 2000 it was a mistake- voter fraud, supreme court intervention but 2004 that was all the voters doing.
However, here Canada just repeated the mistake. We have re-elected a leader that doesn't understand the economy (head in the sand), that is out of touch with the people, a leader that doesn't understand basic science (apparently you can burn coal without emitting CO2).

We need election reform in Canada. We have declining voter turnout, this election was the lowest turnout ever only 58% eligible voters turned out to vote. Our first past the post electoral system allows the Tories to have a minority government (it was almost a majority) with 147 seats after receiving 37.6% of the vote. The Liberal Party received 26.2% of the vote and got 76 seats. Over 60% of Canadians who voted did not want Harper to be Prime Minister. Mixed member proportional system is not a perfect electoral system but it may give us better representation of what Canadians want (pdf link).

So I now have an MP that I have written asking clarification and he ignored me, he is anti choice, and likes abstinence programs. I still have a Prime Minister that is an effective politician but stands for everything I am against. The government spent $300 million in an economic crisis on an election that was against the law. The only consolation is that it could have been a majority (I shudder at the thought)- he was only 11 seats short.