the end of waiting

Oh jubilation! The time of lounging around on my couch and knitting baby clothes is at an end. *sniff* Goodbye anime! I guess I'll spend a little less time with you now, but I'll be so much happier.

Today I signed my contract to work at the Chamber of Worker's library for a year, starting this Thursday. I interned there last summer and loved it, so I am extremely happy to be back and to be able to mix things up there. I'll be partly responsible for their facebook feed, so it will get really interesting, I'm sure. And since I love bringing cakes to work, I'll be baking a lot more ... lucky colleagues!

But I said baby clothes in my last post, didn't I? Yes, sometimes I knit clothes for a non-specified child. No, not to give away. Or maybe yes, after I have stopped being capable of bearing children. But for now, some of the baby clothes I knit are for my own still non-existant children. (Note to self: good first step in that direction? Get a boyfriend.)

Most baby clothes for the Child of the Future happen like this: I go to my favorite yarn shop, see some yarn, note that the color combination is gorgeous and I'll have an idea of what to make. Sometimes I won't have an exact idea, but often I will. .And then I either start knitting right away or the yarn waits. And waits. And waits. Until I am struck with the need to knit something small but not too involved ...

Something not too involved? This little baby kimono? Oh ... whatever. I had the pink and black Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 for a while and wanted to do something with it ... something cool. What's cooler than a kimono? I looked up some of my favorite flowers and a fun fairisle pattern in my hand-drawn book of patterns where I keep everything I copy from somewhere else (occasionally, I design my own patterns, too).

For the actual kimono pattern, I used the Latte Macchiato pattern I found on Ravelry. I called mine Pink Punk but maybe Fluorescent Sakura would have been good, too. My camera can't handle this shade of pink ...

The back features this lovely rose you can hardly see and on each shoulder there's a little flower as well. It is very punky, but now there's thousands of ends to weave in, blocking and all that to do. I guess I'll institute a knitting morning in my work week. I can do this because I'll be working from noon to 8pm.

This is another creation for the Child of the Future. This time I thought up my own pattern and constructed this very randomly. I used a provisional cast-on and knit the fairisle band. Then I undid the cast-on and knit the orange part at the bottom.

After that, I started on the top part but unraveled it about four times to get the neck placement right, I wasn't sure whether to have more buttons on one shoulder to have more space for the head, I noticed I had enough yarn to make the sleeves a little longer and so I kept knitting and unraveling until I was quite annoyed with myself. In the end, I decided to only allow one button in the neck band and made the whole neck opening larger than before.

This one is called Arrow, knit in Lana Grossa Bingo and I must say, I am very happy with it. I just wish I could try it on an actual human child to see how it fits.

I do have a lot of Lana Grossa Bingo slotted for children's clothing. There's some purple and green waiting for something stripey, some pea green waiting for a pea jacket ... but this dark blue and light blue combination (inspired, I must add, by my Classic Baby Shirt, which I also knit for the Child of the Future) made it to the knitting process this time. It's actually pretty big, 80 stitches, if I recall correctly, maybe even 88. And I still have a bit of yarn left over, so I could have made it bigger.

But then I couldn't have added this incredibly twee collar. Yes, this piece of knitwear is called Sailor. Sue me for crimes against ... commonsense taste (or whatever the opposite of twee is called - the internets suggest unrefined, but that isn't correct, really), but I had to make this when I noticed that I really had lots of yarn left over.

A few more details: the front straps will be buttoned to the back as soon as I have proper buttons (must find something nautical). On the left, you can see some of the traveling jogless stripes in the round as taken from the excellent TECHknitting blog (link goes directly to the post on jogless stripes).

 

Finally I made this little number for the baby girl of an ex-boyfriend, but I'm starting to fear that she won't be able to fit in it anymore.

The Spirit of Lutin - the yarn was supposed to be a fairy doll - was made to fit a number of sizes, but I probably didn't make it wide enough.

After all, the main thing that makes all my baby knitting a somewhat risky investment is that I have no access to a real live child I could force to dress in the things I make. I bet if I ever have children they'll hate me for making them wear handknits all the time. Or they will always be the right size for all these pieces when it's summer ...



And with this the baby clothing streak is over for now. I've started two scarves for myself ... but the camera is still broken, because while I did buy superglue, I lost the piece of plastic I was supposed to reattach to the camera. Maybe I'll find it. Until then, a piece of tape will have to suffice. Let's see if they'll let me knit during work - maybe in the evening hours!