Preschooler Surprise

I finished the Baby Surprise Jacket, and I'm thrilled with it. I just followed the standard EZ pattern, but with a much larger-gauge yarn than she suggests. If you do this yarn in the suggested worsted weight yarn (I think worsted...maybe smaller), you get a jacket for a baby. If you do it in my yarn, which is an Aran weight, you get this:


That's my sizeable 3 year old, who usually wears a 4T.

The jacket is proportioned for a baby, hence the short arms. I could pick up stitches along the sleeves and lengthen them, but I rather like the short sleeve. The number of handknit sweaters I end up washing because they got a little food or paint just on the edge of the sleeves is large. Maybe this will cut down a bit on the washing -- dare to dream.

Specifics: I knit this particular jacket from 5 skeins of my own soft-spun yarn. I used a 5mm needle, but I'm a really loose knitter, so a more typical knitter may wish to use a 6 or 6.5mm needle. I had very little of those skeins left over when the project was done. If you wanted to lengthen the sleeves, you'd want 6 skeins. Garter stitch is lovely, but it does tend to eat yarn. Still, the resulting fabric is so squooshy and yum, I think the yarn-consumption is worth it.

The photo shoot was a bit of a challenge. You know how it is. The second your small child senses that you *really* want her to try something on, that is the one time she absolutely will not do it. And if they do it, they will run away from the camera when you pull that out and ask for just one picture.

Here is my daughter 'hiding' from the camera.


Tomorrow is Got Craft, and I have the usual pre-show jitters. I'm afraid I won't have enough stuff, I'm afraid no one will buy anything, I'm afraid I'll have not enough breakfast and too much coffee and be a manic mess whenever I try to talk to anyone, prompting the public at large to start referring to me as "that insane yarn lady." (I'm pretending that they don't already.)

At least I have a ride. My car broke down on Wednesday, and the garage I like can't look at it until Monday...and how will I get downtown with all my stuff you ask? Fortunately, the Skytrain is not involved, as amusing as it would be to carry 8 garbage bags full of wool on public transit. No, instead, the lovely and generous Amanda of Ebbandflo Designs, a vendor at Got Craft who just happens to live near me, will be giving me a lift. Me and my giant bags of wool. Fortunately, she sells jewellery which is small.

I am so buying her lunch.

In which I totally brag about my own stuff

I had so much fun making the purple and grey stranded mittens, that I wanted to make them again. I decided to make them out of my regular corriedale singles, and I couldn't be more pleased by the results. Here are my new mittens:


I made them out of natural 2) and Pink and Brown. I like the effect so much that I'm considering making a whole sweater with a natural foreground, and a background in maybe multi-blue, or shades of orange. There is some undyed fiber all measured out and ready to be spun -- I suspect I'll want a lot of it around, for myself, and hopefully for the people who will see these mittens at Three Bags Full and the Coquitlam Farmer's Market, and want to make their own. I'm even considering writing up an actual pattern. I don't really enjoy writing patterns, I'd rather teach someone how to knit without one, but I do enjoy selling the patterns, and I do get requests for the things. So there may be a write up. A comment or two expressing an opinion on this matter would help me to decide.

I somehow put the thumb on the same side on both mittens. I can only blame temporary insanity. I swear, I checked, but I think when I checked I was holding one mitten upside down. Anyway, I was too lazy to totally undo the mitten to the provisional row that forms the thumb opening, so instead I took down the wrong thumb, grafted the life stitches of the thumb opening together (and not all that well, as you can see), then snipped a stitch in the middle of where I wanted the thumb to go and opened it up. This is an Elizabether Zimmerman technique, one she uses for afterthought pockets on sweaters, and afterthought heels on socks. The Yarn Harlot wrote about the afterthought heel last week.

Here's my picture of the altered mitten, close up:


I have printed off the entry forms for the Abbottsford Fibrefest in March. I'm a bit intimidated by the idea of sending off the entry fee and committing to a big show like this, but when I look at it realistically, it makes sense. I pay $35 for a table for a day at the Farmer's Market, and it's only a small percentage of patrons there who knit and are interested in buying yarn on that particular day. Fibrefest, *everyone* is interested in yarn or fiber, and if they're like me, they enter the building fully expecting to spend a minimum of $200 before they leave. So all in all, I think I can expect sales to be good enough to justify the entry fee. But it's still a bit intimidating.

Hey anyone know of a flat pack, easy to assemble and disassemble, and repeat many times over a season, fairly inexpensive shelf? Doesn't have to be that attractive, I can cover the ugliness with fabric and yarn, but it does need to fit into my rather small trunk of my rather small Subaru.

Awesome socks!

Hey check out these socks, half-knit from some of my yarn! Aren't they gorgeous? I'm gonna dye up a bunch more of the rovings these came from; feel free to email me to reserve one for yourself (in either roving or yarn form)

My So Called Scarf

Check. This. Out. This is what someone is making out of my yarn:




I was blown away when I saw these pictures, the stitch pattern is just perfect for the long colour changes of the yarn. Once I can tear myself away from my wheel, I'm totally making one of these for myself. It will be one of my many vacation projects. You can get the pattern here: http://www.sheepinthecity.prettyposies.com/archives/000079.html

And here are the socks that someone else is making from my yarn:


Don't you just love the colours? Granted, this yarn is not for those who demand symmetry in their socks, but if you like socks that are colourful fraternal twins, this is totally the yarn for you.

Like Christmas, all the time

I know that this is a business and I'm being paid for this, but every time I make up a package of my yarn to send someone, I feel like I'm sending a pretty Christmas present. It's pure projection on my part; I think about opening a box, crinkling the bright paper, and seeing yarn! You can tell what *my* favourite Christmas present is.

So my fiber supplier tells me that he will be getting in some superwash blue faced leicester this month. Anyone interested in trying some sock yarn made from that?