A Taste of Saturday Skies and Baby Knits

Now that the recipient has recipified them,  I can show you a couple little tiny things.  Though I hope Cece can get a better picture of Thing 1: well, I know she will, because it will have a cute little baby boy in it!

This is Tiny Thing number 1, picture taken in the predawn darkness with flash right before being sent off,

and there is a small tale of woe with this (though in the end, I was happy with the result).

Before the tiny Hulk was born, his gender was not known.  I had it in my head to knit Cece’s baby something from Twisted Fiber Art‘s Ravelry colorway, because she and I met as a result of Ravelry, really (pre-BMFA Sock Camp meet-up and School Bus trip there!).  I did ask if she or her husband would have a problem with the pink and green of the colorway if it were a boy….

I hoped to give it to her at Rhinebeck, but my gauge calculations were off and the hat was turning out a 6 month size, which was not what I had in mind.  So I showed it to Cece, she said she loved the colorway and her husband had better well be fine with it, and I took it home to reknit.

Well, first I reknit it after frogging, and it was all weird and loosey-goosey from the frogging.  So I frogged again, washed and hung, and reknit.

And then it was turning out too small!

Plus, this was Arial, Meg’s finest fingering weight — a lot of stitches, so it took a bunch of knitting just to figure some of this out.

Then, six weeks after Rhinebeck, Cece had her baby —  a little early.  And it was a handsome, good-sized young man.  And not only was the hat turning out too small now, but the pink kept turning up at the edge.  I just couldn’t do it — force her to keep explaining that he was a boy despite the pink edge.  So I decided to knit the hat in Xavier colorway instead (same yarn base).  I finished a Sweet Norwegian Baby Cap in Xavier pretty quickly — but it seemed small to me, after modifying it to a newborn size, thinking about his birthweight. (The circumference seemed okay, but it seemed shallow.)

In a fit of pique, I decided to scrap the whole hat idea, go back to using the Ravelry colorway, and knit something else (to be shown shortly).  But at the last minute, I decided to try a hat one more time, but using cushy-soft, squishy “Duchess” yarn base, which is a DK weight superwash wool yarn, and using my “Grow-With-Me” baby hat pattern for insurance against big ol’ heads growing fast.  I used the Braider colorway.  And it worked!  The photography above kind of bites, but the hat isn’t bad!

But here’s what I did knit up from the Ravelry colorway, though in squooshy “Duchess” DK weight also:

Thing number 2,  a gender-neutral BUNNY!

(Big Ol’ Bunny Butt comin’ up!)

The tail is made of local angora/alpaca chain-stitched on.  The pattern is from Heartstrings, free/voluntary donation; it’s actually just a square, cleverly sewn together, with separately sewn ears.  I did use the modified ears separately mentioned with the pattern, which seem to stay up better, and I did my own tail version as above since this was for a baby, rather than pulling stuffing through for the tail (which is what the original pattern called for).

I like this little bunny.  I hope The Hulk does too.

Or at least, perhaps when he’s a little older!

Today was a gorgeous day here: high in the high 20s, but sunshine which melted some of the snow it shone on, particularly on the roads.  I worked this morning, but this afternoon, I drove the Gothlet out to a sleepover she was invited to:  a house I’d never been to, way out in one of the coulees tucked in between the bluffs.  And wow, am I glad I did, despite the fact that my little car couldn’t make it all the way up the driveway….it was so beautiful.

Here are a few Saturday Sky pictures from this afternoon (I’m saving a few for later, though!)

and one from my backyard too.

Happy Saturday!