Daily Craft - The other thing I knit

I shared with you the blanket that I finally took pictures of, and now to share the other thing that I knit up for the little one. Baby's first cardigan!  I also started knitting this before knowing gender, so went with what I hoped were relatively neutral colors.  I think it'll work out just fine for baby boy.    :)

Even after sorting through the many, many piles of baby clothes, I'm still in awe of how tiny each piece of clothing actually is.  I know this picture would look much more inspiring if it were on a real life model rather than a plastic hanger. I'll have to take an 'after' picture when he's actually big enough to wear it!

Daily Craft - All done!

Remember that cardigan I was knitting in sock yarn that I thought would take me 6 months to make?  I'm proud to say that one month and six days later, I am DONE!  I think I surprised myself a little bit with this one, especially considering I didn't actually spend every day knitting obsessively and giving myself carpel tunnel.

The verdict?  I'm actually very happy with it and my only complaint would be that it's perhaps 2 inches shorter than I'd like it to be.  I should have trusted my instinct on that when I was knitting it up and gone a little longer.  Hopefully it'll stretch out a little bit with some love and washing.

Knitting a garment with sock yarn wasn't as painful as I thought it might be, and I find that lighter yarns are better for me anyway - both more flattering and better for my internal temperature control (I run warm).  I was also pleasantly surprised by how easy the DROPS pattern was to follow.  When I was a less confident knitter, I remember looking at a couple of DROPS patterns and being completely intimidated/confused.  Apart from anything, the way the patterns are laid out in a clump of text makes it all look far worse than it actually is.  I ended up cutting and pasting into a word document, which I formatted to my liking and made it much easier to follow.  They have a truly extensive database of good patterns though so I'm glad I'm over my mental block when it comes to their patterns!

I've dubbed it the "Year Round Cardi" as I suspect this will be getting lots of use.  I've got the cardigan bug now though and I'm contemplating what I may make next.  Hopefully I can finish another in a similar time frame!

Daily Craft - Tiny Little Stitches

I am excited to say that I got a decent start on my cardigan over the weekend.  I could have gone on a search for the perfect yarn online, but to be honest I'm too impatient for that.  That's several days of knitting time that I would have lost while waiting for delivery!  I ended up buying Lion Brand Sock-Ease from Michaels, which is a wool/nylon blend and also states that it's machine washable, and can even be put in the dryer.  Caution says I'll likely be using my trusty hand-wash setting on the front-loader then line drying, lest I end up with a cardigan better suited for a toddler.  The materials cost about $25, which is not unreasonable (yay coupons!)  I will admit to originally being attracted to the pretty variegated sock yarn colors and spent quite a bit of time musing over the potential to avoid bad color pooling or inconsistent stripes.  In the end I decided I'd be better off with a plain color and chose this green (which is actually much more olive in person). 

As much as I enjoy working lace and cables, I'm actually really happy that this is a nice plain stitch because it feels like it's working up pretty quickly, despite the tiny little stitches.  I've done 5.5" so far, and feeling like I'm getting somewhere at least.  Wishful thinking says I really will be done by the holidays...

Daily Craft - The search for the perfect cardigan

I don't knit things for myself very often.  One factor being that I live in Southern California, which doesn't present itself a ton of opportunities to bundle up with warm wooly items.  [Really, it probably would have been a good idea for me to learn to knit when I was still living in England, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.]  The other factor is that I do a lot of sample knitting - which I enjoy, but it is work and leaves me very little time to knit for myself because I tend to gravitate toward other crafts between sample knit projects.

As the weather is starting to cool off out here in sunny CA, I have concluded that it's about damn time I made myself a cardigan though.  I love the patterns for cardis and jackets using fun, chunky yarns that knit up in no time...but realistically, I won't wear a lot because the cold season is so short.  I also wouldn't wear anything too thick in my office.  A month from now they'll be turning up the heat in the building and I'll end up sweating with my desk fan blasting at my head because my office is a closet (complete with fuse box for the entire floor - ah yes, I have the power to turn stuff off!) 

So, yesterday I continued my search for the elusive cardigan pattern that would carry me through some of the colder days, but also work nicely during fall and into spring.  Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a winner!  Check out this jacket by DROPS Design.

I will admit that despite being pretty advanced with my knitting, even if I say so myself, DROPS patterns have always been somewhat intimidating to me.  I think it's because a lot of them are converted from Scandinavian into English and aren't written in the standard knitting language that I know and love.  I decided to copy and paste the pattern into a word document and reformat slightly so that the directions were a little easier to follow.  Now, all I have to do is find the right yarn and I'm ready to go. 

Naturally, I picked something that's done in sock yarn so potentially could take me until the spring to finish anyway, but I love it and can't wait to finally be working on something that I'll be able to proudly wear and say "yes, I made it!"