Seedy business...over and done with.

*Finally* Presenting the Seed Stitch Jacket. Go ahead, click on it, it gets bigger...



It took long enough, I know, but when I say it is done, I mean done blocking, done sewing, done weaving in ends, done putting on buttons. Done. (And not a minute too soon, either, the book was due back at the library next week.)



I don't know if the word "hate" properly conveys the way I feel about the ribbon that I bought to embroidery the collar and sleeves. It is perhaps the worst idea that I've had since I decided to knit the jacket without adjusting the gauge. Remember? It snags on my fingers, it disappears into the knitting, it is ugly and I will not use it. I am going to wait to embroidery until I find something that I really do like. In the mean time, I don;t think that it looks undone with out it. I may even leave it as it is.



I had a bit of a problem fitting the collar to the neck, somehow I had several stitches more than I needed even though I had done the math. So I fudged a little. It is kind of ironic that the collar was the only part of the whole sweater that I didn't have any technical difficulty knitting. Anyway, I was supposed to line it up three stitches from the edges, but I managed to get right to the edge while I was sewing it one bar on the body, two on the collar. Plus I had to re-sew it about four times to make it work. It was ugly. I went to bed last night thinking that I may have to re-knit the sleeves and the collar. Luckily, I was wrong, and it all worked out ok. By the way, the sleeves fit perfectly, as if they were made for this sweater (hee hee).



Mimi looks lovely in her jacket, she actually has plenty of room to grow in it. She look a little like a linebacker, but I don't care. I love it, and love is blind. Here is some eye-candy.

Particulars of this sweater (if anyone reads this stuff):

Seed Stitch Jacket from Knits for Babies and Toddlers by Fiona McTague

Knit on size 4's in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece

I am particularly proud of this sweater because it is my very first sweater (besides the hula girl sweater that I made a while back. It looks a lot better when it isn't stretched over a ukulele.) I learned a lot of new things about knitting whilst I made it, including how to make button holes, sew on a collar and how to seam seed stitch. Woo hoo. next on the needles? I want to make my grandma's felted slippers. I am going to go get materials and pattern tomorrow.

Birthday Frog

Here is Mimi opening her first birthday presents.

Here is Mimi eating her first birthday cake.
Here is Mimi looking really cute and adorable on her first birthday.
Here is Mimi wearing her first birthday sweater. Oops, notice that there is no picture of the birthday sweater? See how the "blue paradise" does not compliment her lovely olive complexion or set off the sparkle in her eyes? Note that she is wearing nothing hand made because her mom is a big loser who let her first birthday deadline blow by like so much breath on her birthday candle? Bad mommy.

My only defense is that she has been sick all week and extremely needy making it dang near impossible to get any knitting done. Seriously people, I can manage about one row an hour, if it doesn't let up soon, she'll probably outgrow it before I get it done. The other bad news is that I was doing both sleeves at the same time...I dutifully pinned them together so that I would know which direction I was knitting and things were going swimmingly...were is the nominative word here. At some point I decided I would count stitches to see how close I was to decreasing and I found that I had 48 stitches on one sleeve and 57 on the other. Huh. Then I counted rows, 21 rows on one sleeve and 25 on the other. Something was most definitely wrong. Any guesses? I must have knit one side at least four rows and four increases with out touching the other one. And all that pinning was supposed to stop that from happening. So, I frogged back to where I thought that I messed up and took one off. I also had some mishap where I shaped the neck on the shoulder side (rip rip rip), and I decided that I could space my buttons 1 1/2 inches instead of the 1 that the pattern called for and ended up messing up and having to rip back there too. Now I am mere inches from finishing the second sleeve and there should be collaring and sewing tomorrow...of course the sky could open up and a gigantic anvil could fall from the sky right on top of this sweater and I won't even be surprised. In fact, I will actually be somewhat surprised if this doesn't happen...could it be unsafe to dress my daughter in such an unlucky sweater?