Baby Shower Time

Saturday I went to a baby shower and took the Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl with me. It's going to South Dakota to wait until March, when my dear friend's first grandbaby will be born.


The Diamond Fantasy Christening Shawl is knitted in Knit Picks Bare Merino/Silk Fingering Weight yarn from Sivia Harding's pattern. It's the second Diamond Fantasy Shawl I've knitted; the first was for my friend, the baby's grandmother.



This is a close-up to show off the diamonds.


This is a tassel I made with the same yarn, with a braided strand, to wrap the tissue-paper package. It's going to be a cat toy now that the shower is over. Pretty day, wasn't it? Calm, which matters in the cold-winter High Desert.

And here is the shadow of the shawl on my brick-on-sand sidewalk. I noticed the shadow as I was zipping back into the house to wrap the shawl, put on my shoes, and race to the shower.

The shower was a lot of fun and I even won a prize for guessing closest on how big mommy's waist was. The food was so good that I ate too much and could hardly bear to make dinner for my husband.

Holidays and Hurrying Around

The holidays are upon us and my life has gotten a bit odd. It's not exactly because of the holidays, though. My friend Pat's daughter, the mother-to-be for whom I've been knitting, is here for Christmas. What she doesn't know, but her mom and I know, is that there's a surprise baby shower for her on Saturday. Pat and I have been racing around town, shopping, running various errands, and trying to decide on our shower presents.

I had no problem picking out a gift, as a long discussion of the excellence of the baby swing convinced me immediately that nothing else would do. When I showed Pat the one I'd selected from Amazon, she decided to send another item in the collection, too. After intense discussion, we decided to send them to her daughter's home, denying ourselves the chance to see them in real life. However, we did have the diaper bags (a two-bag set) sent here. I'll tuck the sheets and descriptions from Amazon into the respective bags and she'll have something to unwrap and be surprised by. This whole thing has consumed more time than I thought it could, mostly on selecting the proper color and pattern.

We also spent a day getting our new toilets installed. This house was built in 1972 and I, in my youth and foolishness, put in two Harvest Gold bathrooms. When we bought the first house in Palm Desert we had Kohler Wellworth low-flow toilets. These were the first low-flow toilets we'd seen and liked. The second Palm Desert house had them, too, and now our Lancaster house has them. In white. Plain, glowing white. I'm a quick learner. Next I'm going to replace the Harvest Gold lavatory sinks, rendering one of my bathrooms into a white bathroom (except for the gold tile around the shower). I'll still have the Harvest Gold bathtub, though. I understand they can be painted or powdercoated or something, for a lot less than they can be replaced.

To add insult to injury, my dishwasher is making an odd noise and not getting the dishes as clean as I'd like. It's the second dishwasher we've had since '72, so it's not as if we didn't get our money's worth out of it. However, the expensive soundproofed dishwasher in the Palm Desert house has spoiled me. I'm going to try to hold out on this for a while though. Ditto on the washer (which doesn't always seem to spin well enough) and the dryer (which seems to have lost some of the intermediate heat settings). They're both quite aged and I knew this day would come. I'd just hoped it wouldn't come for every appliance in the house all at once.

I've been knitting like a fiend, between all these digressions. I finished my BIL's scarf last night and the what-not for what's-her-name is coming along nicely. As soon as I finish that, I can go back to my brightly colored shawl.

There's an excellent chance that the probate for my mom's estate will close this month. There hasn't been much action on the house, as my realtor expected, but we hope to see more action in February.

What's New On The Knitting Front

I'm going to start out with the knitting for the March baby, my dear friend's first grandbaby.

First is the christening shawl. Traditionally this is worn by the baby at the christening and then, decades later, by the bride at the baby's wedding. Well, the baby isn't a baby at the wedding, of course, but you know what I mean. We don't know whether the baby is a boy or a girl, so I have to write very generally until March.

This shawl, knitted from the Diamond Fantasy Shawl pattern, is finished, with the yarn ends woven in but not clipped. It needs to be washed and dressed (blocked, dressed--I use the terms interchangeably for lace; everything else gets blocked). I got a blocking wire set just for shawls and I think I'll use them for this shawl. The yarn (Knit Picks Bare merino and silk fingering weight) is very nice and I think it will block beautifully.


A close-up, to show the diamonds.


Next is hand-painted Ultra Superwash Merino in worsted weight, from Karen Jorden (sharing.etsy.com). She's one of my favorite dyers as she has a wonderful eye for bright colors.
This yarn (five skeins) was custom-dyed for the March baby. This green is one of the mother's favorite colors and it's safely neutral. I haven't decided on a pattern yet, but I'm considering a ripple afghan pattern. I could make another Argosy baby blanket, I suppose, but I feel as if I should try something new. Be adventurous or something. We'll see.


And here's a slightly lighter version of the same color, in fingering weight. We didn't want to make the two exactly the same. Too matchy-matchy. This will become a shawl for the baby's mother. Like the worsted weight, this is just beautiful yarn. I really look forward to knitting with them.


Now, some knitting for grown-ups in Iowa. This is the start of a scarf for my brother-in-law. It's Knit Picks Panache in Dusk (the alpaca, cashmere, silk, and superfine merino yarn is discontinued, I'm sorry to say). The pattern is the Yarn Harlot's One Line Hand-spun Scarf, which is beautiful indeed in hand-spun yarn, and pretty good in regular yarn.


And this is a close-up of the garter-stitch scarf, knitted in hand-painted brushed Suri alpaca, for my sister-in-law. This yarn is so light and ethereal, it's just amazing how warm it is. The scarf, which is about nine inches wide and over six feet long, took only one and a half balls of yarn.


Here's a bigger photo, showing a section of it. I think the colors are just beautiful and I was ever so slightly tempted to keep this beauty, except that I've never worn a scarf for warmth in my entire life. Instead, I've threatened my husband with a throw knitted from this yarn, to keep him warm. He's not sure if I'm serious or if I'm kidding. Neither am I.


And here's the ball of yarn. It's one of those yarns that you want to cuddle and pet the ball, because it's so soft and nice.


And finally we get to some yarn for me. This is Claudia's fingering weight merino, hand-painted in the Tropicana color way. Yes, the colors are as bright as they look in the photo. Most people use this yarn for socks. Not me. I have six skeins of it.


I'm making a triangular shawl with it. Here's a photo of about half of it. It's too big to lie flat on the needle cable, so I bunched half of it up and spread out the other half. Bright, isn't it?


Here's a close-up, showing the pattern.


And here's another, closer close-up.


This shawl is knitted in the flower motif from this book:


This is a wonderful book by an exceedingly talented designer. I have many of her lace shawl patterns from Fiber Trends and various magazines and books. This book shows how to knit a triangular shawl in four different motifs, either singly or combined, and add a scalloped edging.
With this book a knitter will understand triangular shawl construction and be able to go much further, designing original lace shawls with a wide variety of lace patterns. I highly recommend it.

Christening Shawl Finished

This afternoon I finished the christening shawl that I started on 15 November. It took eleven days and I was doing a lot of other things during that time. I've woven in the ends, but I haven't washed and dressed it yet. I'm washing the baby blanket I finished ages ago, so that I can mail it off to baby Josh. I've only got one good place for drying large pieces and the blanket gets to use it first. The christening shawl won't be needed until March, after all.

I didn't take any photos today because it was quite overcast here. I hope that tomorrow will be clearer so that I can snap a few photos in the undressed state. This shawl looks a lot nicer and more like the finished product than most lace I've knitted. I don't remember the previous Diamond Fantasy Shawl looking so good, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it's probably the yarn and the gauge. Don't be fooled, it really does need dressing but I've got a lot better idea how it's going to look than usual.

I'm back to knitting the Bigfoot Shawl. I think I've only got a few more repeats to knit on it. I think it might look good with a toggle catch right at the neckline, so I've got to look through a few jewelry supply catalogs soon.

I joined the Year Of Lace 2008 club. It's four lace wrap projects in luxury yarns dyed in special colors using new patterns. The patterns are said to be restricted to club members until 2010 and the yarn colors won't be repeated. Not that I care about either bit of exclusiveness, to tell the truth. I guess it's supposed to make people feel more special somehow. I joined mostly to get myself over my dislike for lace weight yarn, on the theory that I'll have spent so much money on the club that I have to knit the wraps up. We'll see how well that works.

Off The Needles

Argosy Baby Blanket
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's the Argosy Baby Blanket, just off the needles. I haven't woven the ends in yet and I'm still debating whether to run a crocheted edging around it because of the rolling, but it's essentially done.

Notice the subtle zig-zag color pattern in the body of the blanket. I like the pooling on the two corners, too.

Argosy Baby Blanket

Argosy Baby Blanket
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's my Argosy Baby Blanket. It's more nearly done than I thought it was. I haven't knitted much on it recently, because it's too warm to sit around with a woolly blanket on my lap. However, seeing how little I have to go, maybe I'll try to do a little every day. It's cool enough in the mornings here (68° F when I got up).

Looking at this photo, I'm convinced I can see a pattern in the color placement. It looks like a moiré pattern, doesn't it? Or maybe a Bargello flame pattern?

Let me suggest to anyone who wants to knit this blanket that you not use sport weight. Try worsted or heavy worsted (aran). If I had, I'd have been done a while ago with the number of stitches I've knitted.

And, especially, don't use Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport. It has long stretches where it's thinner than fingering weight. The color of this yarn disguised that a bit, but it would look wretched otherwise. Since the yarn is merino it should "bloom" a bit after being washed, but I obviously haven't done that yet. Still, I don't think all the blooming in the world would be enough.

There's not much happening around here. Our lawyer has moved to another firm, so we have a new one to work with. Right now we're mostly waiting on procedural stuff (notifying possible creditors, etc). We just this morning sent the van down to the San Fernando Valley to have the modified system worked on. The electric side door and the underfloor ramp weren't working at all. We'd tried to get them fixed locally, but that had turned into a real goat rope.

Baby Surprise Jacket

Baby Surprise Jacket
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's a photo of my BSJ, from Friday evening. I've done a little more on it, having reached the first increase row. It sure looks odd, though.

I'm actually composing this in Flickr, where I uploaded the photos, and I can't post more than one photo at a time using it. I'll see if I can figure out how to do multiple photos from here. Otherwise you'll see the Argosy Baby Blanket tomorrow.

Another Baby!

We went over to see our lawyer about my mom's estate yesterday and he mentioned in passing that his sister, also a lawyer here in Lancaster, is going to make him an uncle next week. Naturally I started rummaging through my stash the instant I got home. It was easy to decide on Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket but harder to decide on the wool.

I don't know exactly what Shetland wool is, but I deduce it's roughly sport weight, with six stitches to the inch. Nor do I know how many yards there are in 3 oz of it. I don't believe in giving new mothers baby clothes that have to be hand-washed, which means a lot of my stash wouldn't do. I also don't believe in synthetics for babies or children, because they (the synthetics) burn like sons of bitches. Wool, on the other hand, is self-extinguishing. I hope everyone will remember this when they're knitting for babies.

I broke my own rule, though, because I'm knitting this BSJ in acrylic. Lion Brand Microspun in French Vanilla, to be exact. The parents don't smoke, the yarn isn't fuzzy or furry, the jacket is fairly close fitting, it's washable, and I'm in a hurry. I'll issue the appropriate warnings, of course. Plus, I've got three skeins of the same dye lot at hand.

I'm a half stitch off gauge, with 5.5, not 6, stitches to the inch, meaning that the jacket will be a bit on the large size. However, babies are bigger these days than they were when EZ sized the pattern and it's the beginning of summer and this jacket isn't going to get much wear for a few months, so I figure it's OK. I'd show you a photo, but how exciting is a six-row strip of garter stitch in cream yarn?

In other news, I scored my first victory as the administrator of my mom's estate this morning and bent the Bank of America to my will. We got a notice two weeks ago that BofA had deducted the yearly rental for a safe deposit box from my mom's former account. That was the first thing we'd ever heard about her having one and we were pretty surprised. Yesterday I went over to my mom's house and looked around for the key, which we found almost immediately. So today I took the key, my copy of the Probate Court order appointing me as administrator, my mom's death certificate, and my dad's death certificate.

It took over an hour to actually get through all the steps required to even get the box open and well over half an hour for the bank employees to inventory the contents. Then it took about half an hour to close the box and get a refund for the rental. I didn't rent another box or anything, because nothing current in the box was irreplaceable.