Knotty Mom

Crafts, children, occasional bad puns.

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Another UFO roundup post. There have been some changes. First, though, the FO. Cute little baby soaker. Lucky for me this was not a project intended for the baby I miscarried. I started it quite some time ago. I wanted to make baby bloomers,...

Another UFO roundup post.  There have been some changes. 

First, though, the FO.  Cute little baby soaker.  Lucky for me this was not a project intended for the baby I miscarried.  I started it quite some time ago.  I wanted to make baby bloomers, basically and get a free pattern onto Ravelry because there are several that are paid and this is actually a really fucking simple pattern to make.  And that pattern is here.

I kinda like that photo, too.  Almost hides my continuing inconsistencies with tension.  Almost.  It could be slight color differences in the yarn right?

Don’t answer that!

Also, an update on that orange skirt.  Esther found it in a bag under some other yarn.  Who’da thunk it.  Anyway, it’s uglier than I remembered so it is frogged and dead and gone.

A similar fate met the Garter Pelerine.  Turns out I’d barely gotten four inches done in it  I just do not think it is a shape that will work with my shape.  And so, frogged.

Meanwhile, I remembered something I was making–a square shawl/baby blanket from Knitter’s Almanac and probably 10 other EZ books.  It wasn’t in my Ravelry projects, which is weird because it was, so I guess at some point I’d decided to frog it?  I’m giving it another run, though.  Mostly to pretend I don’t need to finish that afghan I’m crocheting.

New list!

  1. Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)
  2. Little White Dress #3
  3. Squares & Rectangles afghan
  4. Lanesplitter Skirt
  5. Butterfly Shawl
  6. Thrift Skirt frogged, dammit
  7. Garter Pelerine frogged, because fuck that
  8. Square Shawl

6 notes

Bubble Butt

Finally, another pattern!  I had almost forgotten I could do this.

OK, not really.  In reality I’ve felt terribly guilty for not writing anything up in forever.

This pattern was born partly out of a niggling desire to make a certain bubbly baby outfit on Ravelry paired with an utter unwillingness to pay $10 for a single pattern.  

Anyway.  I know how much people hate scrolling to get to recipes, so I won’t bore you much more.  My usual caveat applies here–I’m not a great knitter, so there’s always the chance I borked something up.  If you notice any glaring problems, message me on Ravelry, not here.

Picture!

image

Materials:

  • 3.25 mm 16″ circular needle 
  • 3.75 mm 16″ or 24″ circular needle
  • DPNs for one of those sizes; it doesn’t really matter which (for the ribbing on the cuffs)
  • 100% wool yarn, worsted weight (I used Fisherman’s Wool from Lion Brand); if you don’t plan to use this as a soaker, material isn’t important, just weight, and this wool is a pretty light worsted
  • The usual array of stitch markers, yarn needle, etc  I use yarn to hold big piles of stitches, which you’re going to need to do at the legs.

Gauge: 5 sts/in on the bigger needles, stockinette in the round, but as Elizabeth Zimmermann says all babies are differently sized and this is aimed at a wide age range.

Size: up to 6 months at least, but keep in mind it’s going to be adorably oversized on a newborn  The waist is 16″ and so is the rise (when measured as given in pattern).  The idea behind such a large bit of ribbing at the start is for you to be able to fold it down.

Directions: (finally, right?!)

Cast on 80 stitches with smaller needles and work 10 rounds in knit 2/purl 2 ribbing.  

Eyelet round: Knit two, yarn over, purl two together around.

Rib 10 more rounds the same as before.

Now.  You can change this part up stupid easy.  You can leave out the eyelet round.  You can only knit 10 rounds total, or five.  You can do a different pattern in your ribbing, like knit 3, purl 1.

Change here to the larger needles.  Knit one round even.  

Increase round: knit one, knit front & back around.  (Or knit 2, make 1.  Whatever.  You’re just turning every two stitches into three.)  You should have 120 stitches at the end.

Continue on in dogged stockinette (I watched so much Netflix while knitting this) until your soaker measures 8″ from the eyelet round if you did the full 20 round ribbing.  If you did shorter ribbing, measure from the bottom of it.

Next, divide for the legs as such: 5 stitches on some sort of holder.  55 stitches on a long length of yarn, 5 stitches on another holder, the last 55 arrayed on DPNs (I sorted them on four needles with 15 on two and 10 on two).

The 5 stitch bundles are your crotch stitches.  Either Kitchener these together or simply work a 3-needle bind-off.  Your baby won’t care.  You can do it now or wait until the end, as I did.

Each cuff is done the same, like so, using the smaller DPNs if you’ve chosen to:

Decrease round: knit three stitches, reduce the next two however you please (knit 2 together, ssk, etc).  The goal is to end up with 44 stitches.

For the next 10 rounds, you will rib whatever suits you.  I used knit 3, purl 1 because for me it turns out about ten times cuter than the more usual k2, p2 ribbing.  At the end, bind-off using something super stretchy–either Elizabeth Zimmermann’s sewn bind-off (what you see here) or Jen’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off or some other thing I’m not aware of.  You can also, obviously, shorten the ribbing here to just five or 8 rounds.

Finish off, weave in your ends, and make a drawstring of some sort.  There are tons of ways to do this–i-cord, braiding, crocheting two strands together, etc.  You do you; just make it longer than you think it needs to be.  I actually knitted my first-ever i-cord for this project, 3 stitches on the smaller needles, and as you can see it didn’t go well.  Weave the cord through the eyelets, and you are DONE!

4 notes

So best laid plans and all that.  I was going to finish Thrift next, but two things happened: one, I discovered that I did not have enough old skeins of the pumpkin yarn to finish it, and the newer skeins were a completely different shade of orange (like, I know dye lots are a thing but the old ones were actually pumpkiny and the new ones are dan near safety orange) and two–and this is the one that really truly killed it–the two panels that I had completed have completely fucking disappeared.  I was going to finish it off and call it a doll blanket, but I can’t do even that.  I have no idea what happened to the bit I had  It was right beside my chair, but it’s not and I hunted and hunted and it’s just gone.

So I’m going to have to cross it off the list for a weird reason.  It’s gone and not coming bck.  I did frog the partially-made third panel that was all I found, so I am pretty comfortable counting it as a frogged project, but still.  That’s some weird shit, even for me.

Which brings me, belatedly, to the actual subject of this photoset–I really did finally actually make myself a skirt–an all garter version of Lanesplitter.  It’s a seven-year-old pattern with 3389 projects on Ravelry.  Really popular, in other words–it dates back to Knitty’s heyday.  And it’s a good pattern, though of course being me I had to dick around with it some make it my own.  In short, I did the whole thing in garter stitch and changed the waistband.  And I already want to make like ten more.

Best of all?  Total material cost for this skirt was $10.  Usually when you make your own anything, it turns out to be a lot more expensive than just buying one (this is true for sewn things too, by the way, not just knotted), but this is comparable to just going to the store and buying a skirt.  And, frankly, it’s a lot cuter than anything commercially available, so I don’t even care about the cost in time.

Current UFO list:

  1. Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)
  2. Little White Dress #3
  3. Squares & Rectangles afghan
  4. Lanesplitter Skirt
  5. Butterfly Shawl
  6. Thrift Skirt frogged, dammit
  7. Garter Pelerine

In all honesty, I am probably going to try on the Garter Pelerine tomorrow and unless it’s super close to being done–like, within bout two more days’ work of the end–I’m gonna frog it.  I just don’t like the finished object enough and I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to cast it on to begin with.

Filed under knitting skirt knit skirt short skirt plus size clothing make your own

4 notes

This is Butterfly, my version of Lepidoptera.  Really a neat idea for a pattern; on the surface it’s a simple triangle shawl, but you switch between solid and openwork rows based on the roll of a D6.  Not many changes here; the most significant is a different trim, single crochet with a picot every fifth stitch.

The yarn is Bernat Pop!, which is mostly a nice yarn, but these skeins had several issues–I had to cut out knots and one super-frayed spot, and there was a pretty long run of yarn that was coming unplied.  Given that the entire reason for choosing a long color run yarn like this is to avoid having to weave in ends, I’m really displeased with having to cut it and weave in ends.

But it’s another thing off the UFO list.  Here’s the updated list:

  1. Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)
  2. Little White Dress #3
  3. Squares & Rectangles afghan
  4. Lanesplitter Skirt
  5. Butterfly Shawl
  6. Thrift Skirt
  7. Garter Pelerine

Current plan is to finish Thrift next, but we’ll see.

Filed under crochet shawl bernatpop bernat

3 notes

First FO from my UFO Roundup. Finished day before yesterday; I wanted to knock something out quickly. Now, I never thought much of this pattern when I first came across it and tried it. It’s poorly-written and honestly looks like one of those baby...

First FO from my UFO Roundup.  Finished day before yesterday; I wanted to knock something out quickly.

Now, I never thought much of this pattern when I first came across it and tried it.  It’s poorly-written and honestly looks like one of those baby patterns that’s never been tested on a real baby, but for some reason I made it three years ago or so and realized year-before-last that the pattern was gone from the Internet and this made me really want to make it.  Eventually someone on Ravelry linked the pattern page via the Wayback Machine and I decided to go ahead and make it again.

And I still don’t really like it.  Except for the trim  The trim is awesome.

UFO list:

  1. Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)
  2. Little White Dress #3
  3. Squares & Rectangles afghan
  4. Lanesplitter Skirt
  5. Butterfly Shawl
  6. Thrift Skirt
  7. Garter Pelerine

Filed under crochet crochet dress baby dress baby girl

3 notes

2018 UFO Roundup

This is nearly all I use this Tumblr for anymore, sadly.  I need to queue up some photos of previous projects or something.

Anyway, the dirty for this year:

  1. Bubble Butt Soaker (writing the pattern for this)
  2. Little White Dress #3
  3. Squares & Rectangles afghan
  4. Lanesplitter Skirt
  5. Butterfly Shawl
  6. Thrift Skirt
  7. Garter Pelerine

Not very much stuff this year, but most projects are pretty large.  I think I’m going to tackle the baby dress and the shawl first and then go from there.

I’m also working on a temperature blanket this year, so I will uncharacteristically be working on a new project while doing these, just so I don’t get behind.  I’m also having varying amounts of pain in my hands, so there will undoubtedly be some days when I do nothing at all, though hopefuly those will be few.