Baby knits

Leftover knits: Wool diaper cover

Lena

Remember the cardigan I talked about a few posts back? Well, it´s done and is currently drying after a wash. I will be making a post about it once it is dry and photographed. I bought some extra balls of yarn for that project so that I would be sure to have enough. Turns out I had plenty.

This photograph is from the web shop where I bought my yarn, strikkemekka.no

When it was all done I had a little more than 3 balls left. I really didn´t mind, because this is one of the loveliest yarns I have ever knitted with, and I had decided whilst knitting on the cardigan that I would knit something for the baby if I had any left after finishing that project. My pattern of choice was a Wool diaper cover/soaker I have knitted once before. It´s a Norwegian pattern called Leine baby – bleiebukse. It´s knitted flat and then seamed together once it´s done. I think it´s knitting it flat that makes me feel like this is a fun knit. I used 3.5mm needles and knitted the ribbing 2 cm longer.

The pattern doesn´t specify where to put in the holes for the i-cord, so I´m adding my notes for that part here. At least I´ll have good use of them! It´s not an exact number of stitches between each hole, but close enough for my taste. Note: knit the stitches in the established ribbing pattern.

First ribbing: 3, make hole, 6, make hole, 7,make hole, 6,make hole, 7, make hole, 6, make hole, 7, make hole, 6, make hole, 3

Second ribbing: 3, make hole, 7, make hole, 7,make hole, 7,make hole, 3

I´m generally not a fan of sewing my knitting, but I found a few videos from Purl Soho that showed me how to do the mattress stitch in both stockinette and garter stitch, and once I had a closer look at those, seaming was not a problem at all! Here are the links to seaming garter stitch and seaming stockinette stitch.

Once the seaming is done, all you have to do is add a bit of ribbing for the legs and an I-cord. I knitted the ribbing two rounds longer than the pattern called for. And there you have it. A cute little baby diaper cover. It will be lanolized before it´s put to use of course.

I still have two balls of yarn left. They will become a hat I think. But I´m also thinking about knitting a pair of nursing pads. They don´t need to be all white do they?

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Knitted gifts, Knitting

A knitted baby blanket

Lena

There are quite a few of my friends that are expecting babies or have just had a baby, and as a knitter I think it is nice to make something for them. This project has been in the works since the end of April, and was actually a quick knit, but I got distracted along the way. I decided it was time to finish the project when the little one arrived last week. So this got all my attention all day yesterday, and it´s done and  currently drying and waiting to be documented and wrapped.

I used Drops Nepal from stash (I will weigh the blanket once it´s dry and add yardage to this post) and 5mm needles for this blanket.

The pattern is “I ly” (roughly translated to “shelter”) from the book Nordic by Trine Frank Påskesen. She is a danish designer, but the book has recently been translated to Norwegian. There are a lot of lovely patterns in this book, and I will most likely be knitting a lot more from this book in the future. Including more blankets like this one, because it really is easy to memorize, and on big needles it works up so fast! (If you don´t get distracted…) This book was gifted to me, but it would be on my wish list if it hadn´t been. I got to be a part of the copyediting on this book, and I have never read knitting patterns as thoroughly in my  life and it made me want to knit several patterns from the book because they seemed clear and also the designs are beautiful.

Do you have a go to pattern or patterns for gift knits?

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Knitting

The big box of sock shame…

Lena

I have this box that I don´t like to think too much about… It all started when I thought it was a good idea to cast on new sock projects when I was only half done with my current sock project… But have the big box of sock shame taught me anything? No. I still feel the urge to cast on new socks. Just the other day I decided that I should finish some of my sock wips. But now, when I´m close to finishing a pair of socks, I already feel the need to cast on a new pair… And if I keep knitting one sock and then casting on a new one without finishing the complete pair, this box will never be empty! I wouldn´t call it second sock syndrome, because I do want to knit the socks. It´s just that I want to knit all the socks at once!

The upside? When I do pick up a sock from this box, I only need to knit one sock to have a full pair…

Anyone else have a box of never ending sock wips?

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Handmade wardrobe pieces, Knitting

Handmade wardrobe pieces

Lena

As I mentioned in my previous post, I´ve been trying to be mindful as to what I´m knitting for myself. There are pieces in my wardrobe that I hardly ever use, because of colour choices or fit, and that feels somewhat like wasted knitting time. Also, I don´t have enough closet space to store all those pieces.

In this post I want to tell you how I´ve tried to keep track of the things I want to knit for myself. To get an idea of what I wanted to knit, I needed to do more than just keep adding things to my favorites on Ravelry. As I´m writing this,  I have 1838 favorites on Ravelry, and that is definitely NOT the way to keep focus! And the queue option didn´t work for me either.

The solution for me was to use the bundles feature on Ravelry. I´ve been using bundles for a while now, and that helps a lot as far as organizing goes. So I decided to make a bundle for my future selfish knits, and that has worked very well. I can keep favorites in different bundles at once, so even if they are featured in my Handmade wardrobe pieces bundle, I can still find cardigans in my cardigan bundle, and sweaters in my sweater bundle and so on. I´m also adding notes on what kind of yarns and colours I´m thinking of using for the different projects. In some cases I´ve even tried to work out the yardage and number of skeins I´ll need. This makes it easier to plan ahead.  Especially if I find myself in a yarn store, or stumble across a yarn sale online. I also find it easier to find a use for my stash yarn.

                             A screen shot of my Handmade wardrobe pieces bundle.

I have noticed that many of my future knits are going to be gray, but I have a lot of colourful shawls that I know I will use a lot because I never leave home without a shawl 8 out of 12 months of the year. But I´ll try to add some colour pops along the way. In the more distant future I want to sew more things for myself, and that will probably make it a bit easier to add some colour and make it a bit more cohesive.

As I mentioned, I have started on a project and I´m currently knitting on Yakushima by Justyna Lorkowska. Since this is a cardigan, I can start to wear it as soon as I´m done knitting it. I´ll tell you more about that project in a later post.

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