Firstly, as you see, I have completed the bananarama monkeys and they have (as of this lunchtime), been cautiously entrusted to the Royal Mail to deliver them to a birthday-girl to be. No two skeins of handpainted yarn ever end up exactly the same but I love that in the first sock (the one on the left), I've got clear strong swirls of unadulterated banana yellow, but when it comes to the second, the yellow has got a little muddier, with that 'few days out of the refrigeration unit' banana brown starting to creep in - a case of art unintentionally imitating art perhaps!
More importantly, I am now being stalked by babies. As well as the baby bear who is my joy and delight, there are another five girls in our office expecting a stork fly past sometime between the end of June and the beginning of October. It's not that big an office so that's quite a statistic.
Add to the mix a happy addition to some friends of H's in early June, and (to my very great delight) a first baby for another of my cousins in early October and it'll need to be a veritable squadron of ciconiidae to service the Midlands this summer. That or someone needs to start farming gooseberries - choose your euphemism at will.
Now not all of these peeps fall into the handknitting bracket but I'm good friends with two of the other girls plus bumps at work, and new family should always be welcomed with wool so I'm busily hatching my plan. Actually the e-mail from Mum announcing M and G's happy news concluded with: "get knitting girl", and all good girls obey their Mamma's (occasionally).
Anyway, this is where I need your help. M's sister received one of the many alphabet blankets of 2007 so whilst I want to knit a blanket, I've been scouting for other patterns, and I think we have a winner in OpArt from Knitty. For those that don't want to do the clicky thing, it's knit with two colours in horizontal stripes radiating in a square from the centre, knit so that they have a twist and the squares appear to be spiralling.
The question is which two colours would be best for a gender neutral baby, given that I need a decent contrast between the two to make it work. I'm thinking maybe turquoise and light green, or a coffee caramel and cream, or bright red and yellow, but the problem is that I don't have much of an idea what colours M&G favour, let alone the wee babe.
Anyway, please let me know what you think would look good. I might even try to add a poll if I can figure out blogger that far. And Mum, if you could tap up Auntie P next time to talk to her for any subtle hints, without telling her the whole project, that would be really great.
*Brownie points to anyone in the UK who now knows which radio station we listen to in the morning; utter bemusement to the rest of the world - just chalk it up to English eccentricity.
Turquoise and caramel? Dark green/light green, purple and teal
ReplyDeleteI'd avoid yellow, new babies are often jaundiced and if so yellow doesn't have happy associations for new parents.
I have a few little baby jackets if you fall behind, they all need buttons but you're good with them aren't you?
Orange and Green? Or, how about a rainbow? Everybody loves rainbows.
ReplyDeletePretty banana Monkeys! Good thing baby knits are quick...sounds like you have a ton of them in your future! I don't have a specific color suggestion, but Diana from bestitched.typepad.com just posted a neutral (both in color and gender) blanket that is beautiful...perhaps a combination of some of those colors she used (like a mild green and yellow).
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