Baby Knitting

When H mentioned that he's been knitting more than me in the past few months he was for once being serious. He found a Baby Surprise Jacket stuck half way through a row, trailing yarn and looking perilously close to being tipped into a glass of fizzy ginger while the real knitter lay semi-somnolent and groaning on the sofa, and being a well trained man of yarn, he recalled that half rows were a bad idea, and polished off the end of the row with remarkably even tension.

It may have been a baby surprise jacket, but not for the little bear; I'm too cautious to count my bears before the scan! I did cast on something for our little one last week, but having knit two sleeves and a good chunk of the body, I have concluded that the colour is just all wrong and it's getting frogged. Having wailed at the poor boy about the fact that the yarn wasn't quite the right colour and that this clearly meant that I will be a terrible mother because I can't even choose the right colour yarn to make the perfect baby sweater etc etc (hormones make such a lovely addition to my usually perfectionist personality, oh yes!), H wisely concluded that the wrong yarn should go back into the stash to be knit for someone else that it will actually suit, and I should purchase the 'right' yarn. Phew, I'm so relieved.

The baby surprise jackets, for there are two, are for my two newest second cousins, both baby girls.

This one, which should be entitled 'Winter Sunshine', went to little L who arrived in January.



Whereas this one, 'Josephine's Coat of Many Colours' will hit the post tomorrow, going south to fairy princess T, who arrived rather quickly the week before last, much to the surprise of her father, who ended up doing the delivering - perhaps a BSJ is rather apt!

And just in case you thought I'd forgotten, may I present (drum roll please)


H's Olympic socks.

The eagle eyed among you will note from the bagginess and the soft and fluffy nature of the feet that these did not meet the camera for some while, and may perhaps have been stolen from H's feet while he was sleeping (I did put clean socks back on!). We are about to discover what Malabrigo thinks of my washing machine's wool cycle!

The pattern is a little subtle because of the variegation in the yarn but I think H rather likes it that way!

And finally, a massive thank you to everyone who sent their congratulations for our little bear-to-be; we loved reading every one of them and meeting a whole load of de-lurkers and I think I'll have to print that page some day and put it in the baby's book-of-random-thoughts-and-stories-from-Mummy-and-Daddy.

Surprised? Ten Top Tips

This one should be the 'old hat baby surprise' or 'again?! baby' but for the final finished jacket of this year's septet of BSJs we're going for 'Little Boy Blue Baby'. It seems appropriate for Colinette Cadenza in Blue Jay.



None of the babies have arrived yet (which is good because they are not due for another six weeks) so they make a cheerful pile of miniature jumpers:



The top two are for my secretary, who knows that she is having another boy; the third one down is for a colleague who is having a surprise; and the bottom one, well who knows who that's for, the next person to have a girl probably.



So, seven jackets later, here are my top tips:

1. The Mitres (cue background scary sawing style noise!). Not as scary as they seem. The pattern starts off my working two mitred corners, one at each end so that you start to form two right angles in the knitting:



You could just count each row to the mitre, then slip, k2tog and psso but if you spread the corner out you can read the knitting and avoid the need to count:



This picture shows the three central stitches at the corner. These are the three that will become one to form the corner. How do you find them? Look carefully, can you see that the vertical column of central stitches is 'wearing a scarf'?


This picture shows it more clearly. The red stitch runs straight up the corner, and instead of the yellow stitch running directly underneath it, its tail flies off to the side - think of stereotypical illustrations of snowmen and you'll see why I call it a scarf. The yellow scarf will point to the red stitch, and then you have your centre point.

Slip the first stitch:



Knit the next two together:



And pass the first slipped stitch over the top (that is just the one stitch coming over, the yarn was a bit splitty)



And there you go, one mitred corner:



Just rinse and repeat until you have finished the decreases.

2. Increases: the original EZ pattern suggests increasing by a backwards loop cast on. Although several pattern notes have suggested using a raised bar increase instead I've found the backward loop to be practically invisible in garter stitch so I do as the pattern suggests. The backward loop is exactly as it sounds; make a loop as if you were going to make a slip knot and then slide the loop onto the needle, with the live end of the yarn towards the stitches already on the needle. It's harder to describe than it is to so, if in doubt, if you pick up the needle and hold it point down a backwards loop will stay put but a loop de loop will fall off.

When you start increasing out again at the mitre lines I find it easiest to place a marker before the centre stitch. Then all you need to do is m1, slip marker, k1, m1.

3. Increases after five ridges: on a right side row I work (k3, m1) until the last stitch before the mitre, k1, work the mitre, section between and the other mitre, then k1, (m1, k3).

4. Increases for back fullness: I work these on the wrong side row after I get to the correct stitch count. Knit across until you have knit the second newly made stitch then work: (k5, m1) x 5, k4, (m1, k5) x 5.

5. Work across 90 sts: the 90 stitches runs from on centre line of a mitre to the other. When you pick up stitches and start working across the whole back again, the stitches to mark are the 'corners' of the 90st back-and-forth block.

6 Buttonholes: k6, (yo, k2tog, k6) x5, k1, m1, k1, m1, knit to next mitre centre line, m1, k1, m1, k1, (k6, k2tog, yo) x 5, k6.

Even if you know what variety of baby is expected it is so easy to sew up the extra buttonholes and sew the buttons on on top, and it avoids all the hassle of trying to line everything up.

7. If the yarn which you are working with is not hugely variegated you can oversew the shoulder seams, rather than mattress stitch them, for a flat seam so that nothing could possibly rub on the baby. I oversewed the pink baby and the rainbow baby and mattress stitched the other two. You can't tell unless you look.

8. Choosing the buttons is one of my favourite parts



9. At a rough guess, a BSJ for a newborn takes 100g of DK weight wool. In these pictures we have Colinette Cadenza, Reqia Square Colour 6 ply, Some Opal Something, Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino and some more Regia Square. They are all machine washable.

10. This pattern is beautiful, easy and magical. Go and knit one now.

On the other side of the coin we have a contender for 'Now you see it, Now you don't':



It is an attempt at the Super Natural Stripes jacket, but a combination of I have much less yarn/ it takes much more yarn than I thought has given some oddly eclectic stripes and the whole thing feels a bit meh, rather than a wonderful gift for a new baby. The waterboatmen are skeeting over the surface of the pond - does it go in or stay out?

The show's not over ...

... until the buttons are sewn on and the Munchkin Baby Jacket added to my ever-increasing pile of baby clothes.

A root around the button tin for the extra buttons which I bought for the rainbow baby and a quick shopping trip at lunchtime produced four choices:


From left to right: wave buttons - they have a dark blue swirl on them; wooden carved ladybirds; turquoise buttons; mother of pearl buttons.

A quick consultation with my button expert (he who rejected everything in the button tin yesterday), narrowed it down to two:


Ladybirds, or


turquoise; ladybirds or turquoise? The ladybirds are cute and neutral but the turquoise exactly matches the blue stripes in the knitting and are big and manly for this little baby boy. Ladybirds or turquoise?

I couldn't decide, H couldn't decide; the munchkin pumpkin, still sat on my study shelf, expressed no noticeable opinion.

In the end though, the decision was made for me. By this:

Don't even try to pretend that you don't know what I'm knitting! This is the final one though, I promise. The turquoise buttons, chosen with a fuggy coldy head in my lunchhour, with none of the yarn with me, are an exact match for Colinette Cadenza in Blue Jay.


They even match down to the variegations in the yarn. It's the icing on the (woolly) fairy cake.


And maybe it is appropriate that ladybirds are crawling all over a pumpkin!



PS. For Dad, who very gamely reads the 'technical knitting stuff' every post, with very little concept of what I'm talking about, these pictures are more in your line of photography than knitwear:


Sunset setting

Dusk setting.

Both equally beautiful. The real thing was somewhere between the two - a molten gold sky.

Harvestime

Is there really ever too much of a good thing? Last year when I knit three identical large baby blankets several people asked me whether I was sick of the pattern and yet I know I'd knit it again for a baby who I know would treasure it.

With the horde of babies about to descend I am returning again and again to the old faithful baby surprise jacket. It's chief charms are that it's a quick knit and one to use beautiful stripy sock yarn for the brightest and best effect. And you get to choose buttons.

I said yesterday that I had abandonned the one armed bandit in favour of the comfort of repetitive garter stitch which was probably an indication of the delightful cold I am starting to grow today - most of my team have got the same tickly throat so we think we should have quarrantined my boss after his children went back to school.

However, an evening curled up on the sofa means that I've finished the latest BSJ!



This yarn, Regia Square 6ply in Clown (1125) from Web of Wool, is the same yarn that I used for the very first Baby Surprise Jacket, which was called 'Baby Surprise Jacket'. I can't use that again and so far we've had Pink Baby and Rainbow Baby so I was thinking towards Orange Baby when I came across this in Sainsbury's:



It's a perfect colour match and the whole ensemble just glows.



So; Pumpkin Baby? Squash Baby? Baby Baby? Nope. Much better than that:


It's the Munchkin Baby Surprise! All it needs now is the buttons.

Just a spoonfull of sugar

Fear not! I haven't been baking again. Opinion was divided as to whether the rainbow cake was actually edible or whether it would turn your insides the colours shown in the biology diagrams but Chez Moi it is disappearing fast. The chocolate cakes are long gone!

The sugar is to help me with this:


Clearly I need to find a one-armed teddy bear and announce that I have a custom made sweater for him and for his other arm, languishing at the bottom of the toy box because the other sleeve is done, I just couldn't face all of those ends. I am rapidly discovering that (a) I like fairisle an awful lot more when I'm knitting in the round and/or when the pattern hasn't been written so that I needed to use a new length of teal yarn for every dotty row. Seriously, it's a five row gap on straight knitting. I know I could have changed it but it actually looks best that way and more than anything I want this to look as attractive as possible; (b) I am not sufficiently awake in the morning to knit a detailed fairisle pattern. It was two days before I realised that the sleeve was 5cm shorter than the pattern said, by which point I'd sewn it in and trimmed the ends. I haven't lengthened it because I think it looks proportional like this and I'm not keen on super-long sleeves for babies but that's beside the point and (c) for once in my life my gauge is tighter than the pattern. It means that the jacket is a smidgen smaller than the pattern but it's the same size as a BSJ and I know that they fit babies so all will be well.

The sugar itself is another BSJ for a work baby which has so far evaded the camera. It's the same orange as the very first one I ever knit which is here, and it's very soothing.

Birmingham likes to consider itself an up and coming city and is very keen on art and sculpture type projects to show how cultured we all are. The current street exhibition is wicker work and you'll know where the title for today's post really came from when you see this:


An undeniably British figure, some way north of the big smoke.


I don't know how much of the sign you can read (click it for bigger) but the interesting bits are that the desert spiky plants in the sculpture are supposed to represent smoke and the chimney-pots include the Birmingham Bishop type pot. The only problem is deciding which one is a Birmingham Bishop.

Whilst I like this one:



I put my money on this one - because it looks like a chess piece


Google doesn't turn up anything special about Birmingham Bishop chimney pots so if anyone knows anything more, let me know.

The other unanswered question is which way round is Mary - the view above, or this one:



Whichever way she is facing, Mary is a more soothing sculpture than this next one, the one nearest to my office:


The subtext reads: "Your lunch hour is over, please return to your office now. Your lunch hour is over, please return to your office now. Your lunch hour is over, please return to your office now. " on a continuous loop.



Given how my professional life is governed by time - chargeable hours and minutes and targets for hours and minutes, and deadlines, deadlines and more deadlines, I find it a little uncomfortable to watch; it's a bit like a Sophie Kinsella novel, The Undomesticated Goddess which kicks off with a London solicitor who misses a registration deadline for a charge with costly consequences. Without spoiling the story too much I will say that all is not what it seems, and all's well that ends well, but whereas friends in other professions have read it as light train fiction, there isn't a lawyer I know who hasn't felt that kick in the base of their stomach when they read those first few chapters, and run through their current deadlines in their head - it's just a little too close for comfort.

Ditto

Another weekend, another wedding. We've just got back from attending H's cousin's wedding oop north and I am delighted to say that we have now finished the marathon of 'weddings we have been to'.

The wedding was a blur of uncles and aunts and cousins, only a few of whom I had met before, and then it was at our wedding but I feel I have got a little bit more of an idea as to who is who. H has 15 sets of uncles and aunts and around 40 cousins. He can name all of the uncles and aunts on a good day and about a third of the cousins so you get an idea of what I'm trying to get to grips with!

Being nothing if not consistent, my knitting for the weekend was this:


Another BSJ, this time a more successful interpretation of gender neutral. The multicoloured yarn is some Opal which I had leftover from making these socks; I have no idea what the colour is but it's pretty. When that ran out I switched to green Baby Cashmerino which picks up the flecks of green in the Opal. All I need now are some buttons.

The flower is from the wedding, each lady was given a white flower to wear, and each gentleman wore a red buttonhole.

As a little extra, this is my favourite picture from Saturday:

London Calling

Even during the couple of years I spent living in Wimbledon, I never considered myself a Londoner; geographically misplaced Devonian maybe, but Londoner, no! I liked the wide open spaces, the sea and the coastline, and rolling hills. Not noise and traffic and the diesel belch of a passing bus which grits in your teeth.

However, whenever we get a spare day it is to London that we go, but to our favourite spaces, shops and views. And that is precisely where we went on Thursday.

It is a family joke that whenever my father plans an expedition, the list of sites to see in that day will stretch the ordinary family and yet there are little extras built in on all sides, "just one more", "just up this hill", "just...".

I am nothing if not my father's daughter. I also adhere to his maxim that you see things best on foot. H has learned to wear sensible footwear.

From Warwickshire you arrive by train into Marylebone which crosses off one Monopoly square for starters, and we took shanks pony down into Marylebone itself. Marylebone High Street is a picture of upper middle class shopping, there's no other way to describe it. It is perfect for window shopping all the gadgets, odd arty furniture, and hand painted china you could ever need. We did however, fall victim to the Cath Kidston shop. Secretly I love Cath Kidston prints in the same way that I love Martha Stewart Living. I know that however much I aspire to have my home look like that it will still be full of hockey sticks, fragrant sports clothes, golf clubs and bags and boxes of yarn and fabric, but I girl's got to dream.

H, loving as ever, and with a fairly recent recollection of the interaction between a pin and the sole of his foot, bought me this:


And a pinny covered in strawberries which I fell in love with. The reason for our heading in this direction was to pay a visit to the legendary VV Rouleaux. I wish I'd taken a picture of the outside of this shop because the window displays were lovely and the shop itself is a great plummy colour but I was hypnotised by the wares beckoning me in. If you have never heard of it, VV Rouleaux sells ribbons, from the finest gauze to the heavy cord tassels needed to hold floor length curtains in place. We found a rack full of embroidered ribbons

and as you see, a few came home. The pink at the top left is little girl ribbon, then the orange stripe I want to turn into knitwear somehow, the green is elephant ribbon, then there are blue boats and three different colours of butterflies - inspiration ribbons one and all, these will turn up as trims on quilts or tiny clothes, or wrapped around very special parcels. Or maybe I will keep them to look at and play with and love.


Our meanderings took us past Harley Street (where we paid homage on behalf of the medical members of the family) and past this:



A cow. On a first floor balcony. Lest it not be obvious from the picture I should stress that this is not a real cow, which would be very lost, but I suspect it to be part of the Cow Parade. It's at the end of Wimpole Street behind Oxford Street if anyone knows which one it is.



Need I say more or shall I just show you the buttons?


Five pretty little flowery buttons to go on this piece of knitwear:


Before I give you the impression that this was simply a very girly shopping trip which I dragged my husband on, our next stop (well after the bead shop at the bottom of Carnaby Street) was his choice - The Royal Academy:



This sculpture is called Promenade, originally intended for the Tuilleries gardens in Paris, but instead set up in a courtyard in London. During the week, and without any special exhibitions on, there is not that much to see as a lot of the galleries are closed. However, we found plenty to enjoy including, A Quiet Corner, which I can't find on the internet but which has a girl in tudor dress curled up in a sunny windowsill with a book while the fire burns brightly next to her feet. She isn't reading the book but has looked up to see someone coming into the room.

Oh and we found a painting with knitting - Alone by Amy K Browning. In the flesh the lady's face is far more detailed than the rest of the painting, drawing your eye in to her expression - she's too sad to knit.

H is a keen and fairly talented artist and for him, Mecca is three floors of art shop, Cass Art in Islington. "Islington!", I hear you say, "surely there's a knitting shop there!". And you would be correct.

Fortified by a slow pint in a pub near the Angel we made it to both Loop and Cass Art. Loop is small but crammed full of yarn and books and lovely things which I hadn't seen before and would find it hard to get anywhere else. For example, Autumn Vogue Knitting (with amazing mittens) and the Norah Gaughan books, which just might have come home with me!

We made it back to central London as dusk fell, and we sat in Trafalgar Square to watch the world go by





before heading into the National Portrait Gallery which has late opening to 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays. I don't think I've ever been in before, I've always gone for the familiarity of the National next door, but although much smaller it is more concentrated. We say pictures of the Tudors (always a favourite period in history), the portrait of Shakespeare that always pops up on the back of the textbooks, the Stuarts, William and Mary, naughty Queen Caroline, right through to Vera Brittan, Beatrix Potter, and our modern Olympians. Walking through the chronology either painting ability/style has improved or people looked really funny in Tudor times!

After a delicious supper nearby and a stroll around Leicester Square to play with the hand prints (I'm smaller than Arnie and bigger than Maggie Smith), we came home. But there was one last surprise:





Miniature fairy cakes from Fortnum & Mason. Perfect.

The knitting requiring buttons was this:



The first of a conveyor-belt of Baby Surprise Jackets for the onslaught of babies due in the next few months. I was hoping that this one was going to be gender-neutral (yes, I can hear you laughing) but by the time we arrived in London it was clear that this jacket was for a girl so I capitulated and bought the Liberty buttons to match.



It might have been for today's baby, born this morning, but as his name is Oliver, I think we shall have to find something else for him!