Sleepy time and 2010 FO#16: Baby Surprise Jacket in Green

I work from home, so I have a lot of flexibility in how I structure my day.  I'll admit that some days that means I work in my pyjamas until half an hour before Sam is due to get home and I don't apologise for it!  But my day does usually involve getting up, doing stuff on a computer for six to seven hours and then cooking dinner.

However, today I woke up and I just wasn't feeling it.  I was sleepy, cranky, cold and a bit petulant. I may have stamped my foot when I couldn't get two bits of bread to separate so I could toast them.  So when Lucy jumped onto the bed for her morning nap, I popped right on the bed beside her her and slept my morning away.  I'm not a big napper because a) I can't get to sleep at night a lot of the time, let alone during the day and b) I always feel like time napping is wasted time, even if all I would done in that time is watch The Real Housewives and played on Ravelry.  After today's lovely warm cuddly morning, I'm reviewing my napping policy.  I think I could really get used to sleeping in the day, plus who says no to extra pussycat huggles?  Certainly not me!

You know who else naps a lot? Babies do.  So, let me show you a baby jacket I finished in December for a new baby, also called Lucy (was she named after my cat? I think so, although the mother denies it.)

How good was my segue? I'm improving.  Soon I'll be making dad jokes and bad alliterating puns on the Internet - it's only a matter of time...

This is Elizabeth Zimmermann's very famous Baby Surprise Jacket, knitted in Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks in green.  The pattern deserves its reputation as a much-lauded must-knit - it's all tricky short rows and nifty geometry held together by the knit stitch.  It didn't take much actual knitting time to finish the jacket but it is a very small jacket - suitable only for teeny tiny newborns.  I used 3mm needles, but I'd go 3.25mm or 3.55mm if I was to knit it again in 4ply. I hope the mum likes it and it keeps the baby warm, because even though it's summer in Melbourne it snowed yesterday! Oh Melbourne, your weather is so bloody annoying charmingly unpredictable.

I'm slowly catching up with my blogging. A few more posts to go...

Stockinette Sock Four-Ways (2010 FOs #15-18)

It's very common now to find a 'three-way' dish on a menu at a nice restaurant.  No, it's not some dirty act performed by the ingredient du jour; rather it's three ways of cooking the same ingredient presented on the same plate.  So last year I had salmon three ways - poached, smoked and as a carpaccio.  In the second half of last year, I could not stop knitting simple stockinette socks.  But to keep it interesting, I constructed them all in different ways.

Firstly, Sam's Christmas sock.  It's his standard 72-stitch top-down flap-and-gusset sock,  knitted in Wendy Happy - a bamboo nylon yarn.

I hated every single minute of knitting these socks.  The yarn was slippery and splitty, and I think I spent more time untangling the ball of yarn than I did knitting on the sock.  It also kept tangling and I had to break the yarn many times to fix an intractable knot, meaning I had to weave in a bazillion slippery end.

To add insult to injury, as soon as Sam started wearing them they stretched out of shape - now they're too loose and his heel slips.  Worst sock yarn and pair of socks ever.  This sock was an epic fail!

Second, socks for Sister #1.  64-stitch top-down flap-and-gusset heel socks knit in Zauberball.  I called them the Graduating Green Socks because of how the long colour repeats of the Zauberball work to create a graduated green effect.

t was a pleasure to knit this sock.  I divided the Zauberball into two equal halves using my digital scale, and then just started knitting a two-row repeat, letting the changing colours of the yarn do all the work.  I continued the striping down the heel flap, and I am super proud of how well it the stripes worked out.

When finished, the socks were beautiful and soft - like the perfect woollen cover for your tooties.  However, the happiness only lasted for a short while.  I soaked the socks in a tub of water that contained a little bit of wool wash, and disaster struck.  I have never seen so much bleeding in my life!  I soaked the socks for eight days, changing the water 4-8 times a day, and the dye is still leaching out.  The colour faded and the sock shrunk, like the soaking felted the sock slightly even though it was not agitated at all.  I suspect I may have got a faulty ball of wool - it was like the dye hadn't been set properly.  I may email the company that made the wool just to let them know.  I'm still undecided whether or not to gift the socks.  They're still functional, just not as pretty and a little bit small.

The third sock was made using Needle Food Merino Blend.  As always, it was wonderful.  It was wonderful to knit with, it washed and blocked like a dream and the finished sock is soft yet still feels sturdy enough to last as a sock.

This sock was knitted toe-up with a gusset-and-short-row heel and using Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off.  I tried to use the Widdershins pattern but I couldn't figure out how to convert the stitch count to 64 stitches, so I instead used the heel from my Firestarters.  Of course, the Firestarters have cables which are built into the heel turn which I didn't have on these socks, so I ended up with a funny little pointy heel:

It still fits wells and looks lovely, so this project is an epic success.  Thank God!

Sock #4 was a 64-stitch toe up sock with a short-row heel in the ever reliable Filatura di Crosa Maxime Print, and was incredibly crappily photographed 15 minutes before being gifted to the happy recipient.

It just wouldn't feel like a FO post without a picture of Lucy, who has not been coping with the heat well.  Poor little thing!