teamkaty

Everyone's got something to hide

  IMG_4224 
  Originally uploaded by teamkaty

...except for me and my Monkeys.

And my Mini-Monkeys.

Which are for these monkey feet.

Which belong to this little monkey.

Who we cannot wait to meet.

Deets: 21 weeks.  BOY.  Valentine's Day! Yep, IVF#3.  Cornell, bless their pointy little heads. Yes, I feel totally fine.  No, not even once.  Just told work last week.  Yes, we have some names, but Alex wants to keep them secret.  Yes, these are the first things I've knitted for him.  Yes, yes, yes, I am so very happy.

Oh, the yarn!  That's Hello Yarn Tough Sock in Swiftly.  Isn't it great?  Every time I came to the baby blue I'd think, "Adrian is a genius!"  Used 0s on the big socks and 1.5s for the little 'uns.

I made a hat, too.

I know, it's a little small.  Wishful thinking on the part of my parts, no doubt (plus cutting too short a piece of waste yarn for casting on in the subway).  He's getting a big thick monkey noggin from both sides.  I'll probably re-do it.

I have issues.

  Guess what? 
  Originally uploaded by teamkaty

This will come as a surprise to no one, I'm sure.  Gauge issues, big time.  (Wait--what did you think I was talking about?)  A couple of weekends ago I started some new socks and knit two swatches* and all three ran into the sucking quicksand of my eternal inability...well, I don't even know why this is always a problem for me.  Maybe I knit funny.  I seem to have a bad eye for substitutions.  And Gawd knows my math is bad.

Let's go from left to right, which is conveniently also from easiest to hardest:

Monkey socks, Hello Yarn.  This one is less about gauge and more about, "Duh, always check Ravelry first!" I knit a couple of inches on 2.5 mm needles, as the pattern specifies (she calls these #2, in my book they're #1.5), before reluctantly acknowledging that they were coming out too big.  Not impossibly big, but without any negative ease to make the pattern really pop.  I looked up the pattern on Ravelry and sure enough, most people are using smaller needles.  Forget social networking; this is the kind of thing that site is genius for--culling ideas, checking pattern bugs, seeing which designs actually look butt-ugly knit up, etc. 
#1/2.25 mm probably would have been perfect, but one of my sets only has four needles and the other one is that obnoxious 8" size.  Wait a mere 24 hours and buy another set?  Noooo, couldn't do that. So I'm using #0/2 mm, and they take some careful squeezing over the instep.  Maybe I'll decide to be all generous-like and give them to someone more petite of foot.  Or maybe not.

Cobblestone sweater, Classic Elite Skye Tweed.  Wow, I really felt like a paragon of virtue swatching for this one.  It's the yarn the pattern calls for!  But guess what: while my stitch gauge is dead on, my row gauge is 24 to his 29.  Huh. I think I'm just going to plow ahead.  Register your warnings now, so you can say "I told you so" with full righteousness when I fuck up the armscye.

Aran Pullover (Knitting for Baby), Louet Gems Topaz.  OK, this one I'm going out on a limb for.  The pattern calls for Russi Sales Easy Care 8 Ply, but I didn't expect I'd find that.  I wanted something washable.  I found a couple of things that were of comparable weight, but the colors sucked. S-U-C-K-E-D.  You know, if someone came out with an affordable line of washable wool, geared towards baby things, in a decent palette with some depth, I bet they could make a mint (if you think such a product already exists, do tell!).

But the Louet, it was pretty, and washable, so I bought it.  Pattern gauge is 17 stitches/28 rows in seed stitch on #8s; I'm getting 20/33.     Upping the needles isn't an option, it's loose as it is.  I might even need to use #7s.  So my current plan is to [covers eyes with fingers] just knit a size bigger than I want.  Oh c'mon, it's a baby sweater, it's not like there's really shaping involved!

What?  What??

Teamkaty: Come for the complaining, stay for the inevitable trainwreck.

* I deserve a cupcake, don't you think?  Maybe two?  Please, I need positive reinforcement on this swatching business.

Baaaaaa!

WEBS order!
Originally uploaded by teamkaty

Well, I cast on for a pair of Monkeys on Friday, and then on Saturday my order from WEBS arrived--Classic Elite Skye Tweed to make a Cobblestone for Alex. It's official: I'm a sheep. Put a bell on me, I'm done.

The Skye Tweed was a great deal (if you're interested, order now--the "manly" colors are nearly gone), but boy howdy is it scritchy.  However, in our case this is only a problem for the knitter.  When I opened up the box, Alex grabbed a ball and said, "Wow, you're right, it is scratchy!"  And then he stuck it under his shirt and rubbed it around laciviously.  Wool pervert.

I think this is going to be a good color on him.  It's brighter in real life, with little flecks of hot pink and orange and blue.  OK, that sounds like hideous novelty yarn, but I promise you it's subtle.  I am a little worried about the staining you can see here on the labels--hope I'm not going to sport crimson fingers all fall.  Note to self: cover the blocking board when the time comes!

And the Monkeys, well, what can I say: 1,098 Ravelers (is that what we are?) can't be wrong.  I'm even doing the picot mod so zealously recommended by January One.  Check out the fabulous long-tail provisional cast-on that Veronique showed me at Spiders last week.  You cast on with both waste yarn and your working yarn, and then when the time comes you just pick up and knit the working loops with your last row of picot and voila!  No tedious hemming!  No crochet chaining!  Brilliant.  I want to put picot on everything now.  Oh, and the lovely, lovely yarn: it's Tough Sock from Hello Yarn.  I hope you like the colorway as much as I do, because with this yardage--500!--I just might have enough for two pairs.