Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

Life List: Hand Knit Baby Sweater

I added "Knit Sweaters For All The New Babies In My Life" to my Life List. I did this because I enjoy knitting but blow it off a lot of the time and when I had Maddie I got a couple of beautiful hand knit baby sweaters and they were some of my most cherished gifts. I've saved them to pass down to my grandchildren. 

The last baby sweater I made was for Mary, who started kindergarten this year. It was time. 

Our friends Adam and Deidre had a baby about 6 months ago. I made a baby sweater for them, actually pretty quickly. But then it turned out I expected their baby to be born malformed with one arm much longer than the other. 

They had a normal baby with perfectly proportioned arms so the sweater was wrong for them and that's on them. Way to take your prenatal vitamins and avoid radiation during pregnancy guys. 

I redid the sweater and I actually like the color combination better than the original. (Sorry about the pictures...stupid phone pictures. Waaaaa I miss my camera!)

Also the appropriately sized arms. 

I'd never made a hooded sweater before and this one is cute with a little umbilical cord at the top. Well it's cuter than an umbilical cord.

And look, a tag. Logan gave these to me about 8 years ago and I still have approximately 2000 of them. I should make more stuff. Maybe I'll start putting them in Max's lunch box every day. 

I used a pattern found on Ravelry. It's called Duck Soup by Jujube & Lolo.

It was very simple to make (aside from the inevitable mishaps I always have when knitting). But remarkably I found the knotted buttons and fasteners to be the most frustrating thing. The sweater sat in my knitting bag almost complete for over a month because the fasteners made me so furious. In the end I rigged up buttons and closures.

Here's another piece of advice if you're planning to make something for a baby. When babies are newborn they grow really fast. They're also curled up like tiny shrimp most of the time so the sweater you spent hours and hours on will not only fit the baby for about 8 days total, they'll also be all curled up on it so no one will see it. 

If you knit a sweater in a 6-12 month size (or bigger) your gift will be worn for longer and be more comfortable for the baby. This particular pattern is meant to be a little big so one season it can be worn as a light jacket and then, toward the end of the winter, as a regular cardigan.

This is good because after the amount of time I spent pulling out stitches, redoing sections and those stupid button closures, that baby is going to need to wear the crap out of that sweater.  

At this point Swine Flu would be like a dream come true.

I have the world's most annoying cold. It refuses to develop into anything more than an energy sucking/sleep depriving annoying sniffly nose cough thing with occasional "Please I'd Like To Tear My Face Off To Relive The Sinus Pressure" moments.

The cough, I've had off and on for months.

When I went to Florida with my friends last June I was nervous about sharing a room with the friends I hadn't shared with before. I worried they'd be loud sleepers because I am a very light sleeper. I used to snore at times, because of my tonsils, but when I got rid of them I stopped snoring. I felt pretty confident about my fitness as a roomate for anyone.

It turns out my roomate is the world's quietest sleeper. Like I think she completely powers her body to "Off" because you can't hear anything. I held a mirror under her nose to see if she was even still alive. I don't even think she was breathing, that's how courteous a sleeper she is. Her breathing might be a bother, so she'll just stop for the night.

It turned out I was the annoying loud sleeper. I didn't snore but that annoying cough apparently kept my roomie awake the entire time we were there. Even worse I talked in my sleep demanding pizza in a very mean voice. (Saturday night I woke myself up laughing about a dish I read on a menu in my dream called Cob on the Coleslaw.)

Next year I'm going to have to sleep in the shed.

At this point it's pretty safe to say I have allergies but I can't seem to find the medicine that will reliably fix my symptoms. It's pretty obvious I'm allergic to Gary. Anyone want an enormous cat? 

Max is suffering from a similar malady, what I thought was the beginnings of swine flu has dragged on and on for two weeks. I kept him home yesterday just waiting for the fever to start, for something to happen. Instead we sat on the sofa watching movies and coughing on each other. With loving feelings in our hearts. This morning he didn't cough at all, and was only mildly sniffly....so I sent him to school.

....where he'll surely catch the flu so that's just wonderful.

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I've started knitting again, something I haven't done in years. I did not teach myself before you ask, I took a class that sort of developed into a knitting circle where the teacher would show me how to do everything 50 times because I could never remember things like making increases.

I bought my yarn on Thursday afternoon and, thanks to the wonderful world of free knitting tutorial videos online, I've been able to refresh my memory without having to walk around the block to the knitting store every four rows to ask for help.

I knit furiously for 5 days, staying up until 3am one night because I created beautiful raglan yokes (for the sleeves) on this sweater and the triumph was like crack cocaine. I didn't think I'd ever sleep again. Finally, after knitting for 4 hours straight yesterday, (while coughing in Max's face), I put the knitting down.

When I went to sleep I began to dream about knitting the sleeves, because it's a technique I've never done before and I can't seem to wrap my brain around how it will work. I have a lot of lame dreams, I dream I forget to pay the babysitter, I dream about running the errands I have on my list for the next day, I dream about inexplicable menu items like Cob on the Coleslaw.

But this dream about knitting a sleeve was just intolerable. I kept waking up and trying to think of something else to dream about, something more exciting like how I was going to do laundry the next day, but inevitably my brain would go back to knitting. Which also happened when I first discovered that sudoku is an excellent mind numbing puzzle game. 

This concludes Explanation #1: Why Melissa Has Never Touched Illegal Drugs (I may have lightly grazed one briefly. But I don't even count that as illegal.)

I used to do crafty things

Remember when I knit the Best. Baby. Sweater. Ever.?

I've made quite a few baby sweaters and this was the best one I've done.

So imagine how tickled I was when this photo came in a holiday card! First of all, look at my friend John's little girl. Second: check out that awesome sweater! Wooo!

The most amusing part of this sweater is how I thought it would fit in the fall of 2004, when Mary was not quite one. Uhm, she'll be two in February. I guess I'm a loose knitter.

Wait that sounds bad.

Kitty Cat Hat

I completed this hat a very long time ago but it took me 5 months to learn how to make pom poms. Rah Rah!

I made the hat from my very favorite yarn in the world....Mission Falls 1824 Cotton. How can you not love this yarn? If you don't love this yarn there is a cold dead place where your heart should be and I pity you. Pity you.

I used this pattern and adjusted it a little to make it the 'Kitty' hat featured in this book.

About 5 of the 10 things I have ever knit have been in 1824. Including this great sweater.

I love my daughter, but she has the same photo issues I do.

Poor, poor thing.

It's ridiculously difficult to get her to smile and look like her cute self, in general. So I did the best I could. (Check out our 'Snaggle Tooth' daughter! I love that big gap.)

Best Baby Sweater Ever.

I am a slow knitter. A very, very slow knitter. I have a virtual graveyard of unfinished knitting projects in my bedroom. There's the maternity sweater I started a few months before I even started trying to get pregnant with Max. It's still not done but the days of getting pregnant are long gone. The good news is, I have a difficult time getting the correct gauge. So the sweater will fit me, though slightly loose, if I ever finish the sleeves and sew it up.

I mentioned before the baby sweater I was frantically knitting for this really cute (and I'm not just saying that) baby.

This week my friends baby turned 18, so I thought the sweater would make a great graduation gift. It might be a little small but that's cool. At least I finished it and it wasn't abandoned for the Knitting Graveyard.