Bizoo Bizu Tickle

I finished another project! (I'm trying positive reinforcement, hoping it leads to the speedy completion of other projects.) The tickle hat, from Louisa Harding's Bizoo Bizu book I raved about in an earlier post. According to the Ravelry group page, the name from the book is the children's phonetic pronounciation of "bisous bisous" (kiss kiss, maybe it's spelled "bizou bizou," I don't know French so I can't say for sure). How cool is it that Louisa Harding replies to people's questions on Ravelry?

This hat was wonderful to knit, but hard to photograph. A beret demands a human head. Thank goodness I had this teddy bear to use as a model... I tried stuffing the hat with balls of yarn, but it didn't look right at all. (more photos here) I used Louisa Harding's Kashmir Baby yarn, which I like because it looks good and doesn't pill easily.

I've started my next project, Blossom, from the same book, and decided to use Bubblegum, a great coral pink/red color of Kashmir Baby. I've knit two gauge swatches, neither of which were correct (AAAHHH my nemesis) but I finally found the right needles (I hope) and should have that rolling along tomorrow. All of this gauging has me thinking about switching to the combined knitting method (Annie Modesitt's explanation), because I'm not 100% happy with my tension and knitting when I'm not knitting in the round. My knit stitches aren't the same size as my purl stitches, and the combined method is supposed to help with that. I'll try it for my next gauge swatch, to see how it goes.

Bizoo Bizu, Louisa Harding's new baby book!

Louisa Harding's new baby book, Bizoo Bizu, is finally available, and I'm in love. It's full of the adorable pink frilly girl things I love so much. It has some nice boy things, too, like the hat and sweater on the cover. I've been waiting for this book to arrive since March, when I saw the sample blanket (pictured with the book at left) at the Old Village Yarn Shop. But I'm always a fan of Louisa Harding's patterns... her extra details, like picot edging and eyelet rows, speak to me.

Anyway, this book arrived at the yarn shop on Thursday, and my mother (she's the best) brought me a copy right away. I dug around in my stash and found my light pink skein of Kashmir Baby, and cast on the Tickle hat (it's the only project in the book other than bootees that can be knit from one skein, and I'm kind of burned out on baby footwear). I'm through the picot cast-on, the eyelet rib, and an eyelet row. Just a few of my favorite things. The next project I want to try is a jumper with a row of hearts up the front, Blossom, and I hope to start it when I finish the hat, and when I can decide on which color of Kashmir Baby to use. I'm torn between pink and red and a hot pink. Decisions, decisions.


I'm glad that Bizoo Bizu came along and gave me the knitting boost I needed. Lately, I've been much more interested in gardening (my flowers outside are growing! YAY!) and reading than knitting. I am not a person who has to knit every day, and it's not unusual for me to take days or weeks off of knitting, which cuts down on my productivity. Speaking of reading, I think it's about time I talked about a book, as the word "kniterarian" is a reference to literature. Currently, I'm reading The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I first read the book for a college class, but I'm trying to go back and re-read all of the books I read for classes, because the pressure and time constraints of the academic calendar didn't allow me to enjoy them fully. Most people have heard of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which covers a day in the gulag. The First Circle is kind of like an expanded version of Ivan, covering more than one day and getting into a variety of characters. There is even a chapter describing a prisoner darning his socks (hooray for knitting references!). This short intro to the book sets it up better than I do. I'll say more about the book when I'm in the mood to be literary. But right now I have to get back to knitting the tickle hat. An eyelet row is up next, YAY!

Baby's first Birthday Socks

I FINISHED SOMETHING!!!

I had forgotten what it feels like to finish a knitting project. It's wonderful, isn't it? I had a hard deadline of Wednesday night to finish these socks, as Teresa's birthday is today (Saturday), and I had to mail them by Thursday. I didn't have much to knit... at Kniterary Club on Sunday, all I had left was one toe and two heels.

I finished the knitting, buried the ends, and washed them.
I "blocked" (I laid the damp socks on a towel, I didn't pin them) the socks to the following dimensions: 5 1/2 in foot, 4 3/4 in circumference.

As they dried, I reflected on what I would change:

1) I'm not 100% happy with the way the afterthought heel looks. It is a cinch to knit, though. My mother said she read somewhere that in order for the afterthought heel to be big enough, you have to do it over more than half of the stitches. I'll have to look into that. But I think that I would rather look into a short row heel, maybe the one Caitlin suggested.

2) I would get the measurements of the baby's foot before I started. That would have saved me a LOT of grief over sizing.

3) After I got the measurement, I would have stuck to 5 inches in length. I didn't know how many inches the toe and heel would add (answer: one inch each). I knit three inches between the waste yarn for the heel and the first decrease round of the toe. The main factor here was that I started the toe when the yarn went to purple.

What I would repeat:

1) I LOVE LOVE LOVE the scallop edge at the top of the sock, which came from Lucy Neatby. It made all the difference.

2) It used up leftover sock yarn!

3) They're pink and girly and ruffled. YAY.

I hope to visit Teresa soon and get a picture of the socks on her feet. She'll probably need some time to grow into them. Oh, well. Live and learn.

how big is a baby's foot?

Another kink has come up in my baby sock escapade: the sock is too small. I emailed my friend to ask her how long Teresa's foot was (how amazing that my roommate from college has one baby and another on the way!). Maggie said her foot was about 4 1/2 inches long. So I made the sock 4 1/2 inches long. But it looks skinny. Too skinny to fit over her ankle without cutting off circulation.

Oh, dear.

I started over, again, this time using size 2 (3.00mm) needles and casting on 40 sts. I think I've finally got it right this time... it will be at least 5 inches around for the instep, and I'll probably make it closer to 5 inches long.

another gauge error... ooopsa

I was frustrated with all of my wips, and I decided to start a simple baby sock for Teresa's first birthday. I got the Meilenweit Cotton Fantasy leftovers from a pair of socks my mom made, and decided I'd try the decorative scallop edge from a pair of socks designed by Lucy Neatby (photo on the far right). I casted on at Kniterary Club this afternoon, and everything was going great. I made excellent progress this afternoon, got to the toe... and realized that it was really too small and tight. I checked my needle size, and realized it was a size 0 (2mm) instead of a 1 1/2 (2.5mm). big problem. or small problem. ugh. I hate it when I make such stupid mistakes.

Needless to say, I ripped and started over. Gauge is my nemesis. Moral of the story: ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK THE SIZE OF YOUR NEEDLE.

This doesn't phase me at all, however, because the SPARTANS ARE IN THE FINAL FOUR!!!