Some finished things

I have been knitting steadily during the avalanche of concerts, ceremonies, meetings, etc. that happen during May, but have had no time to post. I just realized that I’ve finished a few things this month and not even shared them!

First up – this is a simple scarf made from my handspun.

The pattern is “cartridge rib,” which I got from the trusty old Vogue Stitchionary volume 1. It is a simple, 2-row repeat that is very soothing to knit. The result is a corrugated fabric that I really like. The yarn is the skein of handspun Targhee I just finished last month. It always pleases me to spin a skein and then knit it right away. I thought I had oodles of yarn (424 yards), but the scarf is only 59.5” long. That’s a little on the short side. There is a rule of thumb that you want scarves to be as long as the wearer is tall, and this definitely isn’t one you can wrap around your neck again and again. But it’s good for tucking into the collar of a coat without having a lot of bulk down in the chest area. It was so fun to knit and I was able to take it everywhere (which is how it got done before I ever showed it to you).

I also managed to bang out a BSJ. This is another pattern that is pretty simple and portable, and I worked on it during a couple of school music concerts. I used a skein of hand-dyed sportweight yarn I got at MDSW earlier this month for this purpose. The baby is due in August and is a girl, and the mother’s favorite colors are blue and green. I know that if you knit something in the mother’s favorite colors, then the baby will wear it! This yarn was so entertaining to knit. I just love all the speckles, and there was absolutely no pooling:

I have purchased very simple buttons (which are machine-washable). Also, here’s a shot of the sweater as it looks when it comes off the needles. You do some origami-like folding, and then – surprise! – you have the iconic Baby Surprise Jacket.

I still have to sew those seams at the top of the sleeves and put the buttons on, and then this is ready to gift. Delightfully, I have tons of yarn left over. When I made some sportweight BSJs with Felici Sport several years ago, I used about 345 yards (105 g). The skeins at MDSW were labelled 385 yards (4 oz = 113 g)… so one skein should have been enough, but you can never be sure. Skeins can be over or under by as much as 10%. I bought two to be safe. But my finished sweater weighs 102 g and I have 26 g left, which means I used about 348 yards. I have 26 grams of yarn left from that first ball, plus another skein in reserve.

Finally, when I needed a really simple knit for one of the music concerts, I decided to cast on another Sockhead Slouch hat (that really simple hat made of fingering weight yarn). I used a very old ball of yarn from stash – I entered this into Ravelry in August, 2007, which is when I got my account. So it predated 2007 in real life. Apparently I started a toe-up sock at some point, but then ripped it out because I wasn’t happy with it.

I remember ordering this yarn online and being hugely disappointed when it arrived, because the colors were very, very different in the online photos than they were in person. In fact, I think the colors were a lot like what you see in the baby sweater – very soothing and beach-y. Instead, I got a much darker skein that was more autumnal in tone. AND… it was superwash merino, which was never going to become a pair of socks after a certain point in my knitting life. So I knit a Sockhead Slouch from it. A word of warning: I don’t think this style of hat looks good on anyone in my family. We tried it on 3 of us and this was our best option. I don’t know whose hat this is, but surely it will find its owner. Is it any of you?

I have some other things to show you, but I think 3 FOs (or practically F-ed Os) is enough for today. Hope you are all enjoying a long holiday weekend!