Another Surtsey
More catch-up documentation of summer knits… this has gone across the country to Baby Walter now, so it can have its day on the blog! I had a lot of leftover Indigo Moon Merino Superwash in Mossy Green from the stripey baby sweater I knit at the beginning of the year. (It’s such a cheerful, vibrant green that my camera lost all confidence and didn’t even try to reproduce it here. Way to phone it in, Olympus. You’ll just have to imagine it about fifty times springier and better than what you see here.) Anyway, it was the excuse I needed to buy a skein of Claudia Hand Painted Fingering in Copper Pennies, over which I’d been drooling ever since Twisted received it. (And now I have leftovers of that… enough for edging on a raffish neckerchief, I should think, if I stripe it with something else russety from the stash…) I’d been intending to make a Baby Surprise out of these two yarns, but when Kristen told me about Surtsey I couldn’t picture them as anything else. (Mom wants to know what a Surtsey is. It’s one of the newest islands on the planet, formed by a volcanic eruption in Iceland’s Westmann Isles in 1963. Now seals and gulls and puffins breed there. Puffins! I badly want to see puffins in the wild — clearly I must go to Iceland. Surtsey takes its name from Surtr, a fire jötunn in Norse mythology. Since I love islands and Norse mythology, it was my choice of the names Kristen was considering for the design.)
I picked up these excellent orange buttons at Close Knit. I had nice russet buttons that matched the contrast color; in my original plan for a BSJ they’d have worked nicely on a green button band. But this little sweater wanted something loud and fun, and while I don’t love the orange buttons quite as much as the red ones on Kristen’s original, I think they’re pretty darn good.
Happy birthday, little Walter! I’m pretty sure I made this big enough to encompass your whopping 9 pounds 5 ounces (and gaining steadily, I’m sure), but I hope the heat wave in the Northeast will be over soon or you might miss your window!
Posted: September 28th, 2010 at 10:49 am
What a fun little sweater! Never would have thought of green and russet together, but they are perfect! I also love the name–a new baby is not dissimilar from a new volcanic island.
Posted: September 28th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
So beautiful!!! Absolutely love the color combo.
Posted: September 28th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
That’s so cute! Great color scheme.
Posted: September 28th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
You need to come to Alaska – you can see Puffins in the wild here! :0) Beautiful, cute sweater. Lucky Walter!
Posted: September 29th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Such a cute sweater. I love how solid the buttons feel on the bands. They look perfect for little gripping hands.
Posted: September 29th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I love the color combo! Your knitting is always so neat and pretty and inspiring. I’m so glad you were able to use the pattern! And I really want to see the green if that pretty shade is just a pale reflection!
Posted: September 30th, 2010 at 5:07 am
Walt loves the sweater– I am praying for a cold spell in which to use it. Yesterday it was a muggy 80 degrees. Yuck. I’ll send photographic evidence soon.
Posted: October 1st, 2010 at 3:17 pm
This is a very happy sweater, Sarah.