It doesn’t look like much, does it? (Although I’ll tell you I don’t know what possessed me when I thought this design really needed a bit of stranded colorwork… knit flat. Purl-side stranding? Way arduous. I’m sure I swore never to do it again a few years back.) But every stitch of it is lever knit. It has a sleeve now, too, which I lever knit on two circulars. Whether it will fit an actual baby remains to be seen; the math for the yoke just didn’t want to play nice and even after four rounds of increasing by a third I wasn’t convinced I had enough stitches for a body and two sleeves. I ended up casting on 20 to rejoin at each underarm and then increasing six more beneath for extra body fullness. But I think I can finish it before the closing ceremonies, and while it doesn’t feel like my most amazing accomplishment, it’s been something entirely new for me in terms of technique. I’m choosing to equate it with competing in curling rather than in the cross country marathon or aerials — it’s about precision and focus rather than unbelievable strength and stamina or derring-do bordering on insanity. At least it’s no more underwhelming than snowboard cross.

Oh, and the little stripey sweater? It’s going to be called Okoboji, thanks to Mia having reminded me of our dear sailing roommate, Kate, and her charming Iowa hometown and its lake. I’ve almost finished writing up the pattern notes to send to those of you who volunteered to test knit. Thanks, guys!

I picked up a handful of sample skeins of Happiest Girl! Dyeworks sock yarn at Knit Purl’s Sock Summit party back in August. Those little skeinlets are like mini-cupcakes — so cute and brightly irresistible. But what can you actually make with them? Since the dyer was at the party and encouraging us all to take as many as we’d like, I grabbed a pair in several colors with this pattern in mind. And it turns out I was exactly right: one sample skein = one Blue Steps Bootie with just enough left over to weave in the ends! I can’t tell from the internet whether Happiest Girl! is still in existence, but this is the colorway “Parrot” and the resulting socklet does, indeed, make me very happy.

I’ll finish the second one on the train to Tacoma this evening. Madrona, here I come!

So I’ve finished a wee stripey something:

I would be cuter on a baby, if only one were at hand for modeling sessions.

Behold, a tiny gender-neutral pullover! It features a semi-solid background color (“Burnt Ember,” from A Verb for Keeping Warm; this is their Annapurna cashmere-blend sock yarn) with stripes of a bright solid, although you could just as well go the other way and use a neutral background to show off stripes that change color, as in Whitney’s adorable Stripes! design. It’s my riff on the classic white and navy nautical sweaters, down to the boat neck and overlapping shoulders:

Yes, I’m planning to write up the pattern, so what I need right now is help thinking of a name for it. It should be a gender-neutral name (and no, we’re not calling the sweater “Pat”), something playful and bright and maybe even sailing related, and I just don’t have any good ideas. If you do, won’t you leave them in the comments? If you’re interested in test-knitting it, I’d love to know that, too. All you need is one skein of sock-weight yarn, remnants of a contrast color, and two little buttons. At this point it only exists in one size — I’d say for a three-to-six-month baby, depending on the girth of your little cherub — but I’ll be working up some math for a couple of larger sizes. I knit mine in pieces, just for the heck of it and because I liked the way the semi-solid was behaving in my “swatch,” but picked up the sleeves at the shoulders and worked down, so there are only two real seams to sew plus a bit of tacking at the shoulders. It would be very easy to adapt it to work mostly in the round if you prefer.

Oh, you want to see the chicken buttons? Of course you do:

Sorry I didn’t get a real close-up of the chickies. I bought them ages ago because they were so darn cute, and it turns out they’re the ideal colors for this project.

Switching gears, who am I going to see at Madrona? I can hardly believe it’s this week already. I’m taking the train up on Friday evening so I can attend Amelia Garripoli’s “Productive Spindling” on Saturday morning (I sure hope she’s tolerant of self-taught beginners!), Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s “Knitting for Speed and Efficiency” on Saturday afternoon, and Carson Demers’s “Knitting Happily Ever After” on Sunday afternoon. This is the first time I’ll be staying overnight at the hotel instead of just zooming up and back or staying off-site with relatives. I’m hoping that means I’ll have more time to hang out and meet people and practice what I’m learning. If you recognize me, please do come and introduce yourself!

First of all, thank you all so much for your warm embrace of Daisy Daisy! She’s flattered, and so am I. I am mulling over different possibilities to size the back shaping and will try to come up with some sensible instructions soon. Meanwhile, I’ve got other knitting that hasn’t found its way to the blog yet…

One of our reasons to travel east last month was to attend my cousin Caroline’s baby shower, the better to glimpse a bunch of relations on my mother’s side whom we’ve rarely seen since we moved back to the Northwest. Caroline is an interior designer with impeccable taste, and she’s also having a girl. All the most recent babies I’ve knit for have come with man tackle, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to pull out all the stops and design something really girly and adorable. So I hunted up some sock leftovers from the stash (those skeins of Dream in Color Smooshy are generous) and just kicked up my heels. The result is this sugary confection:

Sorry the photos aren’t a little better; they were taken in haste at the shower itself, since I was sewing on buttons in the airport and steam blocking in my brother’s hotel room just a few hours before! But I think you get the sense that if you were to make a big sundae of sugar & spice & everything nice, this would be the cherry on top. Pink! Picot! Scallops! Rose petals! (I actually feel a need to go read some Ernest Hemingway and knit Scratchy Man Wool just looking at it.) I opted for a sort of bubble hem because I was quickly running out of the red (that’s “In Vino Veritas,” and you might recognize it from a certain February Baby Sweater)… only about eighteen inches remained after I bound off. Here’s the back:

The rose motif (though I think of them as snowflakes) is from a chart in Lizbeth Upitis’s Latvian Mitten book. I added the “lice” wherever there was a particularly long carry, thinking of baby toes getting snagged on the way through. Since The Baby Currently Known as Bundle doesn’t have a real name yet, I’m calling the design after her mother: Sweet Caroline. My cousin may have broken a land speed record with her thank-you note, so I can smugly report that this little top has been dubbed an heirloom and a favorite gift. Thanks, Caroline! Can’t wait to meet your little daughter!