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!

My husband has our baby and I’ve just done four lovely, uninterrupted hours of work in a coffee shop. I didn’t pause to feed anyone, wipe anyone’s bottom, or respond to anyone’s escalating coos and squawks for attention. It was very fine indeed. But throughout I was plagued by a niggling uneasy feeling, as though I had forgotten my knitting or possibly my underpants. Tell me, is it this way when they leave for college or does it wear off?

Do you suffer from that pathological crafter’s condition where you realize you haven’t organized a present for someone whose birthday is in three days and you figure you’ll just make something from scratch? I do. This wouldn’t be a big problem if my craft were baking or cartoons, but knitting is time consuming. Unfortunately, common sense and practical experience of the space-time continuum as we know it are no remedy for this condition. And that’s how I found myself turning to Stephen West (how long could a jaunty neckerchief take, really?), rummaging in the stash for a skein of Malabrigo Sock and some Socks That Rock leftovers and casting on for Akimbo on August 24th.

No, I didn’t finish in time, especially given the need for blocking and shipping to New York. But Fortune handed me a cookie. Essentially the same hour I cast on this quick something for my brother, his wife went into labor. This meant that he would not exactly be watching the mail slot for his birthday present. And all that garter stitch was ideal — I needed something meditative to focus my nervous energy while I was waiting for news. Alas for my sweet sister-in-law, I was nearly done with the neckerchief by the time my wee niece made her appearance, and I am not holding any records for knitting speed.

I did try to get Akimbo out the door as fast as possible, though, and that’s my excuse for not having staged better pictures. I “borrowed” this little scarf for a cool morning’s walk to the coffee shop and liked it so well I’m going to have to knit another for myself. I’d basically like to have the entire Stephen West design collection in my closet for fall…

Akimbo, by Stephen West

Malabrigo Sock in I’m not sure what color… maybe Indiecita?

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight in Pond Scum

NB: STR Lightweight is significantly heavier than Malabrigo Sock. I’ll be wary of combining these yarns in the future.

I always prefer to see baby garments modeled with actual babies inside. Babies are such oddly shaped little creatures; a sweater may look perfectly proportioned but fail to fit an actual tiny human while a pair of leggings may look completely laughable laid out flat but fit snug as you like over a diapered bum. Plus it’s such a tease to show things made to clothe a human without a human inside. Of course I can understand if people choose not to show their faces (or any body parts) to the whole internet, but a sweater pinned to a dress form or a shawl draped over a park bench looks just a little bit wistful and stark, like an untenanted house. The snark in me wonders if they didn’t quite fit despite their apparently perfect workmanship; the mother hen in me wants to see them rightly home, warming a body as they fundamentally should. Things made in anticipation of a new life excite a particular desire to see them filled with delicious wriggling baby. So I apologize if this blog is currently rather heavy on the slobbery infant content and that’s not your thing, but I’m scratching a personal itch by photographing Ada in her handmade togs. I promise a bit of grown-up knitting (why does that sound so dirty?) in the next post, okay? Without further ado, here’s the romper I knit in July:

I really love this photo. It’s like the romper is swallowing her whole. I’m thinking of this picture as my answer to Edvard Munch.

Still a little room to grow.

Project details, in case you missed them before:

Small Things Romper, by Carina Spencer

in Mirasol Lachiwa cotton/linen, three skeins plus a bit of a fourth

and leftovers of Bergere de France Bergereine for the snail

snail chart from Adrian Bizilia’s Norwegian Snail Mittens