And it begins

Blocked, washed and ready, this little baby sweater (complete with not one, but TWO sleeves, is almost done. I say almost, because the original has a sweet little monogram on the front of the baby’s first initial.  I thought I’d do that too, but I won’t know the name for a little while yet. (Well, probably not until their birthday.)

vivi 2015-05-08

Pattern: V is for Vivi. Size: 3 months. (The pattern doesn’t have a three month size, so I just changed the gauge a smidge, to give me another size between newborn and 6 months.) Needle: 4mm. Yarn: Big Bad Wool Wepaca in “blue eyes” – 2.25 skeins.

Lou’s sibling, our next niece or nephew, is set to land on the planet sometime in July, and as the fog of the last few weeks clears, and I start looking at the calendar, and making my plans, I realize that I need to get a hustle on. This new bundle of sweetness will need more than a sweater- my excitement needs to be writ in wool – with hats and sweaters and soakers and … their blanket. The grand tradition of the baby blanket isn’t something I take lightly. I make one for every special baby in my life, a unique thing for each of them. I use stitches I think reflect where they come from, and what the traditions in their family are. It’s no small undertaking, and in the past, actually, they’ve been no small blankets.

Marlowe’s blanket was um, pretty big.  The blanket I knit for Luis wasn’t small, and things got right out of hand when I made one for Myrie.  (Thank heaven for Martha. I still think about how awesome she was.) Each of those blankets took up to 1700 metres of yarn, and as much as running out of yarn for Myrie’s made for high entertainment, I still like to learn from my mistakes, so this morning I went through the stash to see if I had enough yarn to start this bairn’s blankie, and saw that I had ten skeins of yarn.

tenwontdoit 2015-05-08

Lou’s took eight, and Myrie’s ended up being nine, and since this time I’m planning on having it come in a little smaller, ten is more than enough, I’m hoping to only use seven, but when I got to thinking about it – I decided that I’d like to do a full on, old fashioned layette.  Blanket, sweater, hat and booties – all in the same yarn, and I figure I’ll need two more skeins to add that stuff.  That means that I should have just exactly the right amount of yarn. If the blanket takes seven (and I add a skein for insurance), the sweater and bits take two… that’s ten, that works out perfectly. The stars aligned.

So I ordered four more.