Designing woman

We're going to be rather low on the photographic imagery in this post because everything I'm knitting right now needs to be kept hush-hush.

But I can at least show you what DD2 looks like in her birthday Sweetness top:

She wore it to her birthday party today (at a fire station!) over a matching pink t-shirt with black pants, and if I do say so myself, she looked terrific.

Also, the plan I talked about in my last blog entry, i.e. to pair leftover pink yarn with the self-striping pink yarn I was using for a sample piece? It worked okay. Turns out the change in pink tones was not too jarring, which is good. However, the sudden lack of self-stripingness is rather jarring, which is bad. So I'm not sure whether I'm going to be ripping a lot of it out and redoing it, this time regularly interspersing the self-striping pink with the solid pink so that it all looks self-striping...or just letting it go as it is. While I ponder that question, though, I am knitting a second sample of the pattern, in a different size. And I'm loving it even more than the first one. I should be very well positioned to submit it when the publication I have in mind for it opens up their next round of submissions.

And speaking of submissions, it looks like I will be able to meet the deadline I was shooting for tomorrow. All swatches are done, all sketches are done, the writeup is done - I'm just waiting for the final swatch to dry so I can photograph it. Tomorrow I plan to take shots, incorporate the best one into the submission document, PDF it up, and release it into the wild. And then cross my fingers, of course!

That, of course, will give me two design submissions made in 2012, out of the twelve that I'm trying to achieve before the next calendar year. The sample pieces I've been knitting will constitute submission #3. Which leaves me with nine more submissions to go. So I'm going to have to break some ideas out of hybernation and get going on them!

In the pink

DD2's birthday tank top was finished on time. Just on time, as in, minutes before the midnight which began her birthday. I managed to have enough pink (with none left over) to do the i-cord on the straps by alternating pink and white stitches. Thus:

Front:

Back:

I don't have a picture of her wearing it yet, but when I do one, I'll post that, too. But it looks great and should fit her for a while. I'm very pleased. (And, more importantly, so is she!)

I also hit a snag on the new gosh-I-love-it design that I was working on: I ran out of yarn for the size I was making. (As my brother would say, "Wah-waaaaah.") I don't need a huge amount of yarn to finish it off, but it's not like I just need two more yards, either. And the yarn store is totally out of what I was using.

But, all is not lost. I have a plan. First of all, I don't think it's giving away the farm (especially since this is just a sizing sample) to say that the yarn I've run out of is pink. It's the leftovers from these socks I made for DD1:

I also happen to have in the stash the exact same kind of yarn in a different colourway, leftover from this poncho:

and these socks which I still haven't finished even though all I have to do is weave in the ends:

And the leftovers are, happily, mostly pink:

The question of course is whether there's actually enough pink in all that to complete the knitting of my prototype. And if there isn't, would there be enough if I cannibalized the pink portions of the toes of those unfinished socks? Moreover, would it look completely dumbass for some of the prototype to be knitted in stripes of different pinks, and then the last bit knitted in a solid pink? Not to mention that it isn't really the same kind of pink as all the other pinks?

Well...I'm about to find out. Wish me luck.

About fuzziness

So margieinmaryland commented on my last blog entry that she enjoyed the back view of my baby daughter's fuzzy head. Which prompts me to respond:

Margie, you have no idea. :)

I am the parent of three children, and have been at this mothering gig since 2003, and yet, it is only recently that I have discovered the joys of the fuzzy baby head. For example, I took this shot a few days ago:

(Yes, I know. Be still my beating heart.)

But, heart-rending sweetness of a daddy and his baby aside, that's one fabulously fuzzy head, right?

Now compare it to the heads of my other two children at around the same age.

DD1:

DD2:

I think the pictures speak for themselves. I have never realised how fabulous fuzzy-headed babies can be because I've never had one before. Both my older kids came out with serious thatches that only got fuller in very short order. But DD3's head came out merely downy, is taking its sweet time growing in, and man, I am loving it. I rub her head frequently for the sheer fuzzy joy of it.

But...oh yes...this is supposed to be a blog about knitting, isn't it? Well, I've been doing lots of that, although I have no photographic evidence for you. Firstly, DD2's birthday Sweetness top is coming along very well indeed - it's all done except for the straps and the weaving in of ends. I had no problems finishing it off with enough pink to spare - in fact, right now I'm trying to figure out if I have enough pink to do the i-cord for the straps.

My Elizabeth of York vest has seen some action here and there.

I'm also working on a new design that I am seriously LOVING. Right now I'm doing a bunch of samples to tweak the sizing to come out exactly right. I will definitely be submitting this one somewhere and I have great hopes for it. I also took a look at the Twist Collective mood board for their upcoming Winter issue, and I do have something I was working on a while back that seems to fit the theme. Can I come up with a full proposal in ten days? Aiee. Not sure about that one, we'll have to see. I should definitely try, though, as my 12-in-12 challenge stalled out after just one design submission in January!

Sugar overload

So in my last post, I mentioned that the responsible thing for me to do would be to "get going on re-doing DD3's "Sweetness" tank top before she outgrows the biggest size I can make with the amount of yarn I have." And, as it turns out, I had an attack of responsibility and did just that. When last we left DD3's tank top, I was making it in the 24-month size, and had run out of cream yarn here:

This didn't worry me at the time, because there was supposed to be another ball of cream available. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a completely different colour (although still neutral, hence the confusion), so I was, unfortunately, not destined to be able to complete the garment as I'd started it.

Thus, I frogged it completely and re-started it, this time using the 12-month size instructions. There was a fair bit of frogging that had to occur during the second go-round of the project, since I didn't have enough cream to finish even that, so I had to cut down the texture sections by one repeat in order to have enough. And it turns out that I had just enough - there's no more cream left. Now that's good stash management, I say. :)

Front:






(It's a bit big for her, I know. It's okay, she'll grow.)


Back:

And as if that weren't enough, I decided to do another Sweetness, this time for DD2, whose birthday is next week. In order to size it up to fit her almost-five-year-old-self, I used worsted weight yarn on 4.5mm needles instead of the called-for sport/DK weight yarn on 4mm needles, and went with the 24-month size instructions. I didn't go very far before I realised that I had sized it up waaaaay too big, so I ripped back and started following the 12-month size instructions. So far, so good:

I'm putting white strips into the skirt part so that I don't run out of pink. I've been doing a lot of weighing at various stages, and it'll be quite close, but I should be able to finish with just a bit of the pink left. (Famous last words, I know.)