Itty Bitty Raglan Cardigan

After all the discussion about whether boy babies could possibly wear a multicolor sweater with some shocking pink in it (see previous entry), I decided that it would be better to use the yarn in question for some other project and make the Baby in Question something completely different. Plan B was a very cute pullover with a big question mark in front, but I wasn't happy with the way it was knitting up in the reddish-orange I had chosen (thinking "cardinal" meant red) and black. Fortunately, I did the front first, so frogging it wasn't particularly painful. So on to Plan C, a generic raglan cardigan, with black uneven stripes and edging to add a little interest. Voilà:

Pattern: Baby Cardigan by Joy Jannotti, Size 12 mo.
Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Cotton, 4 balls (200g)
Needles: Denise #5US
Revisions: Added unequal stripes generated by Random Stripes Generator and contrast edging

Despite all the false starts, it is very nice, and I liked the feel of the yarn. I have an extra ball of the orange and the black, so I will have to buy more to have enough for another baby sweater, but it should age well in the stash for the time being. The yarn has a slightly nubby feel to it, which makes it a little more interesting than plain cotton – definitely something I would use again. And now I have a color card, so there shouldn't be any color surprises when I order more!

The day after finishing the baby sweater, I cast on new socks for DH. (It isn't as if I didn't have several other projects going at the same time, but nothing that was simple enough or small enough to carry around in my purse.) This is my third attempt at Crazy Toes and Heels socks:

No, this isn't what it looks like... it is the toes of two socks knit simultaneously on two circular needles, according to the excellent manual by Mary Ann Beattie, aka "Queen Kahuna." Each previous time I had trouble getting started, but once I got going, they weren't at all difficult. This time I expected no trouble at all, given that it was the third time, but I still had to frog and restart several times. I'm still not sure why the tippy toes look a little strange. Maybe it will take 4 or 5 pairs before getting it right. At least, doing it this way, they both come out exactly the same!

The endless edging on the Garden Shawl continues... Why am I not comforted by the fact that I passed the half-way mark???

Seeing pink

First, a disclaimer: I hate pink and I have always hated pink. Even as a child, I wouldn't have been caught dead wearing pink. It's okay in a rose or a tulip, but not on me. And, having had two sons, it was never an issue in terms of clothing in this household.

I recently encountered a skein of beautiful, soft merino sock yarn from Interlacements that someone had given me. It has a variety of intense colors, including dark blue, green, purple, orange, brown, and.... shocking pink. (Okay, the pink was there, but it looks nice as an accent among other colors.) It seemed too pretty to waste on socks and the 500-yard skein enough to make a baby sweater. I found a pattern for a V-neck pullover that seemed perfect, and the knitting began. And then it happened – as the sweater got bigger, the pink began to take over. I took an informal survey and asked 7 women if they would put this sweater on a boy, and 5 said "yes, it's beautiful;" one said "no way!"; and one said that her daughter would put it on a boy but her daughter-in-law wouldn't. So, given that the Baby in Question lives 7,000 miles away, and his mother's taste is really an unknown, and the yarn is too expensive to be stuck in a drawer and never worn, it is, sadly, on its way to the frog pond.

Plan B is the Quiz pullover from Mission Falls 1824 cotton. But instead of black and white, I decided to do it in red and black. Ordering yarn over the internet is always dangerous, and I should have learned my lesson a long time ago, but since there is no LYS near by, it is pretty hard to avoid it. The color I ordered was called "cardinal," and it looked red on my monitor, but the yarn that appeared looks more like a coral than a true red. Okay, coral is sort of orange, and that should be okay for a boy. So I started knitting. And something very funny happened. The "cardinal" started getting pinker and pinker. So now it isn't clear what to do. Maybe the lesson is to stick to Boring Blue for boys.