Baby Girl is not happy

Forgive the camera phone picture, but I wanted to share Miss Eleanor's reaction to my baby hat and gratuitous ear research.






I don't think she's too thrilled about the goofy ears. Perhaps she would have preferred a larger ear to hat ratio. The good news is that she should outgrow the hat pretty soon. The bad news is that Aunt Sarah's obsession with knitting all things ridiculous probably won't be something I outgrow.



Good things she's cute. She can pull off goofy. In a couple of years, we'll have to see how she does with tiny lobster claw mittens.



For the moment though, she is probably safe. I am taking a sabatical from my goofy baby hat research to work on some mittens for myself. I'm finally getting around to the Fetching mittens I intended to make last winter to go with my Fetching hat.

Speaking of Cuteness Quotients...

Check out Miss Eleanor modeling her blue argyle sweater:



Still a little big on her, but she's pretty freakin' cute no matter what you put on her. My gauge and Debbie Bliss' gauge didn't quite match up, so I think (I think) this is size 3-6 months. And my sweet niece is only six weeks old, so I guess big is a good thing at this point.

Further Research

Previously on craftfetish, we explored the scientific properties of baby hat cuteness as it relates to the addition of gratuitous ears.

Holding true to the scientific method, we initiated a series of experiments to identify the ideal mathematical ratio between baby hat size and gratuitous ears.

We posit that cuteness will be maximized at extreme values of the gratuitous ear ratio - basically that very small and very large ears are friggin' hilarious.

(we further posit that if I inject enough scientific jargon into this posting, no one will notice that it has taken me two weeks to knit a simple baby hat)

Experiment One: A hat for Baby Christopher employed an ear to baby hat ratio of 1:3.

Next, we would need to determine how variations in the ear:hat ratio would impact the overall cuteness quotient for the hat. Which brings us to the current phase of our research.

Experiment Two: A hat for Baby Eleanor

(I have previously knit a tiny orange hat for my niece Eleanor using the same Cascade Fixation yarn that I used to make a pair of socks for her birthmom. That was back when we thought she was going to be a boy, hence the gender neutral orange.

Now she can have a pink hat too. Okay, back to science...)

For our baseline cuteness quotient, let us consider the hat sans ears:

And now to experimentally manipulate the ear:hat ratio...

For consistency, we employed the same baby hat ear technology as in Experiment One:

Cast on 20 stitches. Decrease one stitch at each end of every knit row until 10 or 12 stitches remain (whenever they seem tall enough) and bind off. This gives you a little trapezoid. Allow the cast on edge to curl in on itself and stitch the top and sides of the trapezoid to the hat in a c-shape.

Because my gauge for the Cascade Fixation was smaller, I needed to cast on 84 stitches for this baby hat.

Ergo, our new ear to baby hat ratio is 20:84, or about 1:4.

We'll employ a survey instrument to determine the relative impact of this new, smaller ear to hat ratio on the underlying cuteness quotient. (Translation: leave us a comment as to which you prefer)

Stay tuned for future experiments.

Math and stuff

I've decided to research the ideal mathematical ratio between baby hat size and gratuitous ears for maximization of hand knit baby cuteness.

Why? No good reason really, other than I enjoy employing the scientific method to urgent matters such as this one. And I worry that babies may be suffering the ill effects of goofy baby hats that don't maximize their cute potential. And we can't have that.

My hypothesis is that similar priniciples of cuteness apply to both goofy hand knit baby animal hats and bona fide baby animals. (for the theoretical framework of baby animal cuteness, please consider the fine body of research at cute overload)

Basically, we posit that baby hats with ears are adorable. And very large or very small ears are even more so. But these assumptions must be validated. Ergo...

Experiment one: A hat for Baby Christopher

For the hat itself, I boosted the pattern for the baby duck hat I made for Baby Aubrey, only, you know, without the duck bill. Using 2 strands (of my never ending supply of) Bernat Softee Baby held together, I cast on 60 stitches.

For each ear, I cast on 20 stitches. For research purposes, we'll call this an ear to baby hat ratio of 20:60, or 1:3.

Should you need to make some ears:

Cast on 20 stitches

Purl across

K2Tog K16 SSK (18 stitches)

Purl across

K2Tog K14 SSK (16 stitches)

Purl across

K2Tog K12 SSK (14 stitches)

Then, they seemed about tall enough, so I sped up the decreasing plan:

P2Tog K10 P2Tog (12 stitches)

Bind off (I K2Tog and the beginning and end of this row too as I was binding off, but I'm not sure if that really makes a difference)

Let them curl in on themselves and attach to the hat in a C-shape. Voila - ears. Good stuff.

We'll have to see how increasing or decreasing the ear to baby hat ratio impact the cuteness factor.

Yay! Science.

Holiday Walk of Shame

Okay, I was so distracted by the arrival of my beautiful and perfect niece that I did very little crafting this holiday season... and even less photographing of the crafting that did occur... and even less blogging of the few photographs of the tiny amount of crafting. I suck.

My shame is only compounded by the fact that, even with a newborn, all of my sister's Christmas cards were still homemade. Sigh, I made one stinkin' card:

Outside based on supplies from one of Emily's card swaps. She sent me all of the ingredients. I'm still exploring the wonderful world of pop-ups, so I put a tree on the inside:

The color was a bit nicer on the original, but you get the idea.

I did virtually no holiday baking this year. I caught a bad cold (excuses excuses) the week before Christmas, so I'm not sure anyone would have wanted anything I cooked anyway, but before that all I managed was a single batch of porn star cookies:

I try to keep this a PG-13 website, so I'll spare you the cookies with ball gags in their mouths. (can't wait to see what sort of google traffic we get now that I have typed that - ick) Sadly, my limited cookie decorating skills preclude them from getting too racy. Chaps are about all I can make.

The last of my conscience clearing pre-holiday crafting documentation was a teeny baby sweater. Alas, I only have in-progress pictures. Hopefully Miss Eleanor will be kind enough to model it one of these days. This is the almost finished knitting shot:

and the Sarah's first attempt at intarsia shot:

Can you tell I started this back when we thought she was going to be a boy? I found a little yellow dress, so hopefully she'll just look preppy in the completed ensemble.

It is a Debbie Bliss pattern from Special Knits. I used Bernat Baby Softee, because frankly, I have a boatload of it.

And this concludes our guilty conscience belated holiday retrospective. May 2008 be a year of crafty goodness and more timely updates.

Happy New Year y'all!

Introducing Eleanor!

Now hang on a second, I thought you said you were getting a nephew. Apparently ultrasounds can be decieving, as I now have the most beautiful and perfect niece.

This is Miss Eleanor:

She was born December the 4th, but I have been too busy staring at her photos and pestering Emily to take more pictures to do much crafting or blogging. But don't worry - the deluge of tiny pink craftiness should commence soon, I assure you.

(possibly starting with a teeny pink bow to girly up that dinosaur onesie - whatcha think?)

But, baby Eleanor does come with a little craftiness already - she was kind enough to model her tiny orange hat before leaving the hospital. I apologize for the blurry photo, but you hate to blind the poor thing with flash bulbs on her first day. If you'll notice in the background, her birth mom is sporting the matching socks I made for her. Love it!

You can't see with all of the tiny hat photos, but she has the cutest little head full of super dark hair. I confess, the urge to give her a baby faux hawk is strong. Perhaps it is for the best that she lives 400 miles away from her Aunt Sarah.

Birth Mom Socks!

I don't think that I have previously mentioned that I am waiting to adopt a niece or nephew. Or more accurately, my (occasional co-blogger) sister and brother-in-law are waiting to adopt a baby and I am way WAY WAYexcited about becoming an aunt.

Months ago, a poster on the knittyboard suggested handknit socks as a gift for a potential birth mom. I thought this was a fantastic idea - although I had never made socks before. My inaugural (okay, practice) socks went to my sister - I didn't want to mess up the birthmom ones. Then, I started to make these:

And now, finally, I have finished them. (Please note the fancy pants sock blockers made from a clearanced out Halloween placemat)

In the meantime, my sister and brother-in-law have matched with a potential birthmom!!! And she is due in the next few weeks!!! Yay!!! Baby!!!

It is pretty clear what our family is going to be grateful for this year at Thanksgiving. The nature of adoption means that nothing is certain until everything is finalized, but as you can see, I'm completely over the moon with excitement.

Please keep this amazing woman, this little baby and our family in your thoughts and prayers in the coming weeks.

How do you thank someone for such an awesome gift? Well, I decided to go with socks. And while I realize that socks could never compare to the gift of a baby, I did have to learn the kitchener stitch in order to make them. Surely that counts for something, right? (no? damn)

The crafty details:

These are Cascade Fixation Ankle Socks made with TurtleGirl's pattern. I used US #2 needles and cast on 62 stitches. I used exactly one ball of orange and maybe 1/3 of a ball of the pink.

I have another ball of orange that is destined to be a matching hat for the little one, but I'm not done yet. Stay tuned - I suspect there will be a lot of baby knitting in my future.

Oh dear...

Intarsia (in-'tar-se-uh) n. A knitted design resembling a mosaic that is visible from both sides of a fabric. Derived from the German for haha, sucker!

Holy tangled mess of ends to weave in Batman!

Baby's first colorwork is a sight to behold. Actually, it's not so bad - the front side looks okay. But seriously, someone should have warned me about the tangly-ness. And apparently, bobbins - not as optional as I thought.

Diablo Baby

Did you know that Saturday was World Card Making Day? No seriously, it was.

So naturally, I celebrated by knitting a hat. I had good intentions about throwing in a bit of card making, but then I was distracted by the hat making. While an extremely quick knit, this project did use up all of the time I had allocated to crafts on Saturday.

Hey - Halloween is rapidly approaching, I needed to get in the spirit a little.

The pattern is the Lil' Devil Baby Hat from K. Schmidt. (There is a grown-up sized pattern avaialble too) I had a skein and a bit of burgundy KnitPicks Essential left over from the Falling Water scarf I made last year. The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, but two strands of sock yarn held together on US #6's seemed to work just fine. The only other modification I made was to make the ear flaps a bit bigger.

Heh. Devil baby. Perfect for a little one to wear on Halloween, or if you have a friend named Rosemary with a sense of humor, or if you are feeling a little collicky - whatever.

Behold - Sleeves!

After an impressive number of delays, excuses and mistakes, I finally finished my little blue sweater for Miss Erin. I only hope it will still fit her.




The pattern is the Ribbon Edged Cardigan from Debbie Bliss' Special Knits, although obviously, without the ribbon edging.



I made the 3-6 months size (at least I think I did -adjusting for gauge is scary) which took about 2/3 of a ball of Bernat Softee Baby yarn and some little heart-shaped buttons from la petite.



Although it took me forever to finish, the actual knitting went quite quickly on US size 3 & 4 needles.




All in all, I'm quite pleased with it (I'll be more pleased once I have confirmation that it will actually fit around the baby it was intended for). My seams aren't perfect, but they are a huge improvement over Maddie's bear. And this definitely counts as an actual sweater, unlike Miss Chloe's vest which I counted as a sweater despite the critical absence of sleeves.

New Toys and New Projects

My birthday was last week and I scored some fantastic new crafty toys. (I also scored tickets to go see Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello - thanks Mom & Dad!) Presents totally rule.

Check out the adorable stickers my friend Tammy sent:

So perfect for Maddie's puppy scrapbook. See the one of the little devil with the sock in its mouth? Doesn't it look like devil Maddie?

(Although Maddie seems to favor chewing on my new rug to chewing on socks)

And holy crap, look at the crapper keeper, I mean scrapping tote my sister and brother-in-law gave me! It's friggin' huge. The box was ginormous. So fun.

As if that weren't enough, when you opened it up, there was all this too:

Honest to God scrapping supplies - not flip flops and whatever else I usually decide to chop up and glue to a page. I'm so fancy I can hardly stand myself. The nice thing is that now I can keep my toys some place accessible, yet still packed and out of the way if I have people over. (quite the upgrade from my current strategy of having papers and markers and gluesticks exploding all over my bedroom)

I keep putting all of my toys inside and the pulling them out and rearranging them and putting them back inside. It's like an anal-retentive field day.

As for actual crafting, I've started to work on some Cascade Fixation ankle socks designed by the lovely Turtlegirl. Since I went with solid colors instead of self-striping yarn, I thought they wanted a bit of a contrast color for the heel and toe. So, pink and orange it is.

All I wanted was to buy some buttons

Grr. Bad customer service.

Slow but sure, I've made some progress on my ribbon-edged baby cardigan. This is the vestiness portion. There is some sleeve action as well, but they are still on the needles.

I thought that I would take the vesty part to the "world's largest button and fabric store" to buy some buttons, now that I know how big my buttonholes will be. Conveniently, the "world's largest button and fabric store" is in downtown Louisville and just a few blocks from my office.

I wanted to get some fancy, girly buttons since I'm making this for a fancy, girly baby. It is already blue so I thought we could hearts and flowers it up a bit. (I first met the baby in question when she was about 4 hours old. Somehow she already had a teeny pink bow in her hair. See what I mean? Fancy and girly)

The button store in question closes at 5:30 on weeknights. So I go barreling out of work at about 5:04 and arrive at the store at no later than quarter after.

Now, I've worked retail. I know how badly you want to be able to actually close the store at the time posted in the window. I know how annoying it is when you have that one customer who lingers long past the posted closing time. So I firmly intended to be in and out in 10 minutes.

I'm not in the store 3 minutes when they make the "(insert name of store) will be closing in five minutes, please complete your shopping and proceed to the registers" announcement.

Then, they shut off all of the lights in the button section where I'm standing. Immediately. After saying you have five minutes, I'm standing in the dark. I find what looks to be little pearl buttons of the correct size and make my way to the register.

Sarah's total time in the store: less than 5 minutes. Actual time: about 5:20. When I get to the cash register, where the lights are still on, I see that the buttons I've grabbed are actually a pale lavender and not the white that I thought.

Grr. I leave the stupid purple buttons on the counter and leave.

Forget this. I'll go to JoAnn's. I tried to support my local craft shops, but this is not the first time I have had terrible service at this particular store. So screw 'em. Clearly they don't need my business. So they won't be getting it anymore.

Okay. End of venting. I need to get back to the sleeve-making.

Now with 20% more knitting

Okay, it has been a while, but I'm back now. No more letting work get in the way of my craftiness. That just won't do.

I finished my very first pair of socks. Yay! Socks!

There is a bit of a learning curve evident in them, but they are definitely socks. I was pleased that they are both the same size and that they fit on to adult sized feet. I'm calling it a win.

And now I see how so many knitters become obsessed with making socks. (I think there must also be a learning curve associated with taking a picture of socks on your own feet. Or else I really need to do something about my cankles)

To recap, these are Spiral Eyelet Socks in Lana Grossa Meilenweit Colortweed on size 2 DPNs. The yarn was originally a prize from the lovely knottygnome, it just took me almost a year to work up the courage to use it.

And, for some bonus knitting footage, check out the lovely Miss Aubrey modeling her duck hat and feet:

Bad timing that she grew into them during a record heat wave, but hopefully they will still fit in a few more months when hats are more seasonably appropriate. (oh how nice hat weather sounds about now) My baby garment growth trajectory extrapolation skills (or whatever) may still need some tweaking. But damn she looks cute (and boy will she be pissed when she grows up and finds these pictures).

heh. duck hat.

Christmas in July sucks

Look what arrived on my doorstep yesterday:

This was the box of toys and blankets that I had shipped in early December for the GetCrafty Handmade Holiday project.

These guys should have been delivered to Project Night Night, but alas, they have apparenly been languishing in a PO Box somewhere for 6 months.





Not exactly the Christmas in July surprise I was hoping for. Oh well, I guess I'll send them along to Project Night Night direct.








In other news, check it out:

A sock! That looks like a sock! Of course, now it needs a friend, but I'll get there. I should have a little free time between now and when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out next weekend.

Dear sock yarn...

Thank you for your patience. I think I'm ready for you now.

I don't know why, but socks kind of intimidated the heck out of me. I think it's the teeny tiny little needles. But with the false sense of security that comes with making a pair of duck feet, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Check me out. I'm a little more than half done with the first one. I'm making these spiral eyelet socks with the Lana Grossa Meilenweit Colortweed I won a long, long time ago.

What? I'm supposed to be making a baby sweater? I'm sorry I can't hear you... You're breaking up...

I hate posts without pictures.

For the record, I did finish my second baby ducky foot over the holiday weekend. And I delivered the little feetsies and duck hat to Baby Aubrey.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture before I handed them over. Oops. Hopefully in a few more months when she grows into them, I can get you a picture of the embarassing duck accessories in action.

Oh well, you saw pictures of both earlier. I used Bernat Baby Softee yarn for both the hat and socks. Two strands held together on size 6 DPNs worked out well for the hat. A single strand on size 2 DPNs for the feet. Both patterns were from p2designs. Fun, quick knits despite my slow turn around time.

Since then I have made some progress on my ribbon-edged baby cardigan, but no new pictures for it yet either.

I'll see if I can't cook up some more photogenic craftiness for you soon.

I knew this was going to happen...

Good news:

Baby Aubrey was born earlier this week.

Also, I made a sock! (a very small, duck foot shaped sock) My past attempts at booties involved seams. This was my first crack at turning a heel and the like.

Less good news:

At present, the ratio of Baby Aubrey feet to just ducky socks is 2:1. I better get cracking on the other one before her little toes get cold.

Dagnabit!

I've been cooking along on the back of my baby sweater. Realistically, it should be done by now, but since the back panel is the largest expanse of uninterupted knitting, it got a little repetitive. I mean c'mon, give a girl an increase or a K2Tog now and then! It is unfortunate that aesthetically, I like very simple patterning but in practice I want a little more action in my knitting.

So I decided to take a break and work on my ducky feet baby socks. Naturally, I didn't actually have the pattern with me when I stopped by The Knit Nook to buy some smaller DPNs. I had swatched my yarn on size 4's and I knew that was too big, so I bought 3's.

Now had I checked my pattern, I would have seen that not only were 4's too big, but they were far enough off that I'd need to go down to 2's. But instead I thought I'd breeze in on my way home from work, buy whatever size DPN's strucky my fancy and be on my way. Which is a pretty good way to guarantee that you buy the wrong size. Which means it will be another day before you can actually get to work on your ducky feet.

(The Knit Nook graciously offered to swap out my needles if I got home and found out I needed a smaller size, but I figure I'll need the 3's sooner or later) More than anything, I'm annoyed that I had to knit 3 gauge swatches for the darn things. Gauge swatches aren't any fun. I really don't want to have to do more than 2.

I finally got things sorted out and should have been able to finish at least one ducky foot last night. In retrospect, I decided I did the increases on the web footing wrong. I was sort of okay with my modified version and was just going to go with it for this pair.

I was all set to bind off last night towards the end of Brothers and Sisters, but then they jumped in the pool and I guess I got distracted and ended up knitting across my cast off row, without actually casting anything off.

I started to back up, but apprently I can't be trusted to tink stitches past my bedtime. I dropped two stitches before I finally went to bed. Hopefully this evening's attempt at the repair will go a bit more smoothly.

Sigh, so much weekend knitting and I don't have a darn thing to show for it. So help me I will have a finished object to show you all soon!

More baby knitting...

Baby gift production continues...only now with buttons and scary deadlines.

Buttons first:
I found these little black and white oval buttons the other day that were just begging to be ducky eyes. Apparently, I live near the world's largest button and fabric store. Despite their "world's largest" claims, the number of buttons with ducky eye potential was less than you might think. The staff wasn't particularly helpful when I went in, so I'm not going to post a link. (That'll show 'em)

Anyway...This hat still cracks me up. I need to buy some smaller DPNs before I start on the little matching duck feet, so they are on hold until I get my act together and go to the store.

Which brings us to scary deadlines...

I just got an invitation in the mail for a baby shower next weekend. I knew said baby was coming and fully intended to make something for the new arrival, but I didn't know there would be a baby shower. (It's not their first kid - I'll spare you my Emily Post rant)

So now instead of having about 6 weeks, I've got a week and a half to finish this up. I'm about 6 inches into the back of the ribbon-edged cardigan from Debbie Bliss' Special Knits. Think I'll get it done in time? Think I'll be able to seam it up well enough that I'm willing to give it to an actual baby? Think my dog will end up wearing a little blue cardigan? Stay tuned.

And now back to our regular scheduled craftiness...

I survived the mini-marathon! Now back to knitting...

Sure, that little tiny baby is sweet and innocent and perfect in every way...now. But sooner or later, s/he is going to be a teenager. At which point s/he's going to start dating.

At which point, Mom and Dad are going to need some embarassing photos of the aforementioned tiny baby wearing stupid hats. Or at least that is my understanding of how the system works.

Voila! The Just Ducky hat from p2designs. It's so fantastically adorable and humiliating all at the same time. I just love it.

I still need to add some little eyes, but I finished up the loopy i-cord featheredness at the top last night and had to share.

The pattern calls for a worsted weight yarn, but I used 2 strands of Bernat Softee baby yarn (a sport weight) held together. Would you believe that there are matching duck feet? The sock pattern calls for a DK weight, but I'm hoping I can find a way to make a single strand of the Softee yarn work so that they'll be nice and matchy.

I'll keep you posted.