Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Baby O Baby!


So a buncha people I know are having babies- must be in the water or something. One, a former post-doc, is about to become a papa for the second time. He's from Peshawar, Pakistan, and whenever his mother comes to visit from home she always brings me exquisite jewelry. So I'm making a nice cuddly blankie for the child-to-be, in Caron Simply Soft Brites. Based on comments over at Ravelry, Simply Soft has a nice hand coupled with easy care. I ordered a skein in nearly every color, to knit into a rainbow of feather and fan stitch (hey, it's easy and fast and needs little blocking). It arrived the other day and I set to work. Casted on 180 stitches, worked 4 rows of garter stitch in Blue Mint, then switched to Berry Blue and the FnF pattern stitch. Two repeats of FnF, then switch color to Grape, then to Watermelon, and so on. When I've done a rainbow of colors, I may switch to 4 repeats for a couple of rainbows, then end with 2 repeats of FnF in the rainbow sequence and the garter band. Oh, and I have 6 stitches of garter on each side. See how it's looking?
Feather n Fan Rainbow blanket start
Now I remembered that DD#1's oldest friend and his wife are expecting their first child too. I have known the young man since he was 2 1/2 years old, playing Haman at the synagogue's Purim pageant. Cannot miss marking this event. So what should I make the baby blankie out of for this one? In the end, I decided to make it out of Pisgah Peaches and Creme in Rainbow. Love the colors, and think the mother will like that it's cotton. At least, I hope so.

Bluebell is finished; pattern will be uploaded to Ravelry soon.
bluebell finis 2
When it is, the link will be on the sidebar at left. The Lily of the Valley scarf is slow-going. Two reasons I can think of for this. One, the yarn is darker than I normally work with, so I require fairly bright light. Two, the nupps really make me nuts; even though I do them easily enough, they just slow down the knitting a lot. The Estonian Lace Group on Ravelry discussed this pattern and quite a few members found it boring. I don't finding it boring, but I can see their point. And to think at the end I get to save live stitches, reknit the edging, and graft together. Oh joy, I can't wait. /sarcasm.

4 comments:

fleegle said...

The F&F blanket will be gorgeous! Never actually felt the yarn, though. Is it soft?

Experimental Knitter said...

Oh yes, very soft and nice to knit. Normally I don't use acrylic yarns but my friends live in an apartment, so easy care is a big consideration. The comments on Ravelry swayed me.

Donna Lee said...

My favorite baby blanket (that I made) was made with all the neon colors I could find along with some white to tie them together. The mother loved it because she was not a pastel kind of person. I like simply soft for those kind of things because it it soft and easily washable.

Experimental Knitter said...

A lot of people want brights and not pastels for babies these days it seems.
DD#2 is clamoring for one of these for her own; I may have to finish another one up before she goes back to college.
And I'm liking Simply Soft a lot: much softer than any other acrylic or acrylic blend I've worked with previously.