Baby Cupcake Hat

After browsing hundreds of baby knitting patterns, I feel sure that the Wacky Baby Knits book is going to rescue my yet-to-be-born niece from a mundane baby life.

As soon as I found out that I had a niece on the way, I wanted to make every baby pattern I looked at, buy every baby yarn available.

But time and money were not on my side. For the January baby shower, I narrowed it down to the Wacky Baby Knits cupcake hat.

This slouchy little hat is going to look so cute on the baby! And a photo of her wearing it is going to make for a much better photo than this one.

The best news is that you don't even have to buy the book to make this pattern. The publisher has made the pattern free on WomansDay.com, so hop over and get your free pattern.

Now, we just wait for the baby...

Always inspiring, always expensive

The always inspiring and always expensive Anthropolgie has stuff I want to knit. This time, I wanted to own/alter their Daisy Day Vest. Except I don't want the black and white speckles, and I think I could do without the huge daisy on the right bust, which I'd imagine only accentuates already-large things. Put 'er on the list!

Casey's Coat = Bad Friend

I am a bad friend.

Two years ago, I was the maid of honor in my friend Brittany's wedding. When Brittany settled into her new married digs in Minnesota, she got a new dog named Turtle. I promised that I would make Turtle a doggie sweater before the winter so she didn't freeze in Minnesota. I moved to New York, started grad school, and completely abandoned the sweater.

Now, I am a new person. I graduated from school and have resurrected the pattern from the Stitch n' Bitch Nation book. I e-mailed Brittany, told her I was getting started on the sweater, and knitted about 20 rows. I just noticed that I messed up the stripe sequence pattern, so I'm backing it up a bit. But hopefully this year, Turtle will have a sweater in time for winter (even though Turtle now resides back in Kentucky where winters aren't nearly as harsh).

Dogwood Donna begins

In honor of fall, I decided to start knitting something dark green. Enter Dogwood Donna from the spring Knitscene (yes, I know it was meant for spring. But now it's going to be meant for fall, ok?). So my yarn from Yarniverse in Memphis arrived Friday and I'm knitting a swatch. I've spent waaay too much time away from knitting this summer and I'm ready to get started again.

Coolest Hat Ever...

Love the Center Square pattern. Love the colors I chose. Problem? I made it too large!!

I have a big head. Blame it on the hair, blame it on the genetics (my brother claims big head status, too). So I always try to make my hats a little larger than normal.

Flashback to winter 06-07. It is unbearably cold. I drop by Urban Outfitters and check out the clearance sale on hats. Pick up two hats: one helmet style and one plain. The plain one won't fit over my head. The helmet one looks silly, but I wear it anyway because it's warm and--good Lord--it covers my whole head, chin, and neck. As a result, I get made fun of by friends and decide to make this hat.

Because the UO hat was too small, I decided to increase the gauge on the Center Square hat for my big head. This resulted in a hat that was too big. Awesome, yet too big.

I frogged it (but not before taking a lovely photo) and will most definitely redo for next winter.

Lucky not very lucky

I hate Lucky. I really do.

I've been working on this for years. As is tradition, I knit, I frog, I knit, I frog. I actually had it almost put together when I discovered that the top of one sleeve was wider than the other. Oh, it won't be obvious, I told myself. I continued to sew seams and whadya know? It looked terrible. Frog!

So here I am again, knitting and hopefully not frogging again. Will I ever finish this? Why do I continue to do things wrong and not check them when it only pisses me off in the end?

Here's the new sleeve just starting...

I hate the asymmetrical coat from Elann.

I wrestled with this durn coat back in October when I purchased way too much for this yarn to make this project for my mom's birthday on December 1. I had many many troubles with the pattern right from the start. I wrote Elann, they printed a correction, and sent the new pattern.

Things were going well until I started to finish the collar. Wrote Elann again and they said there were no other problems or corrections.

A few minutes ago, I got a revised pattern in my email. This is May. I made the coat in December. My mom can't wear the coat now, plus it looks terrible because of the botched pattern.

This is the one and only time in the history of my knitting that I can indeed say that the muss-up of the pattern was not my fault. But it still makes me wanna go GRRRR because it was a nice birthday present with is now almost unwearable. Sigh.

Here's a picture of the finished yet botched coat.

Faux Cable Vest: Frogged

The faux cable vest looked really good on the model on the cover of Knit.1. The vest looked like I was carrying two 4th graders around--one on my back and one on my belly.

That yarn is super bulky. I don't even think it would look good on a super skinny person. The cable looked so awesome, though, that I had to take a picture before I frogged it. Still partly on the needles, as you can see.

Now...what to make with the bulky yarn?