Now Knitting: Knits for small people

EZ sweater for a small girl baby.

A couple of weeks before I left for Spain, Stevenson's Core coordinator started up a knitting circle at the college, the Stevenson Stitch, Monday evenings. It was perfect timing -- I was a couple of weeks out of my Forever Spring Break period, I was looking forward to new ways to be a sociable human being, I needed to get started on some knitting for Paula's baby girl (due in June), and I wanted to get back to doing an activity that would help me to, generally, CHILL OUT. I hadn't worked on a knitting project in over a year.

I showed up on the first day, and it was just Caren, my coordinator, and handful of her students -- two of which were just learning to knit. Let me tell you: it was delightful. Delightful. We sat and talked, I helped a girl learn to distinguish knit stitches from purled stitches (scarves vs. nooses!), and I cast on for the baby sweater above. I went straight home after we stopped at 9pm and continued working on the sweater until 2am like a crazy person. I'd forgotten how relaxing knitting is! It's like yoga for the brain, I can meditate on those little stitches for hours and hours and hours.

I finished knitting the sweater by the end of the week and went back to the next week's Stitch to sew in all the loose yarn. I intended to sew up the under-arm seams (the only seams that the sweater has!) as well, but I'm a lazy person who hates seaming so screw it, I'll do it later.

I got the pattern from the book above: Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac. EZ has beautiful, simple and intuitive designs and a great knitting ethos. Consider the following gauge notes for baby leggings:

Don't worry too much about size; babies vary, and knitting stretches. 

Revolutionary! No numbers listed at all. WHO CARES if it isn't perfect! WHO CARES if you forgot to put in a botton hole or two! WHO CARES if you goofed the lace pattern a couple of times! The baby certainly won't!

Here's a photograph of what the finished sweater will look like, above. When I first got started on the sweater, all those knitting-produced endorphins shot me into expectations turbo over-drive: I was convinced that I would get the sweater, bonnet, leggings, and blanket all done in time for my visit to NYC this summer. Since I've had about a month to let my expectations settle, reality has set in, and I've come to set my goals to completing the sweater, bonnet, and a pair of booties to match. Those leggings look like a lot of fun, so they're definitely on the list for later, but I need to pace myself (and she won't need them until winter). 

I won't be posting any finished images to the blog until after my trip to NYC in July (lest Paula checks in on the blog regularly, not sure that she does), but I'll post little tidbits to the Instagram feed and here as well as I work on this and future projects. The knitting bug has bitten again, hard. (GROSS)