Saturday, April 22, 2006

To knit or not to knit...

I have this... etiquette issue that needs resolution.

Astute readers will notice the gaggle of prospective baby knits. At last count, it stands as follows:

--Coworker's son (born last week)
--Mister Husband's assistant's Baby Of Indeterminate Gender (May 6th)
--Family friend's daughter (May)
--Other coworker's BOIG (Julyish)
--Parents' neighbor and our beloved hairstylist's BOIG (Septemberish)

Here's the dilemma: Absent from this list are my OTHER other coworker's twins, a boy and a girl born in July of 2005. Around that time, I'd been knitting a set of leaf-edged hats for them while minding the mailroom at work. People saw me knitting them (that is, people who weren't the dad in question). I knit the first one -- great. I knit the second one -- eh. Both needed seaming. My seaming stank. Finally, FINALLY, I had them both together... and one was approximately 50% the size of the other. Who knew my gauge would be that crappy? In desperation, I knit another completely different hat. Of course, the yarn wasn't quite as nice and I felt embarrassed. It took me a while to bring them to work, only to discover that I'd inadvertently brought the tiny one instead of the normal one. It went on like that forever.

So now the kids are almost a year old and those damn hats are still sitting in my desk. I could very well give one or the other to someone else. However, I feel terrible about not giving the twins anything, and it wouldn't be very nice to give handknit presents to the babies of two other coworkers and not the one. I'm sure the twin-dad doesn't remember or care, but I do.

So I've got two options here. Which way should I go?
1) Make items for the coworkers and then give the twins something neutral like stuffed bunnies for their birthday. Of course, I hate seaming... any better ideas?
2) Impose a moratorium on handknit gifts for coworkers' babies... which just seems so strict!

I believe that the preventative measure in relation to this problem is simply to continue making baby knits regardless of actual oven-bun statistics. That way something will always be ready, and I'll have a crapload of projects with quick gratification instead of continually making myself hats that don't fracking fit. *shakes fist at giant melon on top of neck*

As for the family friend and the neighbor/stylist, I think they get nicer things anyways. For the family friend, I'm almost done with the cardigan from the cover of this Debbie Bliss book. I just have a couple of seams left. It was a super knit -- very quick and rewarding, and SO CUTE. I liked the way that, just when I'd start getting bored with the stockinette, something would happen to change the shaping. It went by in no time. I also used this garment as a sample piece for Cascade 220 Superwash, and I was really pleased with the end result. It's very snuggly and the color and shaping will be great to break up the endless array of pink I hear the kid will be wearing :P

For the neighbor/stylist, I was thinking of a blanket. Originally I'd thought of the Pinwheel Baby Blanket. This differs, though, from the Grumpecue (Grumperina's take on the Curlicue from Oat Couture, seen 3/4 of the way down) and similar in that those are knit segment by segment. (The Pinwheel Afghan, at the bottom of the page, seems like it'd be another option as well.) Maybe those would be easier and more fun; I like patterns which have definite tracking points to tell you how far you are instead of just saying, "Okay; knit around and around and around until you get to the size you want."

Incidentally, the present I'd been aiming for with the just-born kid-of-coworker isn't going very quickly. It's the cotton chenille baby bath blankie I'd discussed earlier, I believe. It's only garter stitch with a little slip and increase/decrease along the edge, but I don't like it all that much. Maybe it's due to the yarn being so catchy and twisty that I have to pull in weird ways to get it to stop curling around itself. It'll look fine in the end, especially if I add the hood and fold it up all cute with a duckie or something, but the gauge is off in a couple of places most likely due to this issue. I don't like fighting with yarn. (Who does?)

But anyways. We'll see.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm making a few changes to the ol' (okay, new) blog. It's always an adventure, trying to figure out HTML by wrangling it to and fro just to see where the little line or image ends up. I guess it's getting a little easier... maybe.

I've joined a few blog rings, and hopefully that will help me not feel like I am all by my lonesome in this corner of the blogiverse.

More substance coming shortly, as soon as I (yeah, yeah...) figure out the new camera.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Such excitement!

And I'm not even referring to our DUAL NCAA championships in both men's and women's hockey. (Or AM I????)

But anyways. (After writing this entry, I thought I should go back and warn that this is a rather "cleaning up loose ends" post with not much meat. Kind of the mealy crabcake on the appetizer platter of blogland, so consider yourself warned :P)

After that last entry I thought a bit about the knitting_snark community. I don't particularly want to encourage what my husband refers to as the "nattering nabobs of (k)nitting negativity," and I decided to remove them from my friendslist.

Of course, given that I still wanted to read them on occasion, I didn't actually leave the community...

And then, after a particularly galling spate of idiocy elsewhere, just SCREAMING for commentary, I refriended them...

Who knows. I shall, however, try on my own behalf to keep things in the spirit in which they are intended -- which is to say modding things quickly and cheerfully so people don't keep making themselves fodder. Blecch.

In other news, I found out that the daughter of a family friend is not only pregnant but due next month. Heavens. This brings my baby-items-needed count up to somewhere between three and five. I've got quite a lot of nice baby superwash lying around, but who knows if I'll have time. I've got a rather haphazard trip to LA coming up next week, so hopefully I can arrange a proper little kit that will travel well.

My baby bath blanket, the only project actually in progress, has now passed the halfway point, and the lunch/baby shower was postponed due to the mom's bed rest. So I do have a little bit of a reprieve. But I've been working on two other big non-knitting projects recently, and those have been taking up most of my evenings for the last month or so. One's a silly little artistic thing that I could finish tonight if I buckle down, but it's just getting completely tedious and feels like gilding the lily. The other thing will be done by the time I get back from LA. (Cryptic, I know.) I'm just really looking forward to finally getting to work on all sorts of other little projects.

Finally, the most exciting part: we FINALLY got a new digital camera. Yay! The blog should be a much more interesting place. I'm still bummed that nobody got pictures of some of my earlier FOs, but hopefully we can make up for that with better frequency in general.

In addition, a well-timed jaunt to IKEA by a friend resulted in the acquisition of my new storage unit Antonius (a combination of a rolling metal frame with four fabric drawers and a wooden worktop). It's compact yet spacious, and it looks so much nicer than just a plastic bin. Very customizable, too. I could probably even attach my ballwinder to that instead of my computer desk. Unfortunately, they were out of the Fira unit, which I'd hoped to put on top for a more organized circular needle storage solution. I suppose that's an excuse for us to roadtrip back down again. Really -- who can resist the big blue store and a stop at the Belvidere Oasis? Not I.

So. Huzzah and all that, and I'll catch you on the flipside.