Baby Quilt

One of my daughter Cammy's close friends recently had a gorgeous baby girl. She was so excited about her first friend ever to have a baby that she wanted to give her a gift that was really special.

We decided that we would make her a scrappy baby quilt with some hand quilting...together. You know, a mother-daughter bonding experience for us.

We joyfully started out at the fabric store. I let Cammy pick out the fat quarters (with a little guidance from me on how to choose your fabrics to get the scrappy look we wanted). It was fun to let her choose the fabrics because she picked patterns I wouldn't have chosen, and yet I loved how they worked together in the end. The teacher was the student!

The fabric was washed and pressed and we started cutting our strips. As I hovered over her cutting it was really becoming clear that my control freak tendencies were rearing their ugly head. I know cutting quilt fabric can be tricky, and I mean well...but I'm pretty sure my daughter wasn't having a good time.

After I came up with a simple design, we moved on to piecing the blocks. 1/4" seams are pretty exacting work for someone who never touched a sewing machine before. Bless her heart, the one block I let her piece looked great but came out about an inch too small. I set it in the pile of "soon to be potholders" and she looked really, really, sad. And I felt like some kind of quilting bully.

When school started up again (she's a college senior this year!), she was too busy to work together on this anymore. I pressed on and finished it in time for the baby shower. As disappointing of an experience this may have been for Cammy, she ended up adoring the quilt. And I did too. For a week before it was gifted, it rested on the back of a chair in the living room. Both of us had to pick it up and admire it every time we walked by. I hope this means there is still a little inspiration to be a sewist in her...somewhere. Maybe we can try again with a simpler project? Let's hope!

Every quilt has a story, doesn't it?

–Cassandra

Classic Aran - Take 2

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Four inches were knit on a little Aran sweater, and then the Roomba ate it while no one was home. True story.

Like many other Roomba owners out there, we often let it run when we leave the house for a while. Well, my knitting was sitting in a basket on the floor...and the tail must have been over the edge of the basket. Just over enough for Roomba to grab it like a piranha.

Felted all over the place.

I can't be mad at Roomba, it was just following it's instincts. But I am mourning those hours of knitting gone to waste. So much so, that after I finally decided to pull the needles out of the lifeless knitting, I let it sit on the coffee table for a day before tossing it out. It was tough throwing it in the trash can.

The pattern I've decided to knit for the boy's winter sweaters (notice that I'm not saying "holiday" sweaters...who needs that pressure?) is Mariah by Janet Szabo. A very classic Aran sweater. It had been a  little while since I knit cables and I missed it. I'm still in the early stages with this pattern but it's been easy to follow so far. I think Ms. Szabo knows what she's doing.

I have to make two of these little beauties, so I better stop typing and get to some knitting!

Peace out,

Cassandra

The Mistakes of My Past

Somewhere around 2001 Cassandra and I decided we wanted to learn to knit. I think she had some childhood experience. I had none.We found a local yarn shop that taught beginner classes and we signed up to make a felted tote bag.

Not my actual tote - but the same pattern

This is how little experience I had... I had no idea what the heck felting was. I soon learned that it was the modern equivalent of boiling wool - and I knew about boiled wool, having grown up in a wicked cold climate.

The instructor was very clear about why we were doing this particular pattern:

• Projects destined for felting have to be made very large (because they shrink - a lot) so you tend to use larger needles which are easier for new knitting hands to handle.
• Felting hides a million ills. You can make lots mistakes in your knitting and they'll just disappear once you've felted your piece.

I still have my tote bag and often use it as a knitting bag.

My second class was felted slippers, which I've talked about previously. I still wear my original pair all winter long.

FiberTrends awesome Felted Clogs

Starting with felted projects has pros and cons. The pros are obvious - your piece can be less than perfectly knit and it still looks great in the end. This allows you to confidently knit and not worry about a dropped stitch here or there. The con (for me, anyway) was that I became addicted to the freedom to make mistakes. I didn't want to do non-felted projects because I was afraid that my finished project would look bad.

I eventually got over the fear and I knit a bunch of non-felted, smaller projects. In time, my stitches became more even and I learned the little tricks to correct problems along the way. Although, I'll embarrassingly admit that I  only just learned how to pick up a dropped stitch and weave it back into my work - ten years into my knitting.

The best book I've found for general guidance on these issues is called The Knitter's Companion. Good illustrations and simple instructions will get you through most any "mistake" in your work. It also contains instructions for casting on, binding off, increasing, decreasing, various stitch types, and much more. There's even a little needle gauge included in the back. I can't tell you how many times I've referred to this book over the last ten years.

My most common mistakes include dropping stitches, mis-counting, forgetting to do an increase or a decrease (which throws off your stitch count), or losing my place in my pattern. Most of these are easily fixed by becoming a habitual "counter."

Counting stitches, and re-counting stitches, is the best way I've found to ensure that I'm in the right place in my pattern and not missing or adding stitches. I have become an obsessive counter - much to the annoyance of people around me when I'm knitting in public. But, it's worth the side-long glances to know that I haven't totally screwed up a row. In my knitting life, there has been enough "un-knitting" and ripping out of projects in order to correct a mistake that's 10 rows back. I hate re-doing work so I'd rather be the crazy woman in the corner, counting stitches, than the crazy woman tearing her hair out because she has to rip out a couple of days worth of work.

It's important to recognize when it's appropriate to simply adjust your pattern to correct an earlier mistake versus when it's worth ripping the work out and making the correction at the point of the mistake. I often find that no one but me will see the flaw so I eschew perfectionism and accept my piece as being "good enough." 

Recently, a friend's nine-year-old daughter started knitting. My friend doesn't knit so Miss P and I have bonded over our shared love of yarn. The reason I bring this up is because little Miss P is a FEARLESS knitter. In a short forty-eight hours, she was knitting up a storm and, if she happened to drop a stitch while she was working, she'd just pick it up and put it back on her needle. I was aghast and impressed. In my first forty-eight hours, I was obsessing over every stitch and if, god-forbid, I dropped a stitch my entire project came to a screeching halt. We should all strive to have the fearlessness of children, don't you think?

Sally forth and make mistakes. This is how we learn.

- Alex