Sassy Does It

I’m glad Christmas is over, and I’m not sorry I said it.

I had a good Christmas, really, but I’m just so done with it this year.

One excellent byproduct of the holiday nuttiness, however, is a spanking new baby blanket.

Little K was born last week, so this hot potato is ready for assignment overseas.

Pattern: Curlicue

Yarn: Blue Sky Alapacas Dyed Cotton (organically grown) in colorway 617 (Lotus), four skeins (150 yds each)

Needle:  US 3 circulars, 29-inch

Finished dimensions:
28 inches wide, 35 inches long

Modifications: I added a three-stitch garter border to both ends of every row.  To my eye, this was needed to keep the symmetry of the scalloped borders as written.

Clarifications: If this one is in your queue, double-check on how to properly end the even-numbered rows here (the last repeat is finished off with a ssk WHICH REPLACES the final sk2p as written). If you’re clever enough to have worked this out on your own, I hope your prowess is contagious.

Ravelry links: my project, the designer’s pattern

Verdict: Happy.  Easy pattern that doesn’t look super-easy, and it flew on non-Turbo US 3s like you wouldn’t think it would do.  Honestly, I felt like I was knitting on much fatter needles, like 9s.

The finished size was just what I’d hoped it would be (always nice, especially when you go to the trouble of knitting a gauge swatch).

I’m happy with the drape as well - gentle yet consistent.

The fabric is very soft; warm and substantial-feeling while still having the lightness of cotton.  It’s the nice fat feeling of the Blue Sky Alpacas fiber that makes the magic happen.

The finished blanket blossomed nicely with a 20-minute Eucalan soak, and behaved well during the blocking that followed.

The only silly-Amy moment(s) came about in the dash to complete my final rows as my yarn was running out.

Seeing as it’s a baby blanket that lacks the requirement of an exact fit, I should have just stopped when I knew I wasn’t going to squeak out another 5 rows and quit the pattern a bit early to finish gracefully with the final 3 rows of garter stitch.

But I like to live dangerously.

And I figured that blocking would cure all evils if I happened to stretch the yarn (too) tightly to eke out the final rows for a photo finish at the end of my fourth and final skein.

I pulled *really* tightly and finished all rows of the final pattern repetition and the border with only a couple of inches to spare.

Woo-hoo!  I whipped out my Eucalan wash, soaked, patted, and blocked.

But.

There wasn’t enough ease left in the fabric at that far end of the blanket to be able to block any sense back into it:  the width pulled in on itself and started to suck the life out of the rest of the project.

I started having flashbacks to my first baby blanket, a.k.a. The Trapezoid.

No one was ever going to notice that the pattern ended a couple of rows early, not even me.  Duh.

So I blocked all but the crappy end and once the remainder of the blanket was off the board, I frogged back 5 rows and finished with the garter stitch border in a more civilized fashion.

That said, I left out the evidence of my pre-frogged tight end and saved up my photo shoot for the happier times.  Pictured above is the (still sloppy) unblocked but re-knit trouble area which I subsequently prettied up in a second round of targeted blocking.

Below are a few pics of my just-off-the-UPS-truck blocking tools in action.

The Fiber Fantasy blockers I described in my last post did not disappoint.

Along with the curly end of a flexible blocker from this set, the tip of one of the straight-edge blockers is pictured here, next to the happy yellow yardstick that comes with the package.

During the first go at blocking, I ran two super-longshanks rigid blockers down the straight sides and T-pinned them 28 inches apart to set an even width.

Then I threaded a flexible blocker down the not-too-tight shorter edge until I ran out of wire (accounting for the extra length consumed by the scalloped edges, this was about 3/4 of the way across).

I finished off weaving this edge with the second flexible blocker and then pinned down the curves to set the shape.  The second scalloped edge (too tightly knitted, wearing the dunce cap) had to wait until I fixed it before it could be similarly guided.

Here’s a close-up of a flexible blocker in action on the second end after the rip-out-and-redo (you can see that I only re-soaked the last few inches).

You weave the blockers through outermost stitch all along each edge, every half inch or so.

And then you hook yourself up with ship-shape corners by pinning squarely at the joining point.

After blocking, even the reverse of the fabric has a nice smooth look.

Beeteedubyuh, did ya notice my sexy new blocking board along the way here?

Ohhh, it’s delicious.  Boy, did I feel professional voodooing my work down into submission with those T-pins.

As you can see, she folds up real nice so that a gal like me can clean up after herself when the blocking’s done.  Or at least have the potential to…do that.

Some call it cluttered, I call it cozy: I’m currently happily surrounded by knitting items, both old and new, and I’m hunkering down to get some things done here.

In spite of my slight tendency toward bah-humbuginess this year, Santa was very kind.

It’s not about the gifts, I know, but my eyes did get all misty when I unwrapped a shiny new ball winder and a gorgeous swift to boot.  Eureka, my heavy hinting worked!

It’s all I really wanted, so I figured the hinting was justified.

If I don’t do it, birthdays get forgotten and it ends in tears.  It’d be easier if gifts weren’t even involved, you know?  But I digress.

I do like gifts.

Oh joy, I felt like a kid - as soon as it seemed socially acceptable to do so when everyone had finished opening gifts (I gave it about 30 seconds), I bee-lined for my knitting bag and whipped out an unballed hank of Mongolian Cashmere and got to work.  I just happened to have this on hand.  Just in case.

That swift spinning away with a steady whir and a gentle breeze was glorious.  After I got it going.

I wasn’t sure quite what to do since I hadn’t done it before, but I figured I’d better just stick the little end into the big end and go for it* (before Tommy came back and hit me over the head with a tack hammer).

I felt like Ralphie on Christmas morning with his new Red Ryder BB gun, with his dad standing over his shoulder asking him if he knows how to load it.  That kid had been dreaming about loading it for so long, he tuned out all extraneous noise, nodding and smiling (maybe drooling?) and just got down to the business of enjoying it.

And then he went outside and (almost) shot his eye out - but thank goodness I didn’t do that.

I did quickly get my fix, however, and then moved the new goodies to the corner (still where I could see them) while I watched Mamma Mia and squealed for nearly two hours like the girl I am.

Now on to the New Year.  I have absolutely no plans whatsoever to ring it in doing anything exciting, but that doesn’t mean that something couldn’t come up.

Right?

I could just knit it in while others are ringing it in.  That would do.  I’ve got a lot of projects coming down the pike (in theory), so that would suit me just fine.

Old. Boring. Lady.

Emphasis on the Lady, thank you very much.

Toodles, dears.  TTYL.