Recently on Ravelry, I found a cute little pattern for my new niece Isla: Blue Steps Baby Booties. Using 1 circular needle, it starts on the midline of the sole with a closed CO (I used the Magic CO) and a garter stitch sole. After the sole, brioche stitch is used, continuing to work upward ITR. Side note and warning: If you knit Continental Combined, brioche stitch is very easy and extremely enjoyable and addictive! To BO, I tried out Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy BO (JSSBO shown here by Cat Bordhi) after tinking my too-tight k2togtbl BO. JSSBO worked really, really well and fit easily over Isla's foot. This pattern encapsulates so many techniques or methods I like that I really enjoyed doing this pattern, start to finish. I highly recommend it! Unfortunately, when we tried the booties on at Christmas, they were way too small. After all, the pattern is for newborns, not 1-month-olds like Isla. So, now I'm going to re-knit them larger. No problem. I think I'll CO 28 stitches this time...BTW, I thought I'd share something I un-vented, as EZ used to say, which I'm sure many other knitters have also discovered. When I was first doing the Magic CO and beginning the garter stitch ITR to make the sole, the midline was too flat and indented because the first garter ridges surrounding the flat CO end up farther apart from each other relative to the other garter ridges of the sole. Since the Magic CO creates a complete purl ridge on the WS when casting on, I decided to use that feature by beginning the booties on the WS of the work. How, you might ask? Instead of rotating the needle tips around vertically 180 degrees like you usually do to begin knitting ITR, I rotated them around horizontally (toward myself) 180 degrees. As long as your needle tips end up pointing to the right and you see a purl ridge between the needles facing you, you've got it right. For the first round, I knit all the stitches just like you would in garter stitch after a round of purl. Then on round 2 (a purl round) I began the pattern increases as written. No more wonkiness at the midline, and you can't even tell where the booties begin ;-)
Last night I worked a bit on Wright. I'd like to get that done as well as Ian's long-sleeve Vestee before Ravelympics begin. Other small projects OTN that I have: Marie's Lullaby socks and a pair of Evenstar Mitts for me. I'm not sure if I'll get to them or not, but I also have queued a hat (or two!) and mitts set using some beige alpaca yarn. I also would like to knit something besides booties for Isla such as Pepita and Cozy Hooded Sleeping Sack.
A presto! Ciao!
1 comment:
Glad to see you blogging again! Always so full of good information.
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