So in the end I decided not to make ANOTHER Zimmerman 2-needle baby sweater but instead ANOTHER sock yarn Knitty baby sweater. I "cheated" by making the pieces on the machine, and then doing the rolled edges by hand- that took as long as doing all the sweater parts on the machine. I'm satisfied with the sweater but honestly not thrilled; the yellow section of the yarn had dark shadowing on it that made it look a little stained or something, but that was part of the yarn. I definitely will have some self striping sock yarn on hand and wouldn't hesitate to whip it out of the machine with the hand edges again- I think I get hung up sometimes on details. After all, the sweater is the gift, the machine is hand run- does it matter if I use 2 needles or the machine?!

Done.

Next.

Repetition

I wasn't surprised when I opened the Spring issues of Interweave Knits and Vogue knitting and found big features in each on lace knitting. After all, it's the Spring issue. But it was kind of weird when both mags had big feature articles on Kitchener stitch. It's funny how that happens in knitting- I remember once I designed a sweater in blue and white with the word for "peace" in many different languages knitted in. A few months later, Dale (I think it was Dale) came out with a sweater in blue and white with the word for "peace" in many languages knitted in. It wasn't exactly the same (of course) and even the concept must have occurred to us both independently since they must have had it already in production when mine came out, but it was a very weird coincidence.

Of course, sometimes repetition isn't a surprise. I just found out that a dear friend at work added a baby to her family and I wanted to whip out a baby sweater over the weekend, so I don't want to design something from scratch. What did I come up with? Yep, Zimmerman's 2-needle sweater (aka the February sweater) with a solid body rather than lace. (It's a boy and while I think gull lace is fine for a boy, especially in blue, there are those who disagree, and I don't know where the baby's parents fall). I have to get out of the Zimmerman baby sweater rut, but it's fast and almost automatic by now and I usually have something on hand in the right gauge... and if it ain't broke, as they say...

Pictures

So I finally took a few pictures of the Noro scarf-gave up on my photographer so I did them myself, which is why they aren't great- but you get the idea. I'm about halfway through the brighter more "girly" one for me. Waiting to see if I get the Brown Sheep cotton fleece I bid on at ebay to finish the baby sweater. Other than that, working on some design ideas I want to submit (so I can't talk too much about them) and trying to focus my limited design time by prioritizing where I want to submit things- I don't have time for everything! I'm also looking into buying an appalachian dulcimer, because I don't have enough to do in my spare time (snort)