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My mind’s single track

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When the boys and I follow Neil to one of his conventions, sometimes we get involved in the convention goings on, sometimes we socialize a little bit with friends we know there, sometimes we go off on little adventures in the town, and sometimes we hang out in our hotel room working on individual projects.

This trip to Readercon last weekend included most of those things, and it was a really nice time, but I have to admit something: it didn’t much matter where I physically was during our trip, I was nearly always mentally in one particular place – Pattern Design Land.

Oh! the one track mind I had!

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Before we left, I had decided I wanted to attempt to adapt my Everyday Cardigan pattern into a baby size. I packed a hank of Berroco Vintage, my #7 circular, and my laptop which had the original pattern notes on it. By Thursday night, within hours of arriving at the hotel, I had re-worked the first part of the pattern, cast-on, and nearly finished the yoke.

The speed at which baby knits come together is something I find thrilling. I couldn’t get this little sweater out of my head (or my Instagram stream, for that matter).

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Friday morning we went fabric shopping, and I bought a couple of prints that would go with that little sweater. How cute would a hedgehog dress be, peeking out from under a little blue cardigan? I think it’s perfect for fall. (Which is coming in a few months, whether I am finished with summer or not…)

By Friday evening I had finished the body and realized I had forgotten to bring my #7 double-points and couldn’t do the sleeves – oh! the horror!

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Saturday morning I dropped in to the local yarn shop (Edwina’s Knitch, cute little shop, such a nice owner) and procured the needles I needed.

By Saturday night, the sweater was finished. I blocked it, and stuck it in my suitcase.

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Such instant gratification! By Monday morning I was home and dumping out Granny’s buttons all over the dining room table and searching for the perfect set.

This weekend sweater obsession has been good in terms of pattern-making. It’s great to have a project small enough that you can finish it in 48 hours and still have all of the start-to-finish details fresh in your mind.

I have decided that this sweater is too big to be considered a 6 month size. For one thing, my gauge was off (which is weird – I knit with this yarn all the time, and my gauge is always the same. I’m not sure what happened), and for another, I don’t think the baby measurements I originally snagged from the internet were all that accurate.

Monday morning, this realization led me to finding a new set of (reliable) sizing standards, which led me to re-working the entire pattern, which led me to making a really cool spreadsheet that theoretically gives me sizes up to age 12!

(I say “theoretically” because there are design changes I would make for the bigger kid sizes. If I do them someday, they’ll be a separate pattern.)

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So now I am armed with my newly-modified pattern, and I’ve cast-on another version. This one will hopefully be the smaller size I envisioned, but if it’s not, I can keep adjusting my pattern and trying until I get it right. It’s pretty cool when a sweater is so tiny that you can knit it in two days. (It takes me so. much. longer. to make my own sweaters. Ugh.)

I hope my baby niece is going to like wearing tiny cardigans, because depending on how long it takes me to perfect this pattern, I may have a lot of them for her. I have to make sure each prototype is a different size, so I can spread them out a bit 😜

Though, honestly, I do feel like this little pink one is going to be perfect, which means I can quickly get to the part where I pretty-up the pattern itself and publish it. I love that part – it’s always fun to put a new pattern out into the world!

On the other hand, I may be addicted to little knits, and I may have to try just one more after this for the sake of my art 😄

If you are interested in baby knits, stay tuned, because as long as my mind is stuck on this track, chances are good that this pattern will be forthcoming very very soon.

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Posted on 2 Comments

2 thoughts on “My mind’s single track

  1. These are so sweet!! Can’t wait for the pattern!!

  2. […] up two of them (more on those in a future post). Plus, I’m still working on prototypes for that new baby sweater pattern. It’s entirely possible that I may be going slightly overboard with all of the little girl […]

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