thick & quick

Mom calls Thursday - I have a great idea, can you make something for the auction? (The school I went to has an auction every year as a fundraiser.) Sure, mom, when is it? November 18th.

Yeah...

Thursday night is the late night for the yarn store here, so I went over there and looked and looked for about an hour. I wanted to make a shawl with dk weight wool, like this one, since it didn't take very long to make and it was really pretty. Anyway, the yarn store didn't have anything soft enough that wasn't $$, so somehow the owner of the shop convinced me that kidsilk haze would be perfect for what I wanted to do. I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed that it would be perfect, since it's laceweight, and the last laceweight project I made took about a month. On my way home, my nose wouldn't stop itching - I don't think I'll be making anything with that kidsilk haze. I think I'll be taking it back and exchanging for some cashmere for a Christmas present.

So, the next morning I woke up about an hour early trying to figure out what I was going to do and the brilliant idea came to me - a velvety baby outfit made out of that chenille you can get from Michael's. That cute baby surprise jacket from Elizabeth Zimmerman and a little hat. I was thinking dark red, but I ended up with some lovely dark green and cream. Normally I find chenille to be quite tacky - too mid 90's for me, but somehow this works.





The baby surprise jacket is made in one piece and you decrease and increase in different places to create the shape. You end up with seams only on the top of the arms - it's pretty neat how it works. The pattern is written for yarn at 6 stitches per inch, and my chenille knits up about 2.5 stitches to the inch. So I just figured out that it's about 42% of the pattern, and made all of the numbers 42% of what she has in the book. It worked very well, which was fortunate, as I had no time for errors.

I got the measurements for the bonnet from a baby pattern book and then just sort of made something up. It only took about an hour to make, and I think it looks pretty cute.

I put an i-cord edge on every edge I could find, which makes it nice and pretty for the holidays. It's easy to get away with things like that when it's for a baby.



I found the cutest buttons to go with this - the ones on the left. This had to be for either a boy or a girl, so I had to ditch those pretty pearl buttons and go with the other ones. They still look good, but aren't nearly as cute. I'm going to have to find something else to make so I can use those pretty pearl buttons.

For my records:
Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket from Knitting Workshop, and made up bonnet pattern
Yarn: Lion Brand Thick & Quick Chenille
(I am such a snob, I still can't believe I used this yarn and it actually came out nice.)
Needles: Size 10.5 bamboo circulars
4 buttons instead of 5
Buttons from JoAnn (they had an exceptionally bad selection of buttons yesterday)
Time to make: About 8 hours total
Jacket Size: 20" around, 12" long
Bonnet: 13" around top, 5" deep