Deadlines

I recently spent two solid weeks working on a knitting deadline (which partially explains my blog inactivity). Normally I work best under a deadline, but this experience was almost frantic. Even worse, it was of my own doing. I really hate it when I have no one to blame but myself.

Toward the beginning of February, I received an invitation to a baby shower that was scheduled for the third week of March. "No problem," thought I. It was plenty of time to knit some sweet baby gear. I spent the first week deciding whether to make a blanket or a sweater. Then I spent far too much time obsessing about color and pattern. After much dawdling, I realized that I only had two weeks until the shower, and I absolutely had to make a decision. (Oh, and I had to entertain houseguests the week before the shower.) Ah, procrastination—my old nemesis.

And what did I decide to knit? A toddler-sized fingering weight cardigan with a hood. Egad.

But I did it. I didn't get the buttons sewn on until the morning of the shower, but that is neither here nor there at this point, right?

Pattern: "A Cardigan for Merry," by annypurls
Yarn: Fearless Fibers lightweight superwash merino sock yarn, "Inner Sanctum"
Needles: 2.50 mm.

Very happy with the cable grafting

I have wanted to knit this cardigan ever since I first saw the pattern a couple of years ago. Being mostly stockinette, it really is a fairly simple cardi. The reversible cable is quite intuitive to knit, too. Because I had delayed the decision about what to knit, though, I definitely had to knit it with yarn from my stash. My two favorite colors for baby sweaters are green and orange, and since the last two baby sweaters I knit were green, I wanted to go for orange. Luckily I had two skeins that fit the bill. The pattern calls for sport weight yarn, but I did a bit of number crunching for my fingering weight, and all turned out well.

Before I started on the baby cardi, I managed to finish up some yarn that's related to another deadline.

Fiber: Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino, "Touch Me"
3 ply
806 yards
212 grams

My two pink-loving nieces both have birthdays at the end of April. Can I bring myself to knit two pairs of bright pink socks in that time? Stay tuned to watch the disaster progress.