Frogging is not an option

I need some help! Gah! I was just knitting the baby blanket and I saw what I thought was a pull. Throwing my cats a dirty glance, I gave it a gentle tug so the feather and fan pattern would stretch back into place. But it wasn't a pull! It's worse. It's like a dropped stitch, but wouldn't it be facing the other way if it were? I haven't been short any stitches for the pattern. The rest of the blanket looks perfect. Where did this come from? This mistake was made during the second repeat of the pattern of the green section -- somewhere in the yarn overs for the third and fourth holes.


What should I do? I really can't face the idea of frogging. This is the first time I've encounted something like this and I'm at a loss as to how to fix it. I don't want to make it worse. I need a skilled yarn surgeon or something. Do I sew it down? Do I cut and secure it? Right now I'm holding it in place with a safety pin so it won't unravel. I'm not sure if it would though. It seems so isolated. I'm confused. Wretched thing!

Sweater update

Progress is being made, slowly but surely, on the sweater for David. I just finished the back of the sweater. Here it is in its unblocked glory.


It's looking good! Sigh. Everything I make for D takes such a long time.

Meanwhile, I've been eyeing this yarn.
Doesn't it look nice? And it's made from Longwool sheep, which I think would be very appropriate. At $13.50 a skein, this is not something to be taken lightly. I must think on this some more. I hear it calling to me though.

Intarsia it is!

After pondering the blanket question and reading the good advice I got, I decided that I should definitely make the border of the baby blanket all yellow and just stripe the feather and fan interior. Here's what I have so far:



What do you think? I'm pleased with how it is turning out. The intarsia is not turning out to be as bad as I thought. What I did was cut a long strand of yellow to do the border on one side and worked from the skein on the other side so I didn't have to keep cutting and adding the yellow yarn every row. Less tails to weave in as well!

New project

While I've been pondering the blanket question and reading all your good advice on what to do (thanks!), I've started a new project. Remember that Valley Yarn Sugarloaf yarn I bought a few weeks ago? Well check this out:
Knitting with size 9 needles is such a nice change from the size 4 needles I've been knitting the blanket with. I may only do 10 rows at one sitting, but it's visible progress! Dave may have his sweater in time for winter!

I also have to include this picture of Derby I took this morning:

I'm trying to decide whether she making a comment on programming in Perl, the weather, or the state of the world in general. Maybe all three.

The blanket saga continues...

I went to the LYS the other day to find a yarn whose gauge would match the yarn my mom got for me in Italy so the baby blanket would get to actual blanket proportions. Of the yarns suggested to me, the LYS only had Dale of Norway's Baby Ull and Filatura di Crosa's Zarina in stock. Baby Ull turned out to be too thick, but Zarina's gauge was spot on! The only problem was the colors. Unlike Baby Ull, which had all sorts of pretty colors to choose from, Zarina had white, yellow (not the same as my yellow though), blue, pink, variegated blue and pink, and light green. The blue or pink would have made a nice contrast, but as I wish to remain gender neutral my only choice seemed to be the green. I wish the green were a little darker as it looks somewhat washed out against the yellow, but I think it will be okay.
But now comes the question of how to incorporate the stripes? The feather and fan pattern I am doing has a border around the edge.

As I see it I have 2 options:
1) Just start striping and make the border striped as well
2) Continue the yellow border and just make the stripes of green for the feather and fan interior

Aesthetically speaking, I'm inclined to think choice 2 is better, but it would be a pain in the ass to switch colors 3 times each row. What do you all think?

Booties!

The booties are finished! They knit up very quickly. They seem so tiny, yet are for 3 month olds so they will be too big at first. Hard to imagine...

I promise to take a picture of the baby wearing the cardigan and booties once he/she arrives and fits into them.

Too cute

The baby cardigan is finished and is sooo cute! Well, finished except for the buttons, but those won't be purchased until after the baby is born so I can get gender appropriate buttons.

Pattern: Moss Stitch Jacket from Debbie Bliss's Baby Style
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold's Cable Cotton

Now to start the matching booties...


Also, I wanted to put up a picture of a strange event I witnessed on Monday. My town was hosting its annual 3 County Fair and one of the events was "Granny's Racing Pigs". Number 5 did indeed maintain its lead to win, in case you were wondering.

Very calculating

In case you've been worried, I haven't forgotten about that baby blanket I started with the yarn my mom got for me in Italy. Here's the progress so far:


It's currently about 24 inches wide and 4 inches long. While I still have a sizable bit of the skein left, I'm beginning to worry about whether it will reach adequate blanket proportions. My mother said the woman at the yarn store she went to in Florence assured her one skein was big enough for a carseat blanket. Hmph. What exactly are the proportions of a carseat blanket? I'm imagining something not quite big enough to wrap your baby in, but big enough to tuck around the baby while it is in the carseat. 24 inches seems an appropriate width for that.

Now for some calculations. The skein is 100 grams. It appears I have 70 grams left. Just to be sure, I weighed what I've knitted so far as well: 29 grams -- close enough!


Well, if 29 grams has yielded 4 inches (generous measurement -- I'm envisioning post blocking here) then with 70 grams I have 9 inches to go. A 13 inch long blanket doesn't seem quite long enough. However, 26 inches would be just about right so all I would need is another skein. Meanwhile I'm a bit confused by this Italian yarn. The label just says "Baby Irrestringibile". June had suggested that irrestringibile means superwash. Who then is the manufacturer of this Baby yarn? No clues on the label (at least none that I can find). Ha! But I won't let that stop me! The simplest solution (aside from a quick jaunt to Florence) would be to find a merino yarn of similar weight and do stripes of a different color. Dale of Norway's Baby Ull perhaps? Any comments or suggestions on this idea?