Knitting the Knitter's Almanac - February

It's July and I've only just finished up the Knitter's Almanac February projects.  To be fair, I've been done most of the projects since April, but (surprise!) I ran out of yarn before finishing everything.  Since the yarn I wanted was on back order until July, I had to wait until it came in before I could complete the last project.

February's chapter is dedicated to baby things, so there are a number of small projects:  A blanket, a sweater, leggings and a shawl.  Each features a different technique, and I learned a number of new things in the process.

Double Knitting Potholder

First up was the blanket featuring a new-to-me technique called double knitting.  Basically, you are knitting two sides of a bag at once.  When the two sides are joined on all sides, you get a very cushy blanket.  The whole time I was knitting it, I would frequently stop to appreciate how squishy it was.  I also made anyone interested in my knitting touch the squishy.  To get a handle on the new technique, Ms. Zimmermann suggests making a potholder first, just a very small square using the technique. 

Double Knitting Blanket

Edge detail - note the poofiness of
the main portion of the blanket

Successful potholder under my belt, I proceeded to the blanket.  I said I wasn't going to order more yarn I was just going to knit up what I had purchased for the project and be done with it, but it really was too small to be useful once I'd used up the yarn, so I bought another skein to make it just a bit larger.  The result is a small but useful-sized baby blanket or tummy time mat and a new technique mastered.

Baby Sweater

Next up was a baby sweater.  In this chapter EZ introduces us to her sweater formula explaining how to make a sweater in any size using percentages.  Her pattern is knit all in one piece and the only finishing seams necessary are the underarm seams.  It occurs to me that even these seams could be eliminated, but I have not yet tested this theory.  Anyway, the sweater knit up quickly, but it used all of the yarn I had purchased for the sweater and the matching leggings, causing the next project, the leggings to be put on hold.

Shawl pattern - more a blanket

I then proceeded to the shawl pattern.  The shawl pattern is knit starting from the center and increasing every other round at four equal points to make a square.  The original pattern is stocking stitch throughout, but EZ suggests that a lace pattern could be incorporated in each of the quarters, which I did.  I found a simple lace pattern I liked and added it as space became available.  In the end, the yarn I had purchased was much too bulky to really make a shawl, so I would call the end result another blanket.  But the techniques learned to make a square piece from the inside out and how to introduce lace patterns will prove useful in the future.

As I mentioned, I had planned to make the leggings and sweater to match, but used up all of the yarn I purchased for both projects on the sweater.  By the time I realized I would need more yarn, the yarn was back ordered and I couldn't get it until July.  Since I knew that would also mean a different dye lot, I decided to go with a different color altogether.  Unfortunately the other colors I thought would look good with the sweater's grey, were also all backlogged, so I had no choice but to wait.  When the yarn finally came in, I started the leggings pattern.  This was my first attempt at knitting pants or leggings, and I can't really say that I found the pattern easily transferable to another size or pattern.  The pattern itself was pretty straightforward, though.  You start at the waist, knit the body and bottom, then separate the yarn for the legs, which are done separately.  The crotch area is stitched.  EZ suggests a technique called weaving, which I had never tried before.  The end result is an invisible seam.  It looks like the area was knit in one piece.  A very clever and useful technique!  The original pattern called for the leggings to have booties at the bottom, but I was running short of yarn (again!), so I left them off. 

There were a lot of projects for February, and a lot of new things to learn, but because baby things are small, none of the projects took more than about a week to finish.  If I wasn't having constant yarn shortages, I probably would have finished this month's projects within the four weeks of February.  Still, I learned a lot, including, hopefully, how to better predict how much yarn I'll need.