I’ve been knitting off and on since 1990. One thing that always inspires me to pick up my needles is the impending or recent birth of a baby. To date, all of my nieces and nephews have a hand-knit baby blanket from me.
For my nephew Nathan (now 12), I knitted a yellow lace chevron blanket that was the first project I ever finished.
When Olivia came along (now nearly eight), I got ambitious and decided to try my hand at intarsia, or picture knitting. The afghan turned out fine, but I learned I hated intarsia and the project about killed me.
Madeline (5 1/2) and Benjamin (4) both got afghans I designed myself after being inspired by Barbara Walker’s books on knitting patterns. They were both a blast to work on.
So what masterpiece awaits Baby Whozit? Oops. I flopped for my own baby! After toying with several yarns and a dozen patterns, nothing inspired me. But I had to have something for Whozit, and the clock was ticking down…
So I spent the last couple of weeks knitting up a quick sweater, which turned out to be much fun, and now awaits only a monogram in the center diamond to complete. This is perfect, as I know I wouldn’t have had time to do a size 3 months sweater after the baby arrives, but I’d feel slightly superstitious about finishing something before the baby comes, too.
I have a confession… I was going to knit you this gorgeous intarsia baby blanket, even though I’d never done intarsia before. In my hubris, I thought I could just figure it out… Well, maybe if I’d devoted every spare moment to it, I could have, but as it turns out, I ripped out and started over 3 times, and then was so unhappy with my progress (which still looked like crap) that I became discouraged and couldn’t even bear to look at it. Expect a pair of baby booties in the next couple of months…
The sweater, BTW, is gorgeous.