Knitting with Sleeping Kids and Knitting in the Sunlight

Last week was a week full of disaster.  Pretty much everything I did had to be undone before any progress could be made.  It was a disaster.  I'd done all this work just to have to start all over again!  I thought it was going to be one of those things where I just didn't want to pick it up again and keep going, but I did, and sure enough, I'm back on track.

As I'm sure you can see by the picture, my Nutkins are redone and looking pretty.  I'm back up past the heel, and they actually fit!  They're looking pretty good and I'm happy with the way they've turned out.  I'm not making fantastic progress because I've been working on another project that comes with a lot more of a feeling of instant gratification.  Socks take so much longer to get done and there are two of them.  That means twice the knitting fun, but also twice as long to get the project off the needles.  It's great, unless you want something to bolster your ego after a miserable failure, like the ones I had the week before.  These have kind of been thrown on the back burner for a while and only get a few rows thrown in here and there.

Instead of finishing my socks, I decided it was time to work on my Leaving Cowl.  This has been quite the project.  After tearing it out three times, I finally decided the needles it was on were intolerable to work with, so I had to start over, this time on smaller needles.  It went up much quicker this time, and because the pattern was so easy and familiar, I didn't even need the pattern as a reference.  I just worked the whole thing up from memory.  I suppose that's a good thing, because now Little Bear wants one too!

The thing I loved most about this project was working on it with the sunlight spilling over my shoulder.  It's not the traditional fall leaf color, being more brown and gold than reds and oranges, but I think it's a beautiful yarn.  It's not really the feeling of fall that most people think, but it does remind me of Thanksgiving, which at this rate is going to be the earliest I can bust this thing out!  It hasn't been as cold as I feared it would be, so I haven't had much want for a cowl to this point, save for a few days, but I suppose that's soon enough to change.

The hardest part about knitting this week is knitting with Little Bear.  It's been a while since Little Bear has wanted Mommy Lap Naps, but we've been back to that.  The benefit to this is that it means I have to sit down and do nothing else until the Bear wakes.  Unfortunately, knitting isn't always easy this way, and my feet fall asleep so easily!

It's not as simple as it once was.  It's easy enough to let a baby sleep on your chest while your arms wrap around and knit, or sleep draped across your arms leaving your hands free.  Toddlers tuck well enough in laps, allowing someone to knit over them, or twist around to get a good angle without too much effort.  Again, sleeping on one arm is an option.  Once you hit preschool age, even with a preschooler as bitty as mine, it's really tough to make sure there's enough room to knit.  Enough twisting and turning can add to the degree of challenge.  It's almost like a knitting obstacle course.  Eve with the challenges, it's worth it.  It's something I've missed lately, in spite of how difficult it can be to work that way.

The best part about having Little Bear with me is always having a model to show off my projects.  This one couldn't even wait until it was finished.  Little Bear was very insistent that it had to be tried on right then.  Now I have to make another one.  The order came down, "Just like yours, but, blue, blue, blue!"  Can you guess what Little Bear's favorite color is?

Yeah, it's a proud mama moment, look how cute Little Bear is in that cowl!  I think I may need to pattern hunt for the perfect cowl for Bear.  Maybe I'll do something with an ice blue and white, or maybe I can find one with snowflakes.  Frozen is still a favorite in this house.  I also might do something pink and/or purple, because that's what Princess Rapunzel would wear.  Tangled is also a frequent watch around here.  Little Bear even insisted on getting a "short hair Rapunzel" hair cut, which could stand to be updated again soon.  It's just as much fun to knit for my kids, especially Little Bear, as it is to knit for myself.  Little Bear's the only one of the kids that really appreciates the hand-knits like I do.

So the cowl is finally finished, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!  I went all crazy and decided to do a fancy bind off that I'd never heard of before, but decided would be easy.  I got the idea from the Nutkin socks.  They have this way of knitting in the cast on edge to create a folded over cuff.  I did that for the picot hem on the bottom, so I figured I would make it match by doing something similar on top.  That may not have been the best of ideas.

Here's what I did for this insanity.  I took the concept of the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn bind off, but instead of just binding off the edge, I picked up and stitched in the coordinating stitches from the folded over fabric.  I know it sounds complicated.  Maybe some day I'll do a video of what I did, but it was a hassle and time consuming.  I swore I would never do it again, especially after taking the whole binding out twice because it wasn't working out right and everything looked twisted, but grim determination (and people liking the photo of what I was doing on Instagram) kept me going.

Once I figured out where I'd been going wrong, it wasn't all that bad.  It looks nice and neat, and fell into a pretty decent rhythm, so in the end it didn't take all that long to work up.  It was just the first few tries that looked a little wonky.  I honestly don't even think you can tell what I did on that bind off just by looking at it.  It looks pretty sharp.

I'm pretty proud of myself for this one.  I don't take many bold steps with knitting, at least not without the confidence that everything will turn out just fine.  I tend to leave things be and follow the instructions, or to do an alternative that I'm confident will work.  It's not common to see me just whack away at something like this with reckless abandon, just diving in and doing something that I don't know will work, and no one's given me any instructions on how to complete.  It's terrifying, but at the same time, it was a lot of fun.  It gave me confidence as a knitter, and that's something that's always fun.  It's a new technique that I think I want to practice and perfect.  I've really learned something with this, and I didn't expect to.  It was a lot of fun.

The best part of the whole project, of course, is the finished product.  There's something so uplifting about being able to put on the finished piece and show it off.  I mean, look at this, it's beautiful!  The picot edge (which no one else seems to have done, even though it's listed as "option 1") gives it a unique style compared to the other projects just like it.  The dark, warm color goes well with just about everything, not to mention my hair.  (Speaking of my hair, it looks so incredibly good in this picture!  Why doesn't it always look this way?)  The fit is just perfect.  This is exactly what I needed.

For being a project that I wasn't at all in love with, and was just doing so I could have a little KAL with Sable, this has turned into a favorite.  I won't lie, I wasn't inspired to knit this at all after the Seasons Fall/Winter Shawl and the Tuscan Sunflower Shawl kits I got from KnitPicks, both with the same leaf shaped pattern.  I couldn't help but feel like this was just another leaf, but it looks really nice and will serve me well this fall and winter.  It had enough unexpected and challenge to make it something I'm proud to show off.