Endings and Beginnings

I finished the last sock from Malachy's Toddler Set! Finally. The second sock is pretty uneven in tension, worse actually than the first sock. Boy, I really must not have been terribly excited about this project anymore or maybe I can blame it on my sore neck and shoulders. Whatever, I'm just glad it's done! Flitting on to the next thing...

Here's a photo of the original sweater I started to make for Kiera more than a year ago and well before she was born. It just wasn't working out the way I envisioned and I liked the set I ended up giving her at the baby shower better. I just never got back to working on this one. (Gee, it sounds like I never finish anything without struggling and complaining, doesn't it? Not true — well, not all the time anyway!)

So I've decided that it's going to turn into a toddler poncho and maybe another hat if there's enough yarn. I doubt the dyelot is still available at Birkeland Bros by now! So I'm working with what I've got, just like as if it was a limited amount of handspun. The plain yellow is Lanett (100% superwash wool) and the variegated is Sisu (80% superwash, 20% nylon). The top picture is the bits and bobs before I started pulling it all apart. Of course the frogged yarn was all kinky so I decided to wash it to make it easier to knit with. And just in case it shrank or changed in any way, I had to wind everything into skeins and wash them all together. There were some fairly short bits so there'll be a number of joins in the poncho. This stuff is slippery! It doesn't felt together like regular wool and I find that joins in commercial yarn are much more obvious than in handspun. Washes easily though — a must for garments for little ones. (Big ones too sometimes! And Silly Son Simon, Kiera's dad, isn't allergic to it as much as he is to "real" wool.) It might be "engineered" but at least it isn't plastic! You don't think I'd knit plastic yarn for my precious one-and-only grandbaby, do you!? Ick.



Frogging Done

Now to let it dry (it's all currently hanging on the railing on my upper deck but the sun's gone in, darn!) and wind it all back into balls. Thank goodness I have the proper tools: skein winder/unwinder and ball winder. It can get rather tedious but at least I don't have to find a spouse or a chair to hold skeins for me. I think I'll kind of design this poncho on the circular needles. First a cast-on round in the variegated yarn that will fit over her head, then some circular garter (k 1 round, p 1 round) to make the neck lie flat, and including 4 increases (before and after the centre front and back stitches) every other round. Next change to yellow yarn and continue in plain st st (not forgetting the increases) until it's bigger and then finish with a wide border of the variegated in garter again. It remains to be seen whether I change anything from this before I'm done! You never know.