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Here's a classic V-neck pullover vest for all the little scholars.
A relatively quick knit with minimal finishing, Pip is knit from the bottom up in the round and trimmed with corrugated ribbing. If you’re not a big fan of the corrugated rib you can easily choose a classic 2x2 rib instead without changing stitch counts.
Knit in DK weight yarn Pip makes a warm but light accessory for everyday, a special day, or even a school day.
Sizes:
2 (4, 6, 8, 10, 12) years.
Finished Measurements:
Chest: 24 (26, 28, 29.5, 31, 33) inches.
Length: 13.25 (15, 7, 18.5, 20, 22) inches.
Yarn:
1855 Yarn Company’s Alpaca/Merino blend
(50% alpaca/50% merino)
100 grams/220 yards per hank.
Main color 2 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3) hanks.
Contrast color for ribbing: 1 hank.
Sample shown in color Petal Pink w/Charcoal.
Needles:
US #5 (3.75 mm) 24 inch circular
US #4 (3.50 mm) 24 inch circular
US#4 (3.50 mm) DPNs
OR the size needles you need to obtain proper gauge.
Extras:
Waste yarn, tapestry needle, stitch markers, one coil-less pin.
Skill Level:
Easy +
Skills Needed:
Knitting in the round, decreasing, using DPNs.
Gauge:
20 sts/28 rows = 4 inches in stockinette stitch.
Price: $4.50
Your printable pattern will be immediately downloadable in Adobe PDF (v5.0 or later) format
Welcome to the first edition of Confession Friday! Todays' theme is... oooohhhh....*gasp*....
Say your piece! Take a deep breath and get it all out! Leave your identity at the door if you must but for Pete's sake just say it!
All will be forgiven! No one will be judged, condemned, or cast out of the knitting community. After all, we've all been there and done that.
Disclaimer: this is not your opportunity to be just plain evil (I do that of Thursdays not Fridays) so no slamming of fellow knitters. We are not here today to be mean to others but rather to relieve ourselves of our dark and hidden emotional knitting baggage. All names must be changed to protect the innocent.
Also, nobody is allowed to get all offended. If I say I hate yellow yarn and you love yellow yarn please remember that I said I hate yellow yarn not I hate people who love yellow yarn. (I can't believe I even felt the need to say that.)
I'll go first...
1. I love Noro... but I don't know why. I have Silk Garden hoarded away like a squirrel with a bunch'a nuts the day before armageddon... but I don't know why. I have never knit a Noro pattern and, in fact, I don't believe I even own any. I have knit a total of 1 item with Noro and it was a scarf. That's it.
2. I don't like Blue Sky Alpaca's cotton. There. I said it. Its too much like a spun cotton ball... literally. I know, I know, its IS a spun cotton ball (basically) but really I just can't stand it. I did make Tater a little sweater out of it one time and as much as I loved the color and really wanted to like it... I just don't.
The new Skinny Cotton, however, is to die for! Its all smooth and tight and I've got a hank or 12 here some of which are ear marked for something special... maybe even a Knitty submission... and while we're at it there's another confession for ya... I've never submitted to Knitty because I'm a Knitty-chicken.
3. Ya know how I blabbed about making an entire family's worth of boot socks a while ago? Well the entire family of socks is actually one sock. Okay half a sock. Half a Tater sock... which means its about >this< big. And I am completely stalled.
Now, you guys gotta help me with this one. I really meant it when I said I wanted to make boot socks for everybody. The kids and Mac Daddy even all think its a great idea and they all picked what color they want. Tater even tried her little half sock on (its a toe-up) and it fits! But after leafing through that Cat Bordhi book and fiddling with the little learning socks and taking everybody's foot measurements and settling on which style I would make... well I guess all the fiddling sort of satisfied my sock hunger. The spark went out. I cleverly shaped one sock and now the thrill of the hunt is just... not a thrill. Its just a sock.
What am I gonna do? I really want *to want* to make socks. At least a few. The toe-up thing was cool... I liked all the shaping and stitch shuffling and turning and short rows. Now I'm done. (Shrug)
4. I cannot felt wool. I don't mean I don't know how to felt wool... I mean I can't/won't do it. Its like murdering good wool. I've spent years making sure silly men who think they are being helpful don't decide to do a renegade load of laundry and wash my wool garments so I'll be damned if I'll put them in the washer on purpose! Won't do it. Nope.
5. Have you ever had one of those wool yarns that had little dried bits of vegetable matter in it? I seriously love it when that happens. It makes me feel like I've gone all connected with the sheep. The sheep grazed in the field and the field got all stuck in the wool and now I have the field and the wool. Totally.Nifty.
Okay... who's next?
Well, the weather sucks (again) because there's stuff falling from the sky (again) that is some sort of unidentifiable slop (again).
Can't a country girl just get some fluffy-picturesque snow cover? Can't we just have a little Norman Rockwell wintery whimsy?
All the schools are closed and the next 24 hours or so apparently are going to bestow upon us everything from several inches of dry, sandy-snow to sleet/freezing rain, and super cold temps.
I have officially declared today a day off even for us. I'm usually a stickler for doing school on days like this. Not that I'm that mean but I'd rather get a school day counted off and have more days free during the nice sunny spring/summer weather when we can actually go do something.
Besides, today was supposed to be a co-op day. Our last co-op day was cancelled for these exact same weather conditions. The kids are disappointed (again) so I figured I'd set them free to go occupy themselves instead of having to listen to the grumbling all day. They've all gone upstairs and I probably won't see them again until they get hungry.
So here I am with a whole day to play with. Mac Daddy has gone off to work (even though I tried to get him to stay home but he's got that whole Responsible/Professional thing going on and went trekking through the wintry slop to work).
I don't have much in the way of actual knitting to show so instead I thought I'd dispel some of the rumors I hear about what our household must be like. See, I've been told that this blog leaves people with the impression that we have a calm, orderly existence. Not so.
Exhibit A:
That would be Toby with a pancake on his head. I wish I could blame this on one of the kids but really... Mac Daddy did it. So if you figure that this is an example of the sort of example that MD sets... maybe you can see what I'm up against here. Its also why I don't often let him play with my camera.
By the way... if the verse "Toby has a pancake on his head and he keeps it there all day" is playing in your head right now you're not alone.
And about Tater. Yup... she's cute. She appears to be a rather angelic child. She can be (when she's sleeping). But really, what she is is rather a good student. I don't mean my good student. I mean a good student with 4 older siblings to learn from. Now I'll tell you MD and I are the kind of parents that try really hard not to freak out about silly stuff. We let the kids experiment and mess with stuff and take things apart (within reason). Messes are okay as long as they aren't permanent. I pick my battles. As long as they keep their attitudes in check I'm pretty easy-going. That's why things like this happen:
See, Tater suckered MD into buying her some of those cheap plastic colored eggs that are all over the stores this time of year and she decided that they needed nests. Made of toilet paper. In my den. Oh well. It kept her bust for hours. She has some of those little pom-pom thingers for making crafts so she used them as "chicks" in her eggs in their nests. If I had known a kid could be that happy with a roll of toilet paper my holiday shopping budget would have been much smaller. Go figure.
So anyway... I'm going to spend my day here:
This is one reason MD and I loved this house so much. Our room is downstairs... the kids are all upstairs. That's my view of our back deck where my adirondack chair sits. I put it there when we moved in planning to sit in it and knit while I sighed over the mountain view. Instead I keep showing you pictures of the chair covered in ice/snow. So for now I'll sit in here where its warm and try to admire the coating of slop and pretend its pretty.
Newton isn't impressed by any of this:
I love wool.
I like cotton and silk and blends of this and that but I love wool.
I love wool that comes on cones.
I love wool that comes on cones and still has the spinning grease in it and needs to be skeined and washed and hung in my bathroom to dry so Toby can't it.
I love Harrisville wool and all its pretty colors.
I love little twisty stitches.
I love little twisty stitches in Harrisville wool.
Anyway...
Harrisville Highland in color "Rose". This is something I've been wanting to do for a while.
If you look really close you can see tiny pink-ish flecks...
And, really, with all the choices of fiber being what they are I still rather knit wool. Sometimes I wish I was a little trendier or more adventurous with my fiber choices but really I'm just a die hard wool fan. Nothing is more satisfying than a good sturdy wool to keep you warm and dry. Something substantial to knit with. Something with a little backbone.
Its sort of like oatmeal and cornbread and baked potatoes. It just seems right.
(And yes, I am still knitting socks.)
Those of you that have been hanging around here for a while may know that I'm not a sock knitter.
Now I don't have a problem with knitted socks and in fact I wouldn't mind wearing a pair or two but really around here feet and the things that cover them are something to be feared, washed, and sorted on a weekly basis. The thought of spending time thinking about socks just never really appealed to me.
Until Cat Bordhi.
Dammit.
See, its not the actual sock part that got my attention its the new pathways part. Socks never really grabbed my inner-knitting-geek because it seemed to me you had 2 choices... toe up or top down. Yea, I know there are about a million different heel thingers and gobs of gorgeous sock yarn to make it all fun but really... it just wasn't my thing.
Now Cat Bordhi has broken the mold for moldy socks. I love fiddling with shaping and this book is all about fiddling and shaping. I've been pouring over page after page of formula and theory and examples for 2 evenings now and I feel like I finally get the whole sock thing. See I never wanted to knit a sock just because I could, I wanted to understand the shaping and proportion of it and truly it just never held my attention long enough for me to figure it out.
I have had random thoughts of footwear occasionally... sort of sock-ish and sort of not but wasn't sure how to go about designing such a thing. Now I just may have to revisit those thoughts and see what happens.
In the meantime I'm going to continue to tinker with the master sock pages in Cat's book. Me being me, however, I try to spend precious knitting time knitting something that we can actually use and will actually wear so I had to give some thought to what it was I was going to accomplish. I mean, we have socks... lots of socks. They are all white and get soaked and bleached once a week and passed back to their owners. So what do I really need? hmmmmm.....
Look here...
Ya know all that hik'in I blab about? Well here's the hiking boot line up in my hallway. Even Tater has a pair. What we are lacking, however, are boot socks. The ones that go far enough up your leg to pass your boot top so your boot doesn't chafe your leg. We do have some but not everybody has a pair they like so I'm going to make custom fit boot socks for everybody.
I found a box a little Philosopher's Wool in one of my cabinets that will be perfect.
From the last post...
I'm really thrilled to hear that most of you are open to learning new things and taking on the challenge to widen your knitting horizons. Really that's half the fun. I know I too have my preferences for construction and often second guess myself because I'm not sure how well certain techniques will be received by the knitters that a pattern is intended for. I think I feel a lot better now that I've heard from all of you.
Weatherwise...
Its icing here again... not raining or snowing... icing. The power has flickered several times throughout the day and I won't be surprised it if goes out entirely before the day is over. I know its winter and all but geez can't we get a little something to play in? This icy stuff really sucks and its really all we've gotten this year. The little bit of actual snow we've gotten here and there hasn't stuck around so we have a choice of ice or melting-slushy-used-to-be-ice. Again.
Schoolwise...
Tater has joined the older kids for official schooling if you want to call it that. Kids are always learning anyway but she had it in her mind that she needed specific things to do and instruction. We're working on numbers and letters and I'm having a great time with the whole thing. Its been several years since I've had a little one at this stage of learning and I'd forgotten how much fun it is.
Today we made Alphabet Bingo cards and played for a while. This afternoon we are making another board game like the Sheep Trip game but it will have a path of letters and a spinner.
2 of the older kids have been enjoying some Dinah Zike studies that include the whole lapbook/paper fold approach. I'm surprised at just how much time they are spending filling all their tabs with information with no prodding from me.
I'll have to post some pictures of our games and lapbooks soon.
One more thing..
I spent a little time last week thinking over some things I'd like to get working on and contacting some people who I knew would have the perfect yarn for what I have in mind. While I was sitting here typing this post there was a knock at the door and the UPS guy left this on the porch...
I guess that means next week will be swatch and sample week... woo-hoo!
