Knitting again

New sweater
Originally uploaded by Spamily.

After her longest absence ever, the knitting muse seems to have returned to me with a vengeance. My sister says she knew I'd start knitting again when a baby arrived.

This little sweater is from Debbie Bliss's Nursery Knits; I made it out of Garnstudio's Silke Tweed. The sweater knitted up smaller than it would have in the yarn that the pattern called for, but hey, she has a sweater that fits her now.

I am now working on another Debbie Bliss pattern, this one from The Baby Knits Book; it's her kimono and trousers, in her official wool/cotton yarn, which I am sad to find has been discontinued. Romni Wools had a fair bit of it in their sale room, marked down to $6 a ball; with their 20% off sale, it was down to $4.80. So not only will Clara be getting the kimono and trousers and a matching pair of booties in fuchsia with a pale grey trim, she'll also be getting a Bliss-designed tank top (which actually looks more like a vest to me) in a dusty rose.

I am really liking this yarn. It tended to split a lot on the cast-on row, but once past that it's been knitting up beautifully. The 50% merino-50% cotton blend means that the fabric has a bit of stretch and a nice sheen.

Bliss's pattern calls for stair-step shoulders, but I am being rebellious and using a short-row shaping method that I found on the Intartubes. It'll make for a much more even shoulder seam. I'm even pushing myself to try a new (to me) way of doing the short rows, the Japanese style. What sold me on this style was Nona's mention that Lucy Neatby invented the pin trick -- I've been a Lucy Neatby fan since Mr. K and I met her long ago when we were in Nova Scotia. On hearing that a fellow knitter was having car trouble in her neck of the woods, she invited us to her house and fed us lunch while Rolf the Golf was being fixed.

Nona suggests that one advantage of short-row shoulders is that the stitches remain "live" and the shoulder can therefore be finished by way of the three-needle bind-off. This is true, but once again I am going to be rebellious and cast them off anyway once the short-rowing is done, because I like sewing shoulder seams. (There, I said it.)

I used to think I was hot stuff in the Internet knitting world because I had a great big site about knitting. The Internet did not wait for me while the knitting muse was away, though. I cannot believe how many knitting blogs there are now. I've spent the past few weeks trying to breathe life back into my own site (what I've done so far is still behind the scenes; I'm hoping to unveil it all early next month) and I'm just astonished by how the online knitting world has exploded since I put up my pages in 1994 (1994!).

Evidently knitting is hot. Who knew?