Sugar/Spice/Everything Nice

When I noticed in the spring that Becky was outgrowing the last sweater I made her, we picked out yarn and a pattern for another one. A couple of weeks ago, we picked out buttons. And now, the munchkin has a new sweater:

Yes, she's adorable.

Hood up, still adorable

It’s a modified version of ChildHood from Knitty made with KnitPicks Shine Worsted in Crocus. The modifications consisted of no striping (obviously), lengthening the body and sleeves (Becky’s a beanpole) and working the buttonband differently (I didn’t do the thing with leaving the extra width on the bottom band; I just worked the fronts all the way across and then picked up from the bottom edge and worked around, skipping every 3rd stitch). Oh, and I did a crocheted button loop for the top button, which is larger than the others.

And Becky absolutely loves it, which is the only really important thing about it.

Next up, one for Zacky. Same pattern, different mods — there’re going to be stripes all over! And we’re going to roll dice (a d10 for the color and probably a d6 for the number of rows) to determine distribution.

Great tracts of land

I am so going to love this skirt. When it's not, you know, 90 degrees.

I picked up my Intolerable Cruelty the other day to work on it (red, see? for May’s Project Spectrum! And I didn’t even know I was doing PS at the time! My brain eeez soooo beeeg!) and put it back down after about two stitches. Waaaaay to hot and sticky to work with wool. So, after some time spent surfing on Ravelry, I grabbed a bag of beautiful green* Rowan Tweed that’s been sort of hanging out in my stash for awhile and cast on a Nurgake (Ravelry link).

As it turns out, it's actually pretty easy being green.

Unfortunately, I’m a little more, shall we say, bountiful in some areas than the person the original pattern was written for, and it comes in only one size. What’s a girl to do? Math, that’s what! One thing about this pattern is that it’s a little sparse on the details. Not that it’s badly written, just that I wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner. There are definitely some areas where you need to be able to read between the lines to figure out what’s going on. Oddly, I find this makes it easier for me to alter a pattern, because there’s less I need to reinterpret…or perhaps rather because I’ve already done the interpreting for myself it’s easier to adjust that interpretation.

So I’ve done the math and changed the numbers and so far, it seems to be coming along well. I did make one teeny mistake when changing the numbers, but that was an easy (one stitch) tweak, so no worries. I’ve just started the collar decreases and am excited to get to the end of the front bodice so I can join up and try it on to see if my adjustments were correct. This is going so fast I won’t even mind terribly if they’re not (but I’m pretty sure they are…math is a wonderful and powerful tool when used correctly).

*Funny story…I just happened to check the PS website on my way to grabbing the Ravelry link for the sweater…June’s color is green! I didn’t even know! Clearly, I am just totally in tune with Project Spectrum this year.

That third thing

Look! It's me in a skirt!

Remember the other day I said I’d gotten three projects completed, but I’ve only shown you two of them so far? Well, now you can hie yourself on over to the Lion Brand blog and read all about the third project: my finally-complete Carnaby skirt, and all of the  little changes I made to customize it just for me. Love this pattern, BTW — all the changes I made were because I wanted to tweak little things for me, not because the pattern needed it. In fact, I find it much easier to customize a well-written pattern than one that needs tweaking just to be workable. This one was a breeze.