Friday, December 30, 2016

The Most Interesting Gift

The middle sister in our family, Alison, is a lot of interesting things.  I could (and frequently do) boast about all of the fascinating things that she's done in her life, but today I would like to focus on just one.

My sister, along with becoming a slightly-crazy cat lady (current count 3), is also well on her way to becoming a crazy chicken lady.  At current count she has over a dozen birds of all number of types.  Not just chickens either.  There were pheasants and quail for a while.  Now, keeping the chickens company are 2 peahens and a peacock. 

When am I going to get to the bit about the Most Interesting Gift?  Wait for it...

A friend (and country neighbour) of Alison's has 3 charming children.  They all love the chickens too.  In fact they adopted one.  The kids named her Smokey Cheeky Fluffy-Pants. 

For Christmas last year Alison gave this friend a pair of fuzzy pajama pants - navy blue with pink spots. 

And then asked me to knit my Most Interesting Gift to date. 

A sweater.

For the chicken.

Navy blue.

With pink spots.

Please. 

See what I mean?  I think I managed to pull it off ok in the end:


Yup, that is Smokey Cheeky Fluffy-Pants in her new sweater getting comfortable on the new PJ pants.  Not a bad match on the colours either (to my relief, as I actually had never seen the pajamas).

Where's the pattern you may ask?  Right here

As it turns out, battery hens (as commercial laying hens are called over the pond) often lose their feathers.  There are organizations that both adopt out these chickens AND others that provide hand knitted sweaters to keep them warm in the mean time, providing a pattern to any who wish to use it.

Sizing a chicken for a sweater is no easy task.  For future reference, Cheeky is "a large-ish teapot".

And no, there would be NO WAY to get that on over a chicken's head.  You can't see it here, but there are side buttons. 

Did you see the "for now" above?  Another friend has just asked me to design and knit a sweaters for his greyhounds....

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Second Verse...

Right.  Another year, another decent amount of knitting, another ton of work, and another whole lot of not enough time.

I can't believe that it was a year ago that I put up the last baby sweater project.  Seems like I might as well continue the tradition of repeating myself.

Another one of the service desk girls at work is expecting.  A wee little man will be joining the family in March.  Just like last year, this lovely lady is part of the store family.  She's warm, friendly, and cares very much for her co-workers and our customers.  She's bright, always smiling, and manages to tolerate André when he arrives with buckets of returns and of course no receipts.  AND NOW SHE'S LEAVING FOR A YEAR!!

That's is about where the similarities end between the two ladies though.  Unlike last year (petite, bouncy brunette with a really cute smile), this year's mom-to-be is taller, more reserved, and has the most gorgeous mane of curly red hair.

Just like last year, I knew that I needed to knit something.  This baby is being born to a family that has seen some hard times over the past year.  The last few months at the store have also seen some dramatic and unexpected changes.  It's been hard to look too far forward, there's too much in the way in the right here and now.

So, a magical Saturday morning (not scheduled at the store for an entire weekend, and without asking for it!) I followed André to his Saturday morning curling game.  And as much as I love watching him curl, at 9.50am I promptly bailed on my spectator/cheering section duties and booked it a few blocks south to Yarn Forward.

I had formulated a plan the night before, and it went something like this:

1) Need baby pattern.  Probably sweater, since no time for blanket, but still want something to hug baby with.

2) Mom is mature and a bit on the traditional side.  Even Coffee Beans like last time is too cute.  Perhaps a cardigan...

3) Scott/Nordic heritage in Mom just BEGS for something with cables.  But modern rather than traditional.  Perhaps in a more structural type pattern.

3) Spend hours on Ravelry.

636-2_medium

Cute, but almost too traditional


100_5860_small2 

Really adorable, but not a fan of lace for this little man.  However, forest green with red hair...

March2012_049_small2

Ooooo cute! But cotton... not quite what I want.  And the pattern is in French.  This isn't really a problem thanks to my Ontario schooling (and the wonderfulness that is Google Translate).

12_2010_20babytroeje_20kopi_ashx_small2

 PERFECT!!!!!! Cables, but interesting not quite traditional.  Available in 1 year size (I always aim for 1 year, small babies take longer to get there, big babies haven't out grown it yet).  In fingering yarn.  Bonus free pattern.

4) Note the yardage requirements on phone (likely 2 sock skiens, but not use near all of them.  Pick colour I like, may get bonus socks from second skien). 

5) Get really smart and toss needles in my bag so that I can cast on while watching curling.  Hit genius level of organized, include tablet AND charger so I can look up the pattern on something larger than my phone. 

Shopping was a huge success - and in short order 2 skiens of Cascade Heritage Sock in a vine green (creatively named #5612) were in my hands.  I even remembered to ask to have one wound before I left!  I was feeling mighty proud of myself as I hiked back to the curling club.  Perfect pattern, perfect yarn, I couldn't wait to get started.

Back at the club I passed the as yet not open bar (really, 11 am?  Who comes up with these laws?) and settle back in to my seat at the end of André's sheet.  Gather yarn, needles, open tablet to ravelry, select "get pattern here"...

Remember how I said I was feeling mighty proud of myself?  Thinking my self clever for remembering tablet AND needles?  Getting the perfect FREE pattern?  And fantastic yarn?

About that pattern.  The link in Ravelry opens to what looks like an online knitting magazine archive pattern page.  Pattern is all there along with links for downloadable charts.

And every last word of it is in DANISH. 

Once the dark spots had cleared from my vision and my breathing and heart rate returned to something resembling normal, the little creature in the back of my brain blew a giant raspberry and wandered away muttering something about the karmic future of "clever" people. 

Thankfully, there are amazing websites in the world that will take not only individual words, but whole collections of text and translate them for you!  I might still be saved!

Turns out that knitting patterns in Danish are remarkably similar to knitting patterns in just about every other language.  That is, they are written in a language completely their own, which consists almost entirely of acronyms.  But still, between an approximate translation, a really nice chart, and some basic common sense (Front + Back M (140) 160 (184) is probably CO that many for each size...) I muddled my way through.

There was a brief moment of panic as I split for the armholes and completely lost my ability to count, but it turned out in the end.  I'm not quite convinced that it's actually a size 1 year (maybe closer to 9 months) but that might be more due to my complete lack of regard for guage swatches in this instance. 

Behold!  A wee Danish now English old man sweater!



Just like for the rest of the project, I wanted buttons that were traditional-ish but still interestingly almost modern.  A quick trip down to Wool-Thyme (they are celebrating 30 years!!!) and I left with these little abstract wooden toggles.  More perfect to finish off the darling little bit of cuteness! And I will have you know that not even one ball of discount sock yarn followed me home.  This time. 



The shower for the little one was a few weeks back.  Mom's last day of work was at the end of January, although she's been in a few times to say hi.  We'll all just waiting for the day to hear about the new little man in this world, and I can't wait to meet him! 

I really hope he gets his Mom's hair.  Redheaded men are just the most handsome.  Right André?