Dr. Annie
This weekend I was determined to finish something. Closest to being finished was the Baby Shrug so I focused on that. Now I realize that you may be asking yourself why it would take so long to finish such a simple project. It comes from Debbie Bliss' Simply Baby after all. "Simply" implies that the patterns will be uncomplicated and quick. Well let me tell you, I think the title should be Simply Baby, Easy to Muck Up.
What makes it easy is that the shrug is knit in one piece with the ribbing being knit from picked up stitches. Where it is easy to muck up, well paying attention to the pattern. (Duh.) I accidentally was short in the back by 4 rows. There was no way to alter the front to match with out doing a lot of redesigning. Puh-lease it's a baby SHRUG. Not even a sweater, not worth the effort of all that calculating decreases yadda yadda. My fix was to knit extra ribbing on the back. But lo and behold, the bottom of the shrug has shaping to make it more circular. Extra ribbing would look silly at such a large gauge. Instead I performed surgery. Thanks to Knittypants and her tutorial, I cut off the bottom and knit down reversing the shaping. Yes my darlings, I cut my own knitting and it worked.
I thought about doing short rows for the shaping instead of binding off so that I could pick up live stitches. But no, no, no. Debbie likes to write patterns where there are 52 stitches for the back, but for the ribbing you have to pick up 58 stitches. 18 stitches for the back of the neck, but you have to pick up 26. 45 options for stitches at the cuff, but only need 34. Simply Annoying.
The back turned out quite well despite ripping out the ribbing several times and calculating how to get the correct number of stitches evenly. The funny thing is that in the end, the shaping didn't even matter. It looks pretty straight despite blocking. No Cashew shots because it is still a little big. (Phew!)
I was showing the completed shrug to Hila yesterday and filling her in on my drama with the back shaping. She looked at me and said "Why did you bother?" I paused for a moment, looked back at her and said "What else would I have to blog about?"
Labels: Baby Shrug, FO 2007
posted by Annie at 1:39 PM
12 Comments:
It's beautiful! It also looks a little bit like a doctor's coat, you're absolutely right. But it's very pretty.
Either way the shrug is just darling and I wish I could've been there yesterday.
I think its adorable and well worth the effort! baby cashmerino 2 has the same looking shrug/bolero in it which I intend to knit in rowan calmer :) WISH ME LUCK!
Yours is adorable.
Regardless of the muck-ups, the shrug turned out SO cute! I love it with that little dress :)
It's a pity you ahd so much trouble with the shrug, but now it looks beautiful :-)
That dress is SO cute!! I can't wait to see Anastasia model the whole outfit--it's going to have everyone squealing. Yay for an FO! I know you've been itching to finish something.
The effort is totally worth it, just for proving to yourself that you are the boss of your knitting!
And it is darling and classic to boot.
Drama, perhaps... but the end result is beautiful. I've been thinking of making one of those.
LOL! it IS adorable! it was fun to sit n knit!
Annie, what a cute little outfit. The sweater is adorable, and goes so well with the little dress. Isn't dressing girls fun!
It turned out adorable! but I have heard that Simply Baby is anti-simple. I've never knit a Debbie Bliss pattern but I'm actually scared to because I've heard how tricky they are.
VERY cute.
I marvel at your problem solving skills (math?!)
Need to see a photo of 'stasia! : )
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