The Knitting Pirate

This designing stuff is harder than it appears! I sketched out what I’d like to knit, and then realized how much of it I don’t know how to do. The thing I want to make has raglan-ish sleeves, but because it’s a baby outfit, it also has some extra buttons around the neckline to make it easier to get on and off – and I’d like to put them at an angle to match the sleeve seam, rather than across the top of the shoulder. I’m not quite sure how to make the legs, either. Seamless would be nice, too.

I looked up some patterns on Ravelry and found one that had the sort of neckline I am thinking of. It’s in a book that my library system has, so I put it on reserve. Hopefully that will help me get some idea of how this thing goes together! Fortunately, I have at least a year to come up with something. Baby clothes are so adorable; I’m glad that there will be another little one to knit for! Maybe I will crank out a bunch of small sweaters… but probably not.

Someone suggested to me that I could sell my ‘practice knittings’ to make a little extra money, much like a pen-and-paper artist might sell sketches. I am running out of ways to say that I don’t have any ‘practice knitting’ and that my hourly rate would be prohibitively high or I’d be cheating myself. Selling PDF versions of patterns seems like a much better idea; I only have to do the work once, and Ravelry has a nifty way of handling sales. That, and handspun – I think I could speed up my spinning to the point where I could get a reasonable rate for it on Etsy.

I had a moment of weakness yesterday and bought three braids of fiber from someone who was destashing at super-reasonable prices. She will be mailing them out today. Maybe I will get them before Pennsic!

Last night, I was walking with my sister-in-law in downtown Charlottesville. In one of the shop windows, we saw an adorable knit baby outfit. I snapped some pictures of it with my phone-camera while she told me how much she loved knit babywear, and that by next summer I might have another little niece or nephew! (Unspoken: …to knit for.)

On the way home, I got to thinking. I want to publish more designs. Baby clothing is quick, easy and cute, and doesn’t take much yarn so it’s generally inexpensive to make. Even people who don’t have babies knit baby clothing. I’m going to have a new baby to knit for.

Well, obviously, I should knit something, write down how I did it, and publish the design!

Tonight I finished the second of two bobbins of the BFL fiber that Pirate-Husband bought for me. I will let it rest tomorrow while I’m off visiting with my parents and grandma, and probably ply it on Sunday. I am really excited about this yarn and eager to see how it turns out after washing! Mostly, I’m curious to see what kind of yardage I get, and how evenly I managed to split the fiber. I know I was 7g off, but then I also discarded some from each side that snapped off, or wasn’t spinning well, or that I messed up on. We shall see!

On Wednesday of this past week I got to show Grandma both wheels and some of the spinning that I’ve done so far. She enjoyed seeing it, even if I’m not sure she knew quite what she was looking at. I talked with Mom about knitting projects, and got a good laugh out of her saying that she wants to start something new even though she isn’t yet done with her current project, a lace stole. (Which, by the way, is coming along beautifully. I am impressed!) She’s looking for simple crew-neck sweater patterns – does anyone have any suggestions?

So now I have a spinning wheel with no fiber attached to it, and I’m seriously tempted to start a new project…