How to get a toddler to stand still long enough to try on an inprogress project, AND take photo of said child in project? Very very carefully:

That was this weekend.

Then last night I stayed up way too late watching election returns (Yawn) and finishing up the bind off on Katie’s poncho (a.k.a. Super Cape):

I haven’t woven in ends yet (hopefully if I didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t be able to tell), but couldn’t wait to take the picture of it. Even though I went outside and stood in the cccccold to get the supposed natural sunlight, the colors are washed out. It’s much brighter in person. I didn’t have time to try another shot somewhere else. I also had Katie try it on, and I think the fit is perfect!

How much yarn did I have left?

Notice there is NONE of the eyelash/chenille combo that is used as the final stripe on the bottom. Ask me how pissed off I was when I got to the last TWO inches and realized I didn’t have enough to finish the binding off. Ask me how creative I was in NOT ripping back, but because the yarn is so fluffy you’ll never be able to tell how I got the final few stitches bound off!

Don’t forget theknitter.com is going to be selling kits for these ponchos.

And the shot of Ingrid helping our new knitter wind yarn:

I promise to try and take pictures of her project if she shows up again. Ingrid and I are so proud.

I mentioned in one of my last posts a poncho my friend Judy created. You can see a picture of it here. (Yes, Ingrid and I exist just to link to each other’s blogs all the time)

It’s a really cute poncho, in a 6-12 month size. (We tried it on Alex, and it fits Gargantuan baby just fine, so we figure it’s good on non-Gargantuan babies up to a year). We (our knitting group) convinced Judy that it was so cute and such a good combination of yarns that she should publish the pattern and sell kits for it. As part of that, I will create a larger size as a model (conveniently to fit my 3 year old) and put together the pattern.

Design decisions

So yesterday I went over to Judy’s and we got to play in her “stash”. Well, technically it’s her store’s stash, but it was really fun! We pulled out different colors of yarn, trying to find the right balance for a different colorway. In discussing yarns & colors we were pinning down why the poncho she made is so darned cute.

1) It has a variety of yarn textures in it. Specifically a good balance between fluffy eyelashy type yarns and smooth plain yarns, both in matte and mercerized finishes.

2) It has colors that coordinate and are bright and cheery and would look good on an infant/toddler. Kids are fun to knit for because they can wear color combinations that adults shouldn’t.

So we pulled out some different yarns for me to use in the larger size so she can have a sample showing a different colorway. While we were there, we got so into it that we created two more colorways. Here are the yarns I’m going to use:

The other two colorways are a mainly purple one (with deep blue and green accents) & a primary colors using red, blue, yellow and green. I didn’t have my camera with me, so no pictures of those yarns, but trust me they were great looking.

I still need to decide what order to do the yarns in. I know that the eyelashy yarn with the three different colors in it (there are two balls in the pic) will be the last yarn. It’s a really thick, soft & fuzzy yarn and I think makes and excellent edging for the poncho. Then I need to figure out how to write a pattern up for different yarn combos in different sizes.

Pictures
I’ve been really dissappointed with my pictures of Mike’s secret-socks. It looks like I’m knitting a large black sock because the light is always so bad. This morning I braved the outdoors and got some great indirect daylight to take these pictures.

See how pretty the colors are? I’m using Trekking XXL doubled for these.

And the cuff: