So I Got a Little Carried Away at the End

The blanket is flying along, and I've finished one half of a pair of socks.  I don't need these socks until Christmas, though, so I think imma put a hold on those for now.

We have some friends who are the best kind of people and these people, after having adopted three children of varying ages and been foster parents to a few more, have been blessed with a biological child!  It's all very exciting, and I just realized that we will be able to hold this little one in only a few months!  So of course I'm going to knit something for it, right?  I mean, I just have to.

I decide on an Elizabeth Zimmerman "Baby Surplice Jacket" (Yes, I said surplice.  I've already made a few baby surprise jackets, and I thought I'd give the surplice a go) So I'm in my craft room searching through my humongous stash and I see a pile of little yarn balls left over from when I made these mittens for my brother last Christmas.

I had finished the one on the left first, all the while recognizing the need to be a little more selective with the colour values of each yarn.  With the exception of the cream yarn in the fox's fur, I used three different colours of Patons Kroy sock yarn, which has interesting colour gradients in each ply*, but this meant that the contrast between yarns was a little unpredictable. Whenever I would get to a section that was losing contrast, I would cut out a huge chunk of the "background" yarn until I reached a darker or lighter section.  This process resulted in...

This

Well, mostly.  The full hank to the right is actually some random old yarn that I picked up at Value Village.  So there it was, a tidy little pile (Actually, I keep my sock yarn in a hanging shoe organizer on the back of the door, so it was more like a tidy pocket full, but I digress) of little balls waiting to become some stripey wonderful thing.

Perfect!  The BSJ (and the original BSJ.  Maybe the surplice jacket should be called BSJ2) are great for using up random little odds and ends, and these are nice neutral colours, so great!

Of course, the original pattern calls for something closer to sport weight, and this is all fingering, AND the random old stuff is a 3 ply instead of a 4 ply, so it's that much thinner.  

Which for me means, TIME FOR MATH! (As someone with a double major in Studio Art and Theatre, I can honestly say that when I was in high school, I never thought I'd do half as much math as I do now)

Anyway, I did some math, and knit to about this far before I just... couldn't.

"Gah!  What am I thinking!?  This is for a newborn!  A SUMMER newborn!  This isn't for your own kid where you can make whatever the heck you want and just be proud of the fact that you made a cute little sweater in autumn colours.  This is a gift for a friend, and you are NOT a clueless old lady who gifts random things that don't really make sense YET" **

So the frog fairies came, pulled my BSJ2 apart, and carried me upstairs, and yea, they didst lift mine eyes to the very top of the door, and my eyes didst gaze upon a yarn I had forgotten.  This yarn was a soft cotton, blended with the hair of the angels, for on it was writ "Cotton-ish." And lo, the hank was weighted "sport weight".  It was then that mine eyes didst rest upon another ball, a rainbow speckle remaining after another baby garment was gifted.  This yarn, although a fingering, didst shout out to me, "Swatch me!  Swatch me, for my colour is lovely and my gauge is true!"  And so it came to pass that I did swatch, and the angels did sing at the glorious result.

* For those of you who know nothing of yarn or colour theory this just means each ball of yarn slowly changes from colour to colour in unpredicable ways.  Here take a look.

** I"m not saying all old ladies are clueless, but some of them can be, and I think some of them just don't care that much anymore.  I look forward to being one of those one day.