Thing 1 and Thing 2

What an exciting week! My friend Beth, whose wedding I attended in Karlstad, Sweden, had her babies on Wednesday. She and Niclas are now parents to Rasmus and Felix, adorable babies overall, but with particularly cute noses. It's kind of hard to believe that what was once two is now four (they're multiplying like Gremlins!). Just a few days before the babies arrived, I went to visit Beth and Niclas so that I could give them the crazy baby viking hats I made and together with a couple of sweaters.


A little before Beth told me she was pregnant, I had instituted a moratorium on the making of baby things. It's really fun and quickly satisfying, but man was I feeling the burn, as in burnt out! So many of my friends and relatives have had babies in the past two years, that between knitting for kinder and for holidays, I hadn't really made anything for myself. So the weeks leading up to my birthday I dedicated to knitting only for me. Then I got the news about Beth's twins, and I became impossibly excited, so excited that I practically ran to The Point's going out of business sale to pick up the yarn for these:

Details:
Pattern: Little Coffee Bean, v.2, by The Brown Stitch
Yarn: Knit One Crochet Too 2nd Time Cotton
Needles: 4.5mm and 5.0mm
Started: May 31
Finished: June 3

This was a great pattern, clearly written and easy to follow and I'll probably make it again. I decided to use cotton yarn because I wanted a natural fiber that would be comfy and easy to care for. The cotton was about as sticky as cotton can be, but it probably didn't help that I worked this up on bamboo needles. Metal needles would have allowed the yarn to glide a bit more fluidly, yet I was pleased with the yarn, and continue to be happy with the resulting sweater.


I really liked the neutrality of these colors, but was left with a button quandary (as in "You put me in a quandary, Jack Donaghy. A quandary!").* Clear was out of the questions (often looks cheap and seems lazy) and matching the orange would have been really difficult. And ugly. Wood was an option, but the colors I'd selected for this sweater were already rather subdued, so I thought something a little more funsy was in order. I walked myself up to P&S Fabrics one day during lunch and found these little smiling frogs, which I thought were pretty great.






During the same visit, I found these sweet things:

These were an easier selection, since I had already decided that I wanted red buttons for teh blue and green sweater. I didn't consider another color really, it seemed so right to me.

Details:
Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket, by Elizabeth Zimmerman
Yarn: Austermann Algarve Grande
Needles: 4.0mm
Started: July 21
Finished: July 23

This is the third Baby Surprise Jacket that I've made and likely will not be the last. They're fun and simple to knit, easy to finish and look super cute on babies.


Beth and Niclas seemed so touched and excited when they saw the sweaters and crazy hats that I immediately knew I had made good choices. Perhaps the best moment was when Niclas said that the orange and grey sweater is exactly something he would buy for himself. I'll admit it: my feathers were fluffed. But more important than any boost to my pride, their reactions were an immediate reminder of why we knit for those we love: because we care.

*I could't find that clip, but I did find this.