Babies and Lydia Circle

Lydia Circle 08
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

Both the Lydia Circle and the Martha Circle at Mt Olive do needlework, and I like to participate in both even though I'm not always around to attend.

This year, Lydia is making baby items for those clients of the local Pregnancy Crises Center who keep their babies. Because I can use a very small part of what I normally knit, unless I stick to socks, this seemed to be a great way for me to expand (and recall) my knitting skills and make something useful at the same time.

For my first project, I decided to give Ann Budd's tam recipe a try again and see if I could make it come out right. I think I succeeded!!! Hooray!!!

The little tam pictured above is about the size that would fit a newborn, up to six months.

With that success, I decided to start a sweater, too. Click the picture above, and it will take you to Flickr. The little progress I've made on the sweater is under my Needlework / Knitting set.

I'm using Jacqueline Fee's The Sweater Workshop , which I bought a few years ago. She uses Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage method, described in Knitting Without Tears. Using this method, once you find the number of stitches for the body, the number for the ribbing, the sleeves, etc., are just percentages of the body stitches. I have both books and I had glanced through them, but I went back to work (out of retirement) before I did anything with them.

The sweater is going to be about a 12-month-old size, I think. I can only refer to measurements I've picked up here and there, mostly on the Internet, so I'm not sure. I'm thinking I could find some baby sweaters really cheap at the thrift store and use those for a better gauge of size. Once I get the basic pattern established for the sweater, I can do whatever I want with it - knit it in lace, cables, or other nice patterns. This sweater will be a basic pullover with raglan sleeves, with either a V-neck or a slit neck. Either of these types of openings will make it easier to put the sweater on the baby because it will give more room to pull it over his or her head. At least I remember that much about babies! I'm taking lots of notes as I go so I'll be able to repeat and then adjust the pattern and make a number of these. They seem to go really fast.