Fee Fi FO Fum

Bea is finished!

Pattern: Bea from Rowan’s “Little Treasures”
Yarn: Rowan Soft Baby, cream color
Needles: Recommended US7s gave me pattern gauge (which I have of course forgotten)
Thoughts/Modifications: Aside from using a whole half-ball *more* of the yarn than the pattern called for (despite perfect gauge!), I didn’t deviate from the pattern at all. It was a fun knit, and for most of the time I was working on this sweater I didn’t understand why it got the 3-star difficulty rating. And then I got to the finishing. Man, there’s a lot of finishing. Most of it is very easy–nothing of drastically different lengths to ease in, or anything–but I eventually wound up agreeing with the difficulty rating if only because your average knitter would toss it across the room in boredom. Since I’m fairly anal about such things, it was okay. 🙂 If I were to knit it again, I’d recommend just picking up and knitting the button bands and the collar, both of which were knit as pieces and then sewn on.

The yarn, as I’ve said before, is divine to work with. One thing I didn’t get with Harvey was that after awhile, the yarn did hurt my hands. But since I always have a sock to switch out on, it was okay. All of the photos for the project are up on my .mac site. No photos of it on the recipient yet, as the 11-month-old I’m knitting it for lives in CT. Soon, though!

(Edit: A friend wrote to remind me of all of the bitching constructive criticizing I did at the beginning of this sweater. It’s true! The chart in the book is almost impossible (for me) to read, and so after some major ripping I eventually just had to figure out what the cabling pattern *should* be, and do it. Also, MJ: sewing on the button-bands is *totally wacky* and I have no idea why they suggested it, but I always knit a pattern as by-the-directions as I can, the first time.)

I’ve been knitting on the Pebble Beach sock, and *gasp* I’m actually enjoying the striping. No photos of that for now, though, since I’m taking a short break. I was pretty excited about the next baby sweater I have in the queue: The Hooded Striped Top in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. I’m knitting it for another friend’s baby girl. And because this girl is no namby-pamby pastels girl, I’m altering the stripe pattern a bit.

(Please excuse the horrendous lack of blocking.) Yup, that’s a Fibonacci sequence! Two of them, actually, interleaving from top and bottom. I’m tremendously excited about it.

I stopped by my LYS today to show off Bea, though, and asked for a substitute for the Suri Elegance recommended for the Icarus shawl in the current Interweave Knits. (I felt it in person some time ago and was underwhelmed, for the price.) They recommended Misti Alpaca to me, which happens to be only $6.50 a skein there. (Score!) So guess what came home with me?

So the real question is… how long before I cast on for it?

1 thought on “Fee Fi FO Fum

  1. Bea is beautiful! Great photos, too 🙂

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