All Knit Up

I've mentioned my "new hobby" a time or two. I must say that it has slowed down some of my sewing projects. But I can't crawl in bed at night and spend a few minutes sewing. Nor can I sew in front of the pellet stove. I also can't accomplish much sewing while waiting for the toaster to pop or the oatmeal water to boil. Knitting, once so strange, complicated, time-consuming, and foreign, has become a fascinating and satisfying expression of creativity and detail. Now, I'm still COMPLETELY novice at this stuff. I can knit, purl, cast on, bind off, and with my printed-instructions I can do short rows, pick up stitches (is it cheating if you use a crochet hook?) and maybe increase and decrease. And I *think* I can "yarn over." It seems to be working, anyway.

What do I manage to accomplish with all these skills? Wool britches, of course. They're the old-school version of diaper covers (ok, maybe new-school too; I told you I don't know much). Wool and lanolin make for a unique combination for cloth diapering. Apparently it can 'hold' moisture without wicking it through other fabrics, the lanolin reacts with the urine to neutralize it (no smell), and they only need washed occasionally (unless they get poopy). I have learned a lot about wool soakers in general, and knitting them at Yahoo's Wool Soaker Group. So far I've made two wool "soakers" (the no-legs kind) and two "longies" (long-legged, like pants). I'm working on another soaker, and ran out of yarn for another I'm working on. I'm too cheap (so far) to pay for a pattern when there are some great ones online for free. The first I made (the dark brown soaker) is the Curly Purly soaker. I then made a cute pair of Aubrey Doodlepants in the same brown with a white waistband and rolled cuffs (no picture yet!). I made another set, trying my hand at widening the crotch gusset and making the legs a bit 'flared' with this great Lion Brand yarn in Autumn Sunset. The colors made for some 'fun' with the knitting, and turned out some great stripes and lines. I then tried the Punk Knitter's Soaker (the orange-ish one with blue) because I liked the whole hole thing for the drawstring. FYI: that cute drawstring (i-cord) takes a lot longer than you'd think to knit... This pattern also gave me a chance to learn to decrease. The in-progress soaker is another of these. The one I ran out of wool on is this modified 1932 Soaker. I'm thinking it will be great, because all that ribbing makes for plenty of wool/lanolin in the crotch area. However, all that ribbing also makes for slow going for me, and I don't know if I'll do another one.

Things I don't know yet: I've heard that wool loses it's magic under the wrong conditions. Namely, compression. It will wick a bit if something is pressing hard against it, therefore you don't want to snap a onesie over a soaker, nor strap your babe in a carseat for long. I don't know what other wardrobe complications it might present. It's too chilly for bare legs; can I put regular pants over a soaker? Should I learn to knit leg-warmers?

Here are some resources I've found really helpful: This is a page full of links to tons of patterns, free and otherwise, knit or crochet, soaker or longies. Knitting Help has videos for so many things. It's so great to come across an instruction I don't understand and be able to actually see it done by someone. They have everything from the basic knit, purl, cast-on, to other, more complicated things that I don't even understand yet. They also have a few free patterns. Same Knit, Different Day has a great short-row tutorial for doing short-rows in the round (short rows are handy for making a bit more room in the buns to cover the cloth diaper). Techknitting has some more advanced information, but everything seems to have great illustrations and clear, concise instructions. I especially like her method of joining circular knitting. It has helped the edge of my soaker-in-progress look much nicer. There is obviously a million techniques I don't know, and that's fine. For once I don't have that need to conquer everything about a subject.



What works for me: I have broken out a binder and some sheet covers... My old lady knitting bag was getting a bit messy with all these print-outs of patterns and techniques. I copy and paste the pictures and instructions from a website into MS Word, resize the pictures, widen the margins on the page, take out extraneous info, and get the whole thing into a page or two, usually. With some birthday money I purchased a set of Denise Interchangeable Knitting Needles. I really really love them. I can knit flat (imagine your grannies straight skewer-style needles, where she knit back and forth and made a flat piece), knit round (imagine the handful of smaller needles that hold the work like a triangle and ultimately make a tube - like a sock or soaker), knit small-circumference round things and large, use different sized needles on either side of the cord (makes me go a bit faster), and hold unfinished work on a cord without losing my needles to the project. If I were to ever travel on an airline again, I could take them handily in their case, and make it through security without them being confiscated or detained. Now, they're not the only interchangeable needles out there, but they're a bit cheaper than some others, I could find them locally to 'try out', and they're the ones I got.I'll post later about another yarn-project... First though, maybe some baby socks?