Go Get Your Jacket

Craftsy

I can make things. I have made costumes for the large casts of very complicated theater pieces; I have made cakes. I have made leather underwear and vampire's fangs and jewelry and jam and curtains and a large wooden work table and Gothy ball gowns and preserved lemons and clown suits and distressed tutus for dance pieces set to Birthday Party songs. I have made sculptures built entirely out of rusted nails dug up from my garden. I have made a garden. In recent years, though, I have made very little, and since two children arrived with a great deal fuss and fanfare I've been pretty much resting on my laurels. I made them.

They're two. How much longer will they be satisfied with the things I make now, like funny faces and mac and cheese? How long before I have to unearth my glue gun and get the sewing machine tuned up? I will have to make Halloween costumes, forts, masks, shoebox villages, fairy wings, bead necklaces, funny hats, dioramas, volcanos, rocket ships, and doll beds, at least. I'd better enjoy it.

I have no proof of this, never have quit making things before and then started up again, but I'm going to try convincing myself that not making things is like not exercising— you get very resistant and forcing yourself do that thing becomes nearly unimaginable but it'll probably feel pretty good once you get started.

Just like baby

At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, in an age where we seem to be reverting to the pre-Victorian tendency to dress children as miniature adults, it’s actually kind of refreshing to see an adult piece of clothing modeled on something originally designed for children.

This sweater has been taking Ravelry -- the Facebook for knitters –- by storm.

Isn’t it cute? Doesn’t it look all hip and fresh without trying, like something Liz Lemon would wear on 30 Rock?

The thing is, it’s based on a children’s sweater design from almost thirty years ago, the iconic Baby Sweater on Two Needles by Elizabeth Zimmermann. (EZ is a deity in the knitting universe, considered the mother of modern knitting and highly influential in the way we knit today.)

I know of at least one real-life friend who is planning a mother-daughter version. Usually, I'm skeptical of parent-child ensemble dressing, but this sweater pattern is too cute to pass up. Just this once, dressing mommy like baby is the stylish thing to do.

Political Crochet

I've been doing a lot of musing on dressing children in political clothing, particularly as I've noticed a number of knitted garments sporting Obama logos on Ravelry.

While I continue to ruminate on that, check out these awesome crocheted presidential candidate dolls.

I can't wait to see how she does Sarah Palin.

Gender (K)Neutrality in the Knitting World

You might think that knitters, and those who craft in general, would be free from the restrictive definitions of gender rampant in the commercial world. But while it’s true that when knitters knit for new babies we can go far beyond the bland offerings of Babies R Us, knitting a truly gender-neutral garment is still something of a challenge.

When a dear knitting buddy announced that she was keeping the sex of her then-impending baby a secret, the rest of us were surprised by how difficult we found it to select a garment to knit for her shower. We eschew yellow duckies on principle, so those kinds of patterns were right out. Some of us turned to classic patterns from before the age of routine ultrasounds, when gender neutrality was still crucial. The classic patterns by Elizabeth Zimmermann instruct the knitter to put buttonholes down both sides of the sweater and then place the buttons after the baby is born. Yes, button placement is gender-determined! You didn't know?

I went out on a limb and chose a pattern with a tiny wee small smidge of lace on it that others on Ravelry forums  had insisted was appropriate for a boy.

How did I do? My friend loved it. Her husband, from what I hear, took one look at it and said it looked like a “girl sweater.” What did the sweater in? Was it the lace? The color? Fortunately for my sweater, the baby turned out to be a girl, but did I really go out on that long of a limb?

And now, another friend just had a boy. I looked in my knitting basket and pulled out this sweater, made from the aforementioned Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern. Can I give them this? When I posted a picture of the sweater on my knitting blog, my knitting peeps said yes, it is gender neutral. But now I’m all paranoid. Knitters might think purple is just dandy for a boy. How about you?

Not Cheaper by the Dozen

People who lack the DIY gene will look at something hand-made and shrug, “You can buy a whole big bag of those Wal-Mart for two bucks,” or, particularly if you’re making things for children, “Why would you spend so much time making something that’s just going to get messed up?”

I’m here in defense of the hand-knit bib. Yes, you can buy bibs by the dozen at Big Box stores, and yes, they do get messed up in all of two seconds, but here’s why I make them.

As I wrote about in my previous post about knitting, I was too sleep-deprived, post-partum, to knit anything that required following a complicated pattern. I was blessed with an exceptionally poor sleeper, and once he hit his sleep regressions, I was too tired to follow any pattern at all. Enter the Baby Bib O’ Love pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting. It’s so simple, it isn’t even a pattern, really. Take whatever cheapo cotton worsted yarn you have in your stash. Cast on some stitches. Knit (don’t even bother to purl). Put on some straps and attach a button. Baby bib!

The pattern is open to endless variation, and soon I found myself with this:

You can find one satisfied customer here:

You, the non-knitter may protest, "But they’re just going to get messed up!" Um, yeah, that’s the point. These bibs are meant to be used. These bibs, in fact, work better than anything I’ve ever bought in a store. My store-bought bibs retained stains and ripped in the washing machine; my handknits faded a little, but well over a year later, they are still going strong. Plus, if you have an exceptionally drooly child like I do, these bibs absorbed everything while the store-bought ones got soaked through.

They also make impressive gifts if you have friends who appreciate hand-crafted items. They don’t need to know that the yarn cost less than a buck and you whipped one out while watching So You Think You Dance. You can personalize them like this:

Or you can do like my friend Michelle and adapt dishcloth patterns for embossed bib designs. How cute is this car bib? Wouldn’t you like to drool on them yourself?