Twinknit

On Tuesday (Election Day), two good friends of mine gave birth to their very first baby.  This baby was, in many ways, a celebration in his own right (not to mention the rest of the celebrating that took place that day!), and for months now, I’ve been planning dozens of delicious handknits to wrap him up in as soon as he arrived.

But my plans, as is so often the case, didn’t necessarily lead to the most productive knitting.  My early choices were duds (the baby surprise and tomtem were quickly abandoned as the little boy’s mommy is herself a knitter, and I knew she had BSJ knitting plans).  My middle choices were full of doubt (is this nice enough?  Will it look to homemade?  Maybe I’ll just wait until we know the gender…).  Finally, I settled on something I felt confident in — Trellis, from Knitty.  I’d been wanting to knit the sweater for ages and a friend had recently gifted me several skeins of perfect yarn (amazingly, someone left seven skeins of cotton/silk yarn in his bookstore and never came back to claim them) .  I figured my gauge and set to work.  The problem, however, was that I never loved it.  Knitting it felt like a chore, and I was never too pleased with the yarn/cables combo.  It was taking forever.  As a shower gift, I gave the mommy-to-be a store-bought hoodie and a knit baby cap.  I muttered an internal “shit” and promised to have a sweater knit for this baby by the time he came home from the hospital.

Thank goodness for Elinor and this pattern [Rav link].  This sweater, literally, grows like a weed as you knit it.  From start to finish, I think all of the knitting took me a week (and that’s with tons of work, an anxious election night, and two days of being too sick to knit).  I *love* it.  Except that the little baby boy was born five days ago, and it’s not quite done.   Today, I head into my first steek.  Hold your breath, wish me luck, and I’ll see you on the flip side.

(I’m glad I documented this as a whole knit, lest my steeking permanently ruin it!  More details when it’s done!)