Baby Crack

I'm back. I know it's been a few days. The reason for my long absence? I went to see my sister and my brand-new niece, Willow Hope. And boy. That girl is baby crack. Totally addictive. I held her for hours at a time and she hardly made a peep. And then, Sunday morning right before I was about to leave she did something even more amazing. She opened her eyes, looked at me, and smiled. She totally melted my heart.

But back to the knitting. Friday night I finished the last sleeve on Manly, then put it away for the weekend. On the way to my sister's house I started Branching Out in the Southwest Trading Company 100% bamboo yarn that I bought the last time I enriched my stash. As you can see in the picture above, it presently looks like lace crap, but I trust that the blocking will fix that(I really need some rust proof blocking pins.) The yarn itself is like nothing I've worked with before. It's slippery in a way that wool is not. It also has a slightly plastic-y feel, but it's not unpleasant. It's...different, I suppose. I've tried imagining myself making a larger project out of this (if I could afford it) and I honestly don't know if I would like it or not. A delicate lace shawl? I could totally see doing that in bamboo yarn (pending the outcome of the blocking on this scarf) but I don't know about a fitted garment. I would be afraid of it having no memory and not holding its shape. But of course, at this point, I'm just guessing.

Anyhoo, last night I was back to Manly. I knit the neckband and sewed up the shoulder seams. I wish my camera would take a better picture of the shoulder seams (or perhaps that I was more skilled with the camera) because I really wanted to show you the seam detail. I'm using what Debbie Stoller calls "fake grafting" in the Stitch N'Bitch book. Basically, you make it look like there is another row of knit stitches between the front and back seams by running the seaming yarn underneath one full stitch (both legs of the stitch) on the front of the sweater, then running the yarn underneath one full stitch on the back of the sweater, then continuing in this manner across, moving your stitching over one stitch with each successive stitch. If that last didn't make sense then buy the book. Ms. Stoller does a much better job of explaining it then I do.

Tonight I'm planning to sew in the sleeves. I honestly am not sure that I can sew in both sleeves in one night but I'm going to try. I'm just very slow when I seam things up because I want it to look right. I want the seaming of the project to do the knitting justice, you know?