Primary Colors

Primary Colors
Originally uploaded by littlekidd.

Here's a baby hat for a soon-to-be-born boy. I noticed while I was making it that the colors match Superman's costume -- maybe I can use leftovers to make something groovy and Superhero-ish for Zack.

I love to experiment with stitch patterns on baby hats. This one is from Barbara Walker's "Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns," I think. It's a slip stitch pattern, which means that, unlike Fair Isle, you only carry one color at a time. Woo hoo! It's SO easy. This particular slip stitch creates a magical check pattern.

The good news! My hubby bought the domain www.bipurlerdisorder.com... so in time I'll be able to spiff up this blog with a better template, images, layout, etc.

Hip To Be Square

Barbara Walker rules!
Originally uploaded by littlekidd.

My three-year-old son insists he wants me to make him a pink viper scarf. (NOT pictured here. Read on and you'll see why). I started from the tail one night while he was in the bath. By the time he was ready to get out I had completed about about eight inches of a tail which started an i-cord point and had steadily increased to a tube about an inch in diameter. Later that evening my husband found the thing lying around in the bathroom on my needles. "Knitted condom?" he said. We both agreed the concept was fatally flawed.

Now to today's picture. I just love the Barbara Walker "Treasury of Knitting" books, particularly the "Fourth Treasury..." with its groovy lace squares knit on the bias.

This one was suppoed to be part of a table runner. Instead it is the victim of a classic new knitter mistake. I made three... got 3/4 of the way through the fourth one, and ran out of yarn. I searched high and low, but it's a discontinued Adriane Vittadini for which -- even if I could find a spare skein -- I'd never match the dyelot. So, I'm looking for something comparable with which to make three more. Maybe next Christmas, Ma.

Bottom's Up to Neck Down!

Cheapie Baby Cardie
Originally uploaded by littlekidd.

Made this baby cardie with Paton's cotton. It's a little stiff, but hey, at $5 a skein for almost 200 yards, it beats a swift kick in the head. This 6 mo. sweater took only a ball and a half.

Decided to take a break from cleaning for my housecleaner (is that screwed up, or what?) to make a quick post.

If you follow breaking weather news, you might have heard that the sun shone here yesterday. We Oregon moles came out of our burrows squinting in the oh-so-foreign bright light, comparing skin translucency (much the way people in San Diego compare tans, I suppose.)

It has been the rainiest winter in my eight years here. One day of sun, and now it's wet and cold again today. I feel like I'm in a Ray Bradbury novel. Can someone do a cermonial dance or something, and get us past this? I'm growing webs between my toes.

The Sweater from Hell

The Sweater from Hell
Originally uploaded by littlekidd.

Welcome to my blog. I'll dispense with all of the usual introductory formalities, except to offer my apologies to those who work or benefit from counseling and/or antipsychotic medication. For those who have it, bipolar disorder is no laughing matter.

I tried and tried and tried to come up with a witty play-on-words name for my blog that wasn't already taken. This was the best I could think of. And, you have to admit, we rabid knitters are just a little manic.

So, here's my first post. The sweater that started it all. The sweater I started more than a year ago -- just a couple of months after I learned to knit. It was supposed to be a Christmas present for my husband in December '04. It had a preordained spot under the tree this year...

... and, it's still not done. But then again, neither are my Christmas cards.