Soon I will be seeing him, little Francis Xavier. Then just you wait for all the photos you will get!
Right now I will tell you a little about the blanket.
I just had to make him something...
You know, wedding planning is like a kind of alternate reality. You have to live through it to know what I mean.
You can get sucked into it and live everything in your life towards one purpose -- getting ready for the wedding. I don't know about you, but my mouth goes dry; I wake up thinking about it; I go to bed thinking about it; and in the end, I find that I'm just not functioning at all.
This time I decided that I had to resist the thought that I can't do anything other than what amounts to just fretting.
In a way, approaching the wedding with the idea that you are sweeping everything else off the board makes you less productive. (Not that it's something you really choose to do -- it happens to you, much the way stepping through the wardrobe or finding yourself on a spaceship would. You are so not in control of your destiny. It's really crazy.)
But I did try to do some other things, like garden a little, and knit.
So little Francis was coming, only we didn't know it was he. But there had to be something to greet him! Something handmade, cosy, a little warm but not too warm (because Hong Kong these days is plenty warm enough)....
I decided on a white blanket, made of a washable wool. I remember thinking, with Will (#6), that it would be nice to have a white blanket for the christening, instead of whatever cute pastel number happened to be closest at hand -- warm, but not really appropriate, you know?
I remember I answered my MIL's query of "Is there anything I can get you?" with "Could I have a white blanket?" And she got me two. Wasn't that nice? She helped me feel like a mother who had not completely flubbed the event, despite not feeling very well, having a recently unemployed husband, and having five other children to care for.
I purposely chose a quick pattern. This one is great -- you don't even cast on all the stitches -- you start with one and just keep adding -- it grows from the tip out, into a diamond (a square on its side, but don't worry, when you rotate it slightly it ends up square :).
I used my downtime in the evenings, after running around for weddings during the day, to just rest and knit. It didn't take long -- not even that lace that goes around the perimeter, although I did have to use one of my (many and frequent) trips to JoAnn's to get the right sized bamboo needles, since the metal ones I got from my stash were making me crazy -- the lace is slippery and only a maximum of twelve stitches, and just basically wants to slide off the needles at every turn. Literally.
Pippo helped.
I chose to add an eyelet to the basic (very easy) design so that the blanket would be more breathable in that hot climate, but still provide protection against AC chills.
Oh, and as I was thinking about the eyelet, I read some comments to the effect that perhaps lace is not suitable for infants. I thought about it and I decided that babies like to feel their fingers going in and out of the little holes! He won't get stuck in it, because the yarn isn't super thin, and the holes are small. As I remember, Will's white blanket, which became quite the favorite (as in, he started sucking on the trim of it the way kittens nurse on chenille, even when he had had a mouthful of Oreo -- yuck! he made a mess of that thing; wish I could find a picture), had little lacy holes in it and that was part of the appeal. I'm good with the lace.
You can read about the details of this one on my Ravelry page. I have read some reviews of this wool and hope that it will stay nice after it's washed, because it's really, really nice now. It's soft and springy and just the right color to go with a christening gown if that's what the parents would like.
The pattern calls for a garter stitch for the main body, and the way you add eyelet is just to pop it in. Eyelet (or a buttonhole) is "yarn over, knit two together" = yo K2tog. That way you are adding and subtracting a stitch at the same time. I think I did something like K2, yo, K2tog, repeat to the end of the row. It was very loosey-goosey, whatever it was. Then just knit back the next row.
{The wonderful baby photos are by Nick and Natasha's friend, Becky Benians.}
