I Need to Borrow a Baby Arm

I've been invited to go to a baby shower, and what better gift than a hand-knit itty-bitty baby-something? Quick to make, cute to look at, something new to try. All good reasons to dive into searching for baby patterns. After a one-hour lunch break I declared f.pea's bumpy cardigan and hat set to be the winning design. (Ironically, it was this set that got me thinking about knitting for babies in the first place; I could have easily done something more productive during that hour than searching Ravelry.) The pattern calls for Blue Sky Alpacas Skinny Dyed Cotton, and before going online to order the yarn over the internet I checked with my LYS to see if they had this particular yarn in stock (I like the idea of doing stuff locally and keeping the dollar in the community, especially when it comes to yarn stores). And they did!! Or so I was told. As it turned out the next day, the store had Dyed Cotton, but not skinny Dyed Cotton. I was presented with Rowan's Cotton Glace as a perfect substitute, and once I did the comparisons in my head and it all seemed to add up nicely (weight, needle size, gauge), I went for it. I picked a lovely mauve taupe and a very nice beige (I think the colors were called damson and ochre): the gender of the little one isn't known, and I thought mauvish goes for boys and girls alike. The store lady thought differently and suggested a bright green as the perfect gender-neutral color, but since I dislike neon colors for babies I didn't go for it. However, now I had serious doubts about my color choice, and eventually I abandoned mauve/beige and went with gray and off-white, which, although a bit lame, seemed about as gender-neutral as it gets.

(My sixth sense--or whatever that nagging little voice in my head is--told me at this point to just drop the Glace, go home, and order Skinny Dyed Cotton in my preferred colors. I should listen to this voice occasionally.)

Home I went. And swatched to check for gauge. It was a bit off with #5 needles, so I went for #4 needles, which got me good gauge in stockinette stitch. (There was no gauge mentioned for the bumpy pattern, just stockinette stitch.) And so I started knitting!

And I knit and knit and knit, and I finished the neckline/upper body part, and then I put the sleeve stitches on a holder, and knit and knit and knit, and then I began wondering if those armholes weren't a bit small. All the babies I know (not that many) have fat arms. Cute arms. Cute fat baby arms. So I started worrying a bit: will those sleeves, judged by the armholes, really accommodate baby arms? Hubs and my knitting pal calmed me down: the expecting mom is little, her husband, too, is skinny and rather short, and therefore the baby will be little too.

So I knit on. I finished the body. I thought to myself, those armholes look really small, but they look this small because they are on a stitch holder. Once I finished the arms, the armholes will be bigger (???). So I finished one arm. Still it looked small. And I thought to myself, once I finished the button band, the armholes will be bigger (?????). And so I knit the button band. Despite silent prayers to the knitting gods the armholes did not magically grow. They were still very small.

And small they still are! Look:

They must be too small, right? How am I able to tell if I don't have a baby arm at my disposal? I tried the cardi on my very old baby doll that I finally found after I had been searching for it all morning:

Yes, it fits her, but will it fit a real baby? That doll is a small, mal-nourished Communist baby doll manufactured in the--then--Soviet Union. How does it compare to a well-fed, much loved, longingly anticipated, chubby little American baby? (If you have one of those around your house, could you please measure the arms? Thank you.)

Argh. I really have my doubts. I think what happened is that the yarn substitution didn't work: I should have done the bumpy pattern with #5 needles and the stockinette stitch part with #4's. I'm running out of time to redo it. I think I have to abandon this project for now and contribute to the cash pot my department put together for the baby shower. I'm so unhappy about this! The Hubs says I should just complete the cardigan and give it to the mommy-to-be and get over it, but what if the cardi won't fit the baby? I would feel so awful about it...

I don't want to finish and then gift it. Especially since I didn't put all that much TLC into the knitting once I finished the arm and it still looked too small. At that point I had serious doubts and began to work sloppily. My button band looks entirely wacko, mainly because I still haven't figured out what the best way is to pick up stitches.

(Serious questions, knitters out there: when picking up selvedge stitches, do you go through both loops, the one closer to you, or the one in the back? I went for the loops in the back, which left me with giant holes in the front it seems. Every picked-up stitch could serve as button hole on this cardi! Ugh.)

*Sigh*

In other news:

I received my yarn swift and ball winder in the mail last night. I played with the new toys this morning, and I love them! OMG--I love being able to wind yarn into balls!

My MIL got the swift and winder for me, and she sent them my way before she herself embarked on a trip to France (!!!) to paint at the Côte d'Azur (!!!). She left this morning... bon voyage ! (This reminds me: I picked up Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse last night and instantly loved it. I think I'm a bit too old to be this impressed by it, but regardless, I couldn't put it down but finished it in one sitting.)

I'd be green with envy 'bout J's trip to France, except I went to the live recording of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, one of my two favorite NPR shows. (The other one being, of course, This American Life), and that was quite awesome too. The last time I went Barney Frank was the guest. This time, it was Ashley Judd. Boy, do I like Frank better than Judd! Here some mediocre iPhone pics of the Wang Theater, the recording site:

At the time of the recording Barack Obama hadn't yet won the Nobel Peace Prize (Kudos!), but if you listened to today's broadcast you know that Peter Sagal mentioned this little fact several times. Hmmmmm... I wonder how that happened....

Night now!