Osborn Fiber Studio

Oh Naomi, what trials we must endure! You know nothing of my dilemmas, of time wasted and squandered in endless self-doubt. You shall understand these things in due time. For now, I require your aid, to help me see what truly lies in my heart.

Lay it on me, Ma!

So, I have this little problem. Two babies need sweaters. One is above pictured; another is yet to present herself on the world stage. I also have two bags of very pretty Sublime Baby Silk & Bamboo DK – about 800 yards of pink and 1000 yards of yellow. Pretty stuff, worth a good bit, and given to me by a knitter who didn’t think she’d use them. Sounds like a great situation, right?

Except I can’t find a pattern. For some reason, browsing ravelry is like pulling teeth for me right now. I’ve seen everything on the first five pages filtered for “Baby or Sport” and “DK or Sport,” and I don’t feel like doing any of them. I have a lot of yardage of this stuff, and I’d like to use a good bit of it, but I’d rather pull out my own molars with a vicegrip than make a baby blanket. Don’t ask me why; I just don’t want to do it. That pretty much leaves sweaters and dresses. I’d like something pretty and cool-looking, but not too hard. I’m looking for just that right thing, and I can’t find it.

In a state of complete angst, I turned to Naomi to help me rule out at least one factor. Would she prefer her item to be pink or yellow? I laid both bags beside her to see what she thought.

Definitely went for the pink first. Well, maybe that was a fluke; she was just distracted by the first bag she saw. She rather loves plastic bags, and I think I would be a terrible parent if I encouraged that. So let’s take a ball out and see what she thinks.

More encouraging… is she going to pick differently?

Nope, the bag is still there. Let’s take the bag out of the equation entirely:

Wow, she definitely wants pink.

And what this exercise has shown me is that I definitely want to put her in yellow.

I am kind of sick of browsing ravelry for baby stuff, so I pulled out the two baby knit books I own to see if I found more inspiration in looking at paper than at pixels. Immediately I found some good candidates. These pictures are terrible, but you can click on the links to se better ones.

Floyd pullover – Cute, one piece, and the fit seems like it would go with a drapey yarn. Would definitely look girly enough in the above colors. Isn’t winning any drop-dead-adorable awards, though.

Sophie blouse – Cute and interesting, since the front and back are different and it can be worn either way. Calls for fingering, but on bigger needles, so I *might* be able to make the gauge work.

Emily dress – A dress! A bit boring, but with all those pleats it’s sure to use up a substantial amount of my yarn.

Noah sweater – this has the novelty of using both colors – which might work together, but the colors might be too close in value. What do you think?

Louisa cardigan – Also fingering, but a bigger fingering, and of a construction that’s very forgiving to adjustments. Downside: it’s a little too much like several other things I’ve made.

Since Ravelry browsing isn’t turning my crank right now, do you have any ideas? It has to be DK, available online (I don’t care if it’s free or not), unisex or girly, and a dress or sweater. And it has to fit some incomprehensible criteria of “not too fussy.”