OpArt is 2009 FO #1!

OpArt Pre Blocking
Originally uploaded by sunasak

OpArt is done, as you can see. It only took a month and two days, which is not bad, considering its size and the little things I had to make before Christmas. I spent all day yesterday finishing up on the edging, which I made with a picot bind-off. I figure that is nice and stretchy, plus the baby is a girl, so this sightly feminizes it. I must admit that the blanket does its job--if you look at it too closely, it will get your eyes all confused and start to appear to move around. It's hard to believe that such an easy pattern produces such cool results!

As you can see in the picture of the whole blanket, it does need to be blocked. The instructions warn you to not get upset when it comes off the needles, because it needs to be "severely blocked" to end up square. I'll be doing that at some point today or tomorrow, I figure. I measured it, and unblocked, it's exactly 40" across, which is what size it's supposed to be. That's a rarity for me! I am not sure whether it will block out slightly larger or not. The bigger it is, the more space for the baby to roll around and enjoy it.

The yarn is very soft and was quite nice to work with. I'd use it again in an afghan or something (KnitPicks Swish). I am going to get some Fray Check stuff and dab it on all the ends so that the back looks as neat as possible. That's for two reasons: there's no way to avoid the back showing when it wraps a baby, and I know babies tend to pick at things like yarn ends when they get a bit older, and I don't want the blanket to get picked to death (like my own baby blanket did). This baby will have a LOT of blankets, though, so who knows which one she will pick for her "lovey" if she picks any at all!

Moving On

The next project is the Baby Surprise Jacket. I just could not control myself from trying this, and I am happy to use up some of the organic yarn I bought a while back to try out organic projects. I am using O-Wool Balance, which is an organic wool/cotton blend. It is worsted weight, but I am using a size 4 needle, to get 5 stitches per inch. That supposedly makes the one year-ish size jacket, which would work for baby's first winter, I think. I am going to make a second one in sport-weight yarn for another knitting friend's baby, which will be a little younger so might need a slightly smaller jacket. That does, of course, assume I make it through this first BSJ. I am trying to follow EZ's instructions and not read any additional hints and helpers. I want to pretend to be a lady of 1968 who got the original newsletter.

I am using some new row markers to keep track of the double decreases in the BSJ pattern. I got them from Entrelac (in person, but YOU can get them from the Loopy Ewe online, or Gauge or Knitting Nest locally). They are shaped like little omegas, and really work well. They stay in when you want them to, but easily come out to move up to another row. I got these nice shiny anodized ones, because I love shiny colorful things (as you may have noticed).

I'm off to write in my personal blog, then work on the jacket, watch football, and finish taking down holiday decorations. A nice end to the holiday season!