Sounds like a
headline in a newspaper dedicated to knitters, right? I thought so, too! So I’m cruising along, with plans to spin and
knit sweaters for Christmas for the existing grandchildren and maybe even some
of the parents, make my DH a replacement pair of felted clogs and his
long-awaited sweater vest, and make myself a couple of summer sweaters. Fiber and yarn have been purchased, bagged
with their patterns or measurements of the children concerned, and I’m finishing
up a couple of UFO’s in preparation to begin.
A lovely year of knitting planned, with room in the timetable for those
“gotta make this” projects you run into occasionally.
Then my
daughter announces that we’re having another grandchild. Okay, that can take the place of all those
“gotta make this” projects I was going to do…a bump in the road, not a
complete closure. However, I just cannot face the
idea of designing another baby shawl. My
mind shuts down at the very thought, running around a hamster-wheel of…what
lace pattern, what kind of fleece, what lace pattern…endlessly. It doesn’t take more than a week of that to
realize that another baby shawl is NOT going to happen. So my hamster-cage moves on to “what can I do
instead to welcome this little bundle of joy?”
Spinning, spinning (pun intended)…the wheel stops on the idea of a
christening gown. That’s doable,
right? It’s an heirloom-type project,
very special, and shouldn’t be all that hard to design…and babies are little!
A couple of
hours of web research later sends me scrabbling through my knitting books. A couple of weeks of thinking about doing one
of Sharon Miller’s designs sends me to the spinning wheel. A couple more weeks of spinning and the
announcement that my daughter is expecting a daughter sends me back to the web
to the Jameson and Smith site. Three
more weeks and I’m the happy recipient of a kilo of their gossamer-weight
2-ply. And during that three weeks comes
the discovery that my daughter-in-law and son are also expecting another child
– not quite five months after my daughter and her husband!
I’m truly
delighted at the idea of two more grandchildren – don’t get me wrong! The ones we already have are fabulous,
fantastic and incredible, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the new ones. Nonetheless there’s a knitterly part of me
that mourns the hijacked sweater vest and clogs for my DH, the summer sweaters
for myself, and the other planned fiber adventures for this year.
Back to the
saga of the christening gowns…yes, there are now two of them planned. I dropped the Sharon Miller design…it’s a
lovely design, and wonderfully practical for cool, wet Great Britain. However, the idea of wrapping defenseless
infants in two layers of even gossamer-weight wool in the much warmer climate
of the southern United States is much less practical. A lacy wool christening gown – with lots and
lots of holes – that can be worn over a onesie and tights or something similar
is much more practical. [Update: I've finally decided on a handsewn batiste underdress, and am heading out to get the fabric this afternoon. Much prettier, right?] So (to nobody’s
surprise) I’ve designed my own variation on a christening gown and begun
knitting. What if the second grandchild
is a boy, you ask? Christening gowns are
unisex – I think he’ll survive wearing one skirted item during his babyhood with no scars on his psyche.
And now I’m
headed back to my unexpected knitting projects with lots of wonderful feelings
about having two more little people to call me Grammy!
