Anyone Have a Baby I Can Borrow?

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, an old friend who lives far away just had her third baby--after neglecting to mention that she was pregnant for the entire previous nine months. This is the second friend who has done this this year--don't these people understand that I need time to knit?

Ordinarily, I would whip up a baby sweater in a couple of days and mail it off. But since it is summer in Georgia, where they live, it occurred to me mid-cast-on that a fuzzy, hooded sweater might not be all that useful. This is progress for me, since I usually only realize such things during the bind off. "No problem," I thought, "I'll make a sun dress." Several fruitless hours of internet- and library-searching for a pattern ensued. Finally I decided to just cast on and see what happened (this is code for "throw logic to the wind and deny everything I know about my knitting skills, then blame the yarn/needles/stars when the project doesn't work out").

This is what happened:

I don't hate it. It does look a little like a pastel lampshade, but I'm telling myself it's baby retro chic. I have no idea whether it will actually fit a human baby, since I based it on my own shaky recollection of the general size and shape of a new baby. It's been a few years since I've had one of my own, and I don't have any nearby friends with new babies. So unless I can find a baby to borrow, I'll just have to wait until it reaches its intended recipient. It's also a little heavy. Maybe a little more than a little heavy. The yarn is worsted weight cotton that I've had in the stash for long enough that I've forgotten how long I've had it. I know I've had it at least since my friend was pregnant with her first child, about five years ago, because I found this in the stash, along with the yarn:

This is a baby blanket I started for her first baby, but what with one thing and another, life and all that, I never quite got around to finishing it in time for her first child to use it. When she announced she was pregnant with her second child, I thought, "Great, this is the perfect opportunity to finish that blanket," and I pulled it out and worked on it some more. But, what with one thing and another, life and all that, I never quite got around to finishing it in time for that daughter either. So now, with the birth of a third daughter, I am convinced that the fates are giving me one more chance to redeem myself and finish the damned thing already.

I am plugging away at it--a task that is complicated by my having, somewhere, sometime, lost the pattern I was working from. It turns out that I have actually gotten good enough at playing with string that I was able to deconstruct the fabric and figure out the pattern. And since I have roughly enough of this horrid, heavy, pastel cotton to outfit every baby in town, there's no way I'm going to run out of yarn before I finish. I have made a deal with myself. Not a deal so much as an ultimatum. Until I finish this blanket and mail it off to its new owner, I will not knit anything else. Not a stitch of Icarus, not a row of the twinset, not even a cast-on for the two lovely summer projects that are just waiting for my attention. Not one thing.

Give me strength.