Becca's Blog

Red Chief 4/24/1991 - 6/17/2009

Goodbye, my boy. I'll miss your companionship, love, and lap-warming.

 

 

So, the animal situation.

To cut to the chase, for now we are six. There are twice as many quadrupeds as bipeds living here, and that doesn't count the feral family in the back yard. And as I mentioned, it's been a fairly eventful three months; here's a (not so) brief history:

Go Josie, Go!

 Alpha dog Josie has arthritis that has caused nerve degeneration in her spine, so over the past few years she has lost more and more mobility in her back legs. We've tried lots of different adaptive leashes and harnesses and slings to help her get around, and we're pretty used to cleaning up the accidents she can't help because of her disability. We've taken to carrying her outside if she can't get there under her own steam, and one of us always comes home at lunch to give her a bathroom break. We know that her diminishing abilities get her down sometimes--she doesn't like stumbling around and falling. Because of her loss of function and depression, we really wondered whether we should let her go soon.

Sometime in late March a neighbor saw us on our morning walk/stumble and stopped me. She said she had a cart that belonged to her dog who had passed away, and she'd be willing to give it to us. I was definitely interested; in fact I had wanted to check into buying a used doggie wheelchair/cart but had no idea where to begin looking. So the offer of a hand-me-down was providential. Even better, it fit pretty well and Josie took to it immediately. 

The cart is from an East Coast company called Eddie's Wheels, and they custom-build based on individual dogs' measurements, but the carts are adjustable to some extent. One of their former employees lives in Guerneville, so we took a day trip out there to have Josie fitted to her new/old cart.

 The result has been better than we expected: She goes out in the cart twice a day, and it has strengthened her back end and improved her balance, so that she even gets around a bit better without it. And it's given her back confidence--she gets to choose where she walks, and she even challenges other dogs again. For an alpha dog, that's huge. We don't tell her she still can't do much damage; it's the attitude that counts.

New Year's 2009 was the 15th anniversary of the J-Dog coming to live with us (which makes her 16 or 16 1/2), and I was mentally composing an elegiac post for her back then. (The stack of photos of her that I pulled is still waiting to be scanned, and I still owe her a real photo album.) But here it is six months later, and she's holding her own.

Cat Rescue

Our next-door neighbor is an elderly woman who has always been eccentric, but in the past year has shown clear signs of dementia. And the companion who was her main source of support left the situation (with the complete approval of everyone who knows them). I've never liked this woman (she was the self-involved, talk-your-ear-off kind of crazy and staged screaming fights in the wee hours; since I'm prone to insomnia, this made me murderously angry), and I've avoided her for years.  But around Thanksgiving I shamed myself into making sure that she got something to eat periodically.  We realized then that she couldn't take care of herself and called Adult Protective Services.

When she was briefly hospitalized in December, Jane wanted to make sure her cats were cared for, so we went into her house and found it was filled with trash. I called her social worker and said the house wasn't safe for her to live in, but legally they had to let her return home. For the next few months she stayed in her house as her family and APS tried to improve her situation and she resisted. In late March one of her two cats died, and she called us to help her. Jane went over and took the dead cat out to the trash for her.

Finally in early April she was hospitalized again, and again we worried about the remaining cat. Her family asked us to look after it, and we decided to try to trap it, so we could at least care for it over here, rather than going into the house next door. But Zizi resisted trapping for weeks on end. I consulted with animal control, and they also tried trapping him without success. On their advice even the water was removed, and they left a way for him to escape the house, with the idea that he'd leave and maybe show up with our ferals for food.

More weeks went by, and Zizi never showed himself or went into a trap. The city got involved in cleaning up the house and yard, and I pretty much convinced myself that he had died. Jane heroically made a final walk-through of the house to look for him (going in meant picking up fleas, as well as climbing over garbage), checked out the back door, and caught a glimpse of a cat that looked like him diving under the house. We set a trap in the crawl space and caught him by the next morning.

We took him to the animal shelter, where he got hydrated and fed, vaccinated and flea-treated. We visited him regularly because we also became shelter volunteers in the past three months. Amazingly, one of Jane's work friends adopted Zizi within a week of his coming to the shelter. He now lives in a San Francisco studio with another cat, and he's adjusting nicely to his new, uncluttered life and getting lots of love and playtime.

The Shelter and Little Big Man

In March Jane and I went through training and orientation to be volunteers at Berkeley Animal Care Services, our municipal animal shelter. I can't really explain my motivation to volunteer at a shelter when we have our hands full of pets at home, but knowing I'll need a kitty fix when we no longer have the Orange Boy is part of it, and rescue fantasies are surely a big chunk of it. Also, I inquired about volunteering with Bad RAP late last year, and for whatever reason they never got back to me.

So once or twice a week, sometimes together and sometimes individually, Jane and I go to the shelter and play with cats or walk dogs. BACS is a low-kill shelter, which means that they euthanize only as a last resort. Even though they work hard to get animals out of the shelter and into homes (even foster homes), sometimes animals are there for weeks and months at a time, and we volunteers get to know them and get attached to them. Jane and I have talked often about how doing this volunteer work requires compartmentalization. Mostly, I just focus on what I can do for an individual animal in a single hour, to avoid being overwhelmed and just wandering the aisles of the kennel, bawling.

But I see the potential in every dog I walk, and engage in a mini-rescue fantasy about how great it would be to have him or her in a good home with a loving owner. I've already tried to persuade my parents to take Satin,

a deaf 9-year-old shepherd-cattle dog mix. (She looks like Tina's big sister, and she's a sweet old thing.) Since Satin has been in the shelter for two months and still hasn't found a home, I'm not done working on my parents...

 Jane and I have also talked often about what to do when Josie goes, and what kind of dog we'd get next. I've always said I wanted to scale back to two pets, and that we should wait and give Tina a chance to be top dog. I was also emphatic that our next dog needed to be dog-social, not a terror like the young Josie was. We agreed that we wanted a small dog next, who wouldn't threaten scaredy-cat Tina. As much as our hearts went out to the old dogs at the shelter like Satin, no one was talking about getting another dog now. 

But then the shelter volunteers and staff began a campaign to find a home (either foster or permanent) for Coffee, an arthritic 9-year-old chihuahua who had lived at the shelter for three months. And I started to fantasize about whether it maybe, possibly might be OK to add one more small dog to the mix at home. I knew that senior shelter volunteers sometimes took longtime shelter residents for a weekend taste of home life. Jane agreed we could "check him out" for a trial run, so I asked the shelter director if we could. Coffee exhibited some dog-aggressive behavior while in the shelter, so a seamless transition wasn't a sure thing at all.

Last Friday I brought him home for what might have been just a weekend visit--but he joined the household pack with relative ease. Josie has magnanimously decided to tolerate him. Tina isn't thrilled about the competition for love and treats but thinks he's kinda OK. We can see that the two of them are going to team up and be pals in time. Orange Boy spends most of him time in bed, but when he's up, he isn't threatened by Coffee, merely annoyed.

 Last Saturday I headed out to buy pet supplies, and Jane told me to get Coffee a bed and a nametag--because we both knew all along that he was home to stay.

Orange Boy's Long Road

In dealing with kitty's illness over the past couple of years, we've done things we never thought we would or could, like sticking him with a needle to administer subcutaneous hydration. We've learned not to be thrown into high anxiety by a few days of lethargy and low appetite, and we've learned to appreciate the way he is now rather than constantly mourning the way he used to be. I miss him making a beeline for my lap in the mornings, but I'm glad now when he wants our company.

 And yet I'm feeling with increasing certainty that it's time to let him go, because he's losing ground. He's had a rough week, even after visiting the vet following the last rough week. He is being treated with everything that makes sense (4 drugs in addition to the hydration). It's really, really hard to know how much quality of life is enough, and whether we are keeping him here for him or for us. I just know he's a huge piece of my life and my heart.

Hello again.

It is totally possible to have writer's block for, like, three months, and a lot has happened, so I have lots to catch you up on.

When I was last here Kate and I were getting ready for the benefit knitting party for the Women's Daytime Drop-in Center, which went off successfully.

We launched 11 new knitters, and the Drop-in Center gained some new advocates--notably the women behind Help a Mother Out, who chose to make the WDDC a beneficiary of their May drive for diapers and women's and kids' health and hygiene supplies. They have hit the ground running, and I really admire their advocacy for women and kids who are hit hardest by the recession and our state's upside-down budget priorities.  

At the end of May the WDDC held its annual benefit auction, and Jane and I attended again.

I donated at handknit lace scarf, which apparently sold after we left.

That's been about the only knitting I've done lately, since it had to be finished on deadline, except that I also helped out with A Verb for Keeping Warm's Keep the Fleece event.

 

That was the summery-est Saturday we've had all spring, and I had a lovely time meeting new people and hanging out. I had the honor of knitting up Michael's handspun into a scarf block.

There is a lot more to tell you, most of it revolving around pets, but I'll hold that for another post. (Baby steps...)

Cat Bordhi to the rescue. Again.

I have to give props to Cat Bordhi.  I'm rather abashed to admit that I do so grudgingly, because that seems snotty, but it's the truth. I really didn't care for "Socks Soar on Two Circs," and I think I wrote a cranky blog post about it at the time. Yet despite my complaints, I managed to learn how to use two circulars and got at least one pair of socks knitted.

Then I saw "New Pathways for Sock Knitters" at Maia's house, and I was intrigued by all the designs, which are much more appealing than the ones in "Socks Soar." Not only that, the "anatomy of a sock" diagram that I wanted in "Socks Soar" was there, along with concise instuctions on techniques critical to sock knitting. Between the intriguing (or unbearably cute) designs and the charts and guides that are key to customizing your own socks, this looked like a very valuable sock-knitting reference. 

I bought the book after Christmas a year ago, and it has been a valuable reference, even though I'm not much of a sock knitter. I did knit the first two learning socks, and eventually I will work through some more of the sockitechtures. But mainly I come back to this book for the technique instruction. For example, Bordhi's explanation of how to knit together a stitch and its wrap is in a sidebar titled "A wrap resembles a necklace." To me, the tone of that is insufferably twee, but the explanation is thorough and clear, and the twee mnemonic works (dammit).

I also go back again and again to remind myself of the correct way to make lifted left and right increases (which she gives awkward-sounding nicknames). I should probably just drop my resistance and memorize her silly names and mnemonics for which stitch to lift for which side. The diagrams for these increases are great, but if I got the differences firmly enough in mind, I wouldn't have to go back to the book to refresh my memory.

The description of Judy's Magic Cast-on is crystal-clear and takes up only a quarter-page. And she gives abundant credit every time she explains a best practice developed or popularized by someone else, as with this technique. In fact, I just found the tip, squeezed in on the last page of the index, for finishing bind-offs neatly and invisibly. I wish I had found it last night when I was binding off a mitt. That mitt is what caused me to grab "New Pathways" again.

I'm finally finishing the mitts I started as a Christmas/birthday gift for my boss back in November (she reads the blog, but I'm sure all the boring knitting tech-talk has driven her away by now), and I wanted to make sure the bind-off at the top isn't constricting. I figured I'd try Elizabeth Zimmermann's sewn bind-off, since it is reputed to be so elastic. First I dragged out my trusty old Vogue Knitting, which had, as I remembered, an extremely complex series of instructions (it maintains a k2,p2 ribbing pattern as you sew, so it's a mind-numbing, impossible-to-memorize routine of "Insert purlwise once, then insert knitwise to the back, now switch, now stand up and turn around three times..."). I bailed on that and decided to keep looking. I have just one EZ book, and I skipped that because I find EZ's written instructions to be cryptic very often. "Knitting in Plain English" addressed sewn bind-offs only in passing. "No Sheep for You" and "Knitting Circles Around Socks" and "The Sweater Workshop" and "Custom Knits" had nothin'. "DomiKnitrix" shows a tubular bind-off that looks pretty much like the thing, but I wasn't sure it was exactly right. Finally I checked "New Pathways for Sock Knitters," and I should have started there. A sidebar, titled "Elizabeth Zimmermann's sewn bind-off," with blazingly simple instructions. Eureka.

My first mitt is bound off, and the edge is indeed stretchy and unconstricting (unlike the cast-on, which now looks rather tight). So, honestly, I will never diss the twee little metaphors or titles like "Treasury of Magical Knitting" again. (I almost wrote "Enchanted Broccoli Forest" there.)

I'll photograph the mitts as soon as I've bound off the second one and knitted the thumbs. I swiped the eyelet stitch pattern from the Riverbed sock pattern in "New Pathways," and I did these two at a time on magic loop, following the instructions in Melissa Morgan-Oakes's "2-at-a-Time Socks." That has been another really good reference guide for techniques that are good for more than just socks. 

As I was working on the mitt last night I thought about the "Sock Summit" convention that's scheduled for this coming August. I was imagining sessions titled "Grafting Intensive" and "Cast-on Colloquium." That would be kind of a hoot, but as I've said, I'm not a sock knitter.

Delayed gratification.

Back in November I mentioned some travel craziness, and in December I mentioned the two stories I wrote for Knotions.com, about DIY knitting retreats and a knitter's tour of Seattle.

What with the holidays and everyday preoccupations, I pretty much forgot about those stories—working on them feels quite long ago. But they're live now.

Planning a party is great fun...

but actually throwing a party is nerve-racking. Jane and I don't do it very often because we're both pretty neurotically insecure (about different things, but I think the anxiety level comes out about the same).

I certainly had fun planning our wedding reception five years ago—I was happily distracted from the tedium of my job for months. Lately I've been party-planning again, which is much more entertaining than, say, taxes.

On March 15, Boxer Press Kate and I are hosting a Learn-to-Knit party here in Berkeley. It is a benefit for the Women's Daytime Drop-in Center, where I teach knitting once a week. Kate designed the easy cat-toy pattern we will be teaching, and she wrote the how-to-knit booklet and the pattern instructions. And she pulled it all together in an amazingly cute package.

I came up with a menu of Asian-inspired snacks, like fresh spring rolls, satay, and fruit. I think menu planning might be my favorite part. I also scouted locations and settled on Cafe Zeste, on the edge of Strawberry Creek Park in Berkeley. Although we originally thought we would do the catering ourselves, sanity prevailed, and Cafe Zeste will be providing the delicious snacks as well as the scenic locale.

Crystal Palace Yarn donated yarn and needles for us, and K2Tog donated a $25 gift certificate as a door prize. I'm still working on getting a few more door prizes, and we could use a few more guests to make the event a fundraising success for the Drop-in Center. We think a $35 donation is a good amount, considering all that we're providing. I'm asking guests to make their donations directly to the Women's Drop-in Center, so their donations are completely tax-deductible and they are not defraying the costs of the event at all. All the event supplies have been donated, and Jane and I are underwriting the catering costs. We're happy to foot this significant expense, though, to raise money and awareness for a service that is close to home and close to my heart. As a bonus, it's supporting a local small business.

Bay Area buddies, if you know someone who would like to learn to knit in a really fun setting with a lovely group of people, give me a holler. 

The backstory on this little project is that the Drop-in Center hosted its own fundraiser last summer, an auction at the Berkeley Yacht Club. Jane and I attended, and it was a lovely evening. I rocked a black minidress, white fishnets, and a very mod hairdo. I looked great, if I do say so myself. If it weren't a bit much for midafternoon, I'd consider reprising the look for our knitting party. (No, I am not in the party shot below. I successfully avoided being photographed, as I try always to do.)

(I bet you didn't know that Berkeley has a yacht club, did you? Well it does, and it's a pretty cool little clubhouse with amazing views.)

Kate and I dreamed up this Learn-to-Knit party as an auction offering, and created a lovely display of instructions, menus, and invitations. (All of which Kate designed and printed. She has mad paper-arts skills.)

We actually swiped the the learn-to-knit party idea from Celia and Pamela, with their blessings and advice. 

During the auction I cruised by our display all evening, but no one bid. At all. The only items to receive no bids at all were ours and the $4000 guided trip to Costa Rica. Needless to say, I was rather crestfallen. But I vowed that our work would not go to waste, and I would organize the party as a fundraiser at some later date. Now I have, and I'm determined that it will be a success.

During our March 15 party, I figure I'll be too busy teaching to bite my nails and worry.

All trussed up and ready to go.

In January, most of the knitting I did was making hexagons to be part of a collaborative afghan.

And when it came time to block them, I knew it was going to be hard to pin down the points and avoid having the edges curl up or pull out of shape.  So I thought of doing something like using blocking wires. 

I don't have any blocking wires, but I do have a set of those little, teeny sock dpns. And I have the little skewers known as "turkey lacers" which are for trussing up turkey cavities. Necessity is the mother of invention, n'est-ce pas?

Like potato chips

Last weekend I tore through the book Cooking for Mr. Latte in less than 2 days. I wasn't planning to read it (it was published in 2003); I found it at the library while I was looking for something else and figured it could be light, amusing reading.

Cooking for Mr. Latte is a memoir by Amanda Hesser, a food writer for the New York
Times, about meeting her husband, a writer for the New Yorker. I have always liked Amanda Hesser's columns in the Times magazine, which are always built around a recipe. When she writes about the experience of cooking and its techniques, she's clear and engaging, and I usually find her taste very good.

I probably hesitated to read “Mr. Latte” because I figured it would excite my jealousy to read about someone with such a glamorous, cosmopolitan life—and it's a heterosexual romance besides (I'm not supposed to like those).

In addition, I have kind of a bad track record with memoirs by women (a least contemporary ones). I couldn't bear Eat, Pray, Love for lots of complicated reasons, and I hated A Three-Dog Life as well. But pondering what the common thread among the three might be is leading me off-topic.

Mr. Latte had lots to entertain me, with stories about going to movies and restaurants in New York, stories about family connections forged during summer weeks at the family compound on Long Island, dinner parties and fabulous engagement parties, and recipes. Almost all the recipes are things I would like to cook, like walnut cake, oeufs mayonnaise, and papardelle with lemon and ricotta salata. Although I certainly could find most of these recipes or similar ones among the collection of cookbooks I already have, if I found this book for cheap at a used bookstore, I would buy it to remember the recipes. And I'm going to search out "grains of paradise," which she mentions as an aromatic alternative to pepper. Since I'm addicted to pepper blends with black, red, green, and white pepper for their aromatic qualities, I was intrigued by this new-to-me spice.

But the book puzzled me as well, I think because it didn't go deep enough. Hesser would disclose something negative about herself, but then not reflect on whether it had gotten better, or whether she had grown. She readily admits to being bossy, such as during the family trip to Rome where she makes her entire family miserable pursuing the perfect Italian dining experience and gets frustrated when everyone else doesn't share her passion. I can relate to that type of frustration, actually, but Hesser makes no attempt to excuse or redeem herself. I think I wanted her to write about apologizing, or trying to make up for her bad behavior. Instead, she writes about a comforting dinner (made by a family friend) that seemed to make everyone feel better. But Hesser herself didn't fix things, unless she's taking credit for arranging the dinner. And there are numerous instances where Hesser admits to meanness or bossiness toward a friend, or reveals unflattering feelings about a friend, and I had to hope that the friend didn't learn about them by reading the book. Either I crave the cliché of redemption, or I'm just not mature enough to appreciate someone who can put the negative side of themselves out for scrutiny without attempting to mitigate it. Or maybe I missed what Hesser intended to be the self-redemptive parts.

The central of these conflicts is with the Mr. Latte of the title. As Hesser characterizes him, he's basically a brainy frat boy when she meets him—and apparently, for him food isn't the be-all and end-all (gasp). She wonders whether she can have a relationship with someone who orders lattes after noon, sweetens them with artificial sweetener, and feels oppressed by the service rituals and flourishes at classical French restaurants. And Hesser doesn't dwell on his good qualities or examine what she sees in him; she says only that she's happy and excited to be with him. But why? To read this book you have to suspend the belief that to judge someone on their restaurant preferences is shallow; in fact, it does matter whether your life partner shares the passion that you've constructed your life around. But it seemed to me throughout that Mr. Latte met Hesser more than halfway, and she was carping about minor points, many about appearances. Again, she has to understand that these admissions are unflattering (doesn't she?), so why leave them unchallenged?

There's always the possibility that Hesser is simply a diva--who happens to write best when she sticks to the subject of food. That was certainly true of MFK Fisher. When I read a bunch of Fisher years ago, I was rather repulsed to read about her extramarital affair (which you can put down to prudishness or naivete on my part); when I read about Fisher's divalike behavior years later, I was even more repulsed. Whatever there is of value in Fisher's writing is soured for me, knowing that she was a prize bitch.

Hey, Tim Geithner! I'm really good at my job too!

Can I stop paying my taxes on time, just like you did?

In better economic times, Mr. Geithner’s confirmation to be President-elect Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary might be in danger after the disclosure this week that he had paid more than $48,000 in delinquent taxes and interest. But with the economy so fragile, many senators are loath to rattle financial markets by rejecting someone with Mr. Geithner’s qualifications and international respect. By late Wednesday, Republicans as well as Democrats were predicting he would survive the controversy and be confirmed next week.

On the eve of this new post-Bush, postracial, postpartisan era, it dismays me that apparently there are still different sets of rules for the powerful and rich and us working schmos, regardless of the fact that Obama's campaign spun a happy dream of an administration whose members played by the the same rules as the rest of us.

Mary L. Schapiro, who appears this week at a confirmation hearing on her selection to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been accused in two lawsuits of making misleading statements to quickly complete a merger of regulatory organizations after which she received a 57 percent raise in her pay.

I am the daughter of a tax collector, and I have a probably unhealthy respect for authority. I fervently believe in government's role in providing a base level of services to all of us in this society, and I believe in my role in contributing to that mission by paying taxes. I even accept the precept (sort of) that I can't pick and choose which government functions I fund. In my family, tax protesters have been looked upon as misguided whack jobs. Yet in the past six years I have felt so impotent, so unheard and unrepresented by my government, that I have considered tax protest. The main reason of course is the Iraq war, but the financial bailout is now running a very close second. I am impotently furious that my tax dollars are being handed out, with no strings, to companies whose only instinct is self-preservation and whose only mandate is profit maximization.

Pretty much the only thing stopping me from protesting by withholding my tax payments is my middle-class fear of stepping out of line. If I weren't afraid that the shithammer of financial and reputation ruin would slam down on my head, I would write a check for a quarter of my income to well-run charitable organizations of my choice, and decline to hand over the equivalent amount to the federal and state governments.

Today the Senate voted to turn loose the second half of the $700 billion TARP bailout, after the first installment didn't loosen up the credit markets. What was it that our revered outgoing president said? "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice ... won't get fooled again."

I don't have any smart conclusions. I just need to vent my disappointment at the apparent grinding on of the system, very much the same as it ever was, only worse.

L'idiote dans la cuisine.

So I was just in my second sauce class at Kitchen on Fire, which focused on sweet sauces. (Jane gave me a couple of classes as a Christmas gift.) I said to Chef Olive, "Bon soir, chef." He said, "Bon soir. Ca va?" And then my 10 years of French classes failed me. I stared and grinned like a dope and couldn't say a word. "Bien, et vous?" would have done fine...

But I learned what a sabayon is supposed to taste like, what a gastrique is for, and why I keep fucking up my white sauce. I think I'll do better now, and I won't be afraid of cooking sugar anymore. I didn't try making crème anglaise in class, but I will do it soon.

The great thing about cooking classes is that you can dirty pots and other cooking gear with abandon, and you don't have to clean up after yourself. Want to use a blender to puree strawberries? That's what you're there for, and the dishwasher or class assistant is there to do the cleanup.

A holiday gift for you

... if you like this sort of thing. I've finally finished writing up my hoodie baby blanket pattern, and it's here. I hope you like it. (Oh, whoops--I didn't realize the page would show up in the normal flow of the blog. It's immediately below this post as well...)

I've been pretty silent lately, but that's mainly because I had so many things partially done, and I was a bit reluctant to discuss all the half-done-ness. I've been knitting, reading, cooking, thinking, and opining a lot on Twitter and Facebook. Half-baked thoughts seem appropriate for 140-character bursts on the spur of the moment.

Here's what I've finished since Thanksgiving: two stories for Knotions.com (which should appear in the next couple of months), my lopi-esque pullover (I'm hoping to get all the colorwork ends weaved in and a little blocking done in the next few days, so I can wear it to Reno over Christmas--photos forthcoming), a gift scarf, and this pattern. I've also tried no-knead bread two ways, done the East Bay Christmas Bird Count and gotten two colds, continued to teach knitting at the drop-in center and contributed to their Christmas lunch for clients. Also wrote a book proposal for my job, which unfortunately didn't get greenlighted. I'll just have to come up with some more book ideas.

Here's what I've started since Thanksgiving: two pairs of mitts, one reasonably well along. I swiped pretty stitches from a couple of sock patterns to adapt to them, so they're fun.

I hope you are all well and enjoying the holiday season.

Heads-Up Top-Down Hoodie Baby Blanket

This baby blanket pattern requires some intermediate skill such as directional increases and knitting in the round using the Magic Loop technique, but it's fun and functional.

Download Headsuphoodie-basic

You may redistribute this pattern freely, in its current form, but please credit this site when you do so.