eye candy friday -- the second best thing i've ever made

I made a person once. But it wasn't on purpose and I can't say I had a lot to do with the shaping or designing of him. He came out how he came out, which happened to be magnificent, for which I thank my lucky stars.

Even though deep down inside I know I shouldn't go claiming credit, I do. Schmin is the best thing I've ever made.

The second best thing is this:

Remember the tiny buttons from a previous Eye Candy Friday? Here they are, finally at home. And the quote, from this post? It's from the "Some Babies' Things" chapter of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac. That's the chapter that contains this lovely, lovely pattern, which everyone refers to as The February Baby Sweater.

Knitting this sweater was, for me, something like giving birth. While other knitbloggers who made it wrote of good times and easy knitting, Zimmermann's "pithy" directions and my own lack of experience knitting sweaters (I'd only done shrugs before) made me cry out for an epidural. The version you see here is number two. Number one was a beautiful failure.

It took a while for me to figure out where I went wrong the first time, but I did. (Among other mistakes, I read Zimmermann's directions literally and worked the 2nd front section just like the first. All she says is "repeat for second sleeve" and I didn't realize I needed to knit all the way around first, so that everything would end up on the same row, but anyhow.) It pained me to frog the first sweater. It was sweet, even in its deformity. But I was making this for the baby girl of a very dear friend and I wanted it to be, needed it to be, perfection. Just like the baby, whose name is Grace Beatrice. Isn't this the most ideal little old-fashioned sweater for a girl named Gracie Bea? I think so. And I love knitting old-timey pieces like this.

February Baby Sweater
Artyarns Supermerino #113
Size 7 Addi Turbos
Buttons from Michael Levine's Fabrics, Downtown LA

Nature's trick on childbearing women is that we develop amnesia regarding the excruciating brush with death that having a baby is. Most of us love the product of all that torture so much that we forget about the agony and we turn around and do it again.

I got the best of nature and decided once was enough, but knitting this sweater, even the second time, was not without its share of comparable agonizing moments.

The pain of which apparently has escaped my consciousness because I'm already a third of the way through a second one.