little legs

The thought of leg warmers for babies never really occurred to me before, but one day my office found ourselves abuzz discussing the cuteness of the concept. Ok. I can do that. 

This project really started out as a bit of a joke, but they went so quick that I am pretty glad I made them. I used size 4 dpns and another ball of yarn out of my dwindling (but still sizable) stash in keeping with my knitterly goal this year. I actually obsessively weighed the yarn as I got close to what I thought was halfway through since I wanted to use the whole ball up. I literally weighed every 4 rows or so. Yeesh. It worked, though. 

Once the first was done and off the needles, need for the scale gone, I may or may not have knit the second one on the beach. 

That, people. That is why I love living in California so much. I just plopped my beach chair down, took out my needles and got to work while my companions went for a run or just generally wandered down the shore. I was totally a-ok with guarding the stuff until they got back. 

I used the long-tail cast on for the beginning which I think is somewhat stretchy. But, worried that I'd have a tight cast off that had the potential to cut off circulation on chubby little baby legs I went with a stretchier bind off. I feel that backfired because now that end is overly stretched out at the top of the ribbing. I am hoping simply flipping down that part and essentially making it "the top" kind of solves the issue. Still, I'd be interested in hearing about a stretchable bind off that doesn't do that annoying flare out thing. 

The self-striping yarn was fun. I have one more ball in another colorway that may be destined for ankle socks. I liked working with it so I'm hoping it's a good candidate for my first foray into turning heels. Plus, not allergic to microfiber. I digress. These leg warmers are made using Alana Dakos' "Legwarmies" pattern (more detail on my Ravelry page) and used just about 185 yards of sport weight yarn on size 4 needles to make a nice dense fabric. They don't really thematically go with the blanket I finished for this mom-to-be, but I think she'll get a chuckle out of them nonetheless.