Baby shrug, interrupted.

First up, a quick hello to everyone, and thanks for the comments of encouragement. I've finished seaming side one of the shrug, and am down as far as the armpit of side two. I still have all my hair and fingernails (bar that one I broke last week) so it's going well.

I also finished the bootees of gorgeousness.


I had a request from the lovely Denise for a bit of a talk through the baby shrug. It's from the Debbie Bliss book Simply Baby, which I adore.
I have deleted my work in progress photos from the previous cthulhu-baby incarnation, so I'll just use this one.

(If you right click and hit open in new window, it'll make life easier!)

This is a bottom up shrug, knitted in one piece. The cast on edge is at the bottom left of the photo, and is basically the start of a t-shaped section for the back and arms. The next section is slightly more involved. On my first attempt, I got a little...how do you say....over-confident, and in the process of being queen of the universe I left out a line of pattern, which resulted in the previously mentioned cthulhu-baby option.

Divide for fronts
As you're on a circ needle for this, it makes things a zillion times easier.
Knit across the required number of stitches, do the casting off in the middle, and knit across the remaining stitches. This is much easier than having to move them before casting off the middle stitches

Congratulations, you now have what looks like one side of a giant buttonhole!

At this point, take your trusty stitch holder, and put all the stitches from the end of the line - the side that's all cut off by its lonesome - on to it. Then ignore them completely.

The next pattern section is worked on the remaining live stitches that you have on your needles. Work the required number of straight rows, then start on your increases. Do not do what I did, and ignore that end of line that says "and the inc row once more". This leads to much frogging and swearing later, as things end up backwards.

Continue down through the sleeve shaping lines, and then you're home free for the shape front section. These are the small sail-shaped bits right up at the top.
Do not let your brain tell you that the right side is anything other than the nice side with the little v's on it. That way lies madness. And cthulhu-baby arms, and no fronts.

Once you get done with that,and have your stitches moved to a holder, it's time to work on the right front. Again, ignore the stitch holder entirely. Join the yarn to the live stitches as you would if you were changing to a new ball, or changing colours, and off you go.

When she says sleeve edge, she means where the cuff will be, and the side edge is the bit at the U-shaped piece in the middle that you're creating. You'll see these on the photo pretty easily.
On this section, you're basically doing exactly the same as on the other side, just in reverse, so instead of casting off at the start of a row, you'll be doing it at the end.
Work down through the shape front section, and you should end up with a mirror image of the other side, and very few stitches left on your needle.

Here's where I cheated though. Instead of going from there, I moved the live stitches straight to a 4.5mm circ, K1 and then picked up stitches the whole way around. That's the stage the photo is at, and why one of my fronts looks deformed. I didn't, however, use her number of pickups, as it wasn't working for me when I tried. I just picked up every stitch. Yup, all of em. Then worked 5 lines of 2x2 rib, and cast off.

Bottom edge, where the original cast on was, and with the cuffs, I did the same thing.

When that's all done, flip it in half with the wrong side out, and line up the edges.
You'll end up with something that looks like this

You then have the joyous task of seaming. On the plus side, the book gives great info on that.

I hope that helps!
If anything is unclear, or you have any questions, feel free to holler. I like feeling useful :)