Sunday, November 29, 2015

A Rainbow Unicorn Woobie for My Baby Boy

When I found out I was pregnant with my second child (who am I kidding, this started before I knew I was pregnant) I started queueing tons of baby patterns for my little WIP.  I made Lucky a woobie Zebra.  I wanted to make something on a similar theme, so when I saw the Unicorn Woobie in the Woobie Pattern Collection Series 2 I knew that this was going to be a winner for my second child.  It didn't matter the sex, boys can like unicorns, too!  I wanted to make it rainbow so I am counting back from previous woobies to divide the main blanket section into equal stripes.


In August I finished a Monkey Woobie for the first born to Lucky's godmother.  I wanted the woobie unicorn to be the first thing I started for my little WIP (besides the pregnancy announcement) but I didn't really feel like making a second woobie immediately after finishing one.  Therefore I decided to cast on some of the embellishments and then proceed with the woobie itself.


I used shine sport in Serrano (red - 6 g, 13 yards), Clementine (orange - 11 g, 24 yards), Dandelion (Yellow - 17 g, 38 yards), Macaw (green - 18 g, 40 yards), French Blue (blue - 22 g, 49 yards), Iris (purple - 24 g, 53 yards), Cosmopolitan (pink - 2 g, 4.4 yards) and white (83 g, 183 yards) and size 3 (3.25 mm) knitting needles.  All weights are rounded to the nearest gram.  To see the complete before and after weights check out the Ravelry project page.


Planning the Stripes
I kept detailed notes on all of the woobies, but in particular the Monkey Woobie since I just completed this project the day before starting the unicorn.  (I'm exactly 20 weeks behind Blue Harvest's Mama.)  In the monkey there were 52 Brown rounds + 3 cream rounds between the double picot edge and the closure for the head meaning that there are 55 main blanket rounds.  I can do stripes of 9 rows in Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange and then 10 rows in Red.  I'll switch back to white for the head before I criss-cross the stitches to secure the head bottom.

Notes from Construction
  • I decided to start with the smallest parts for this Woobie.  This way I can really work on the finishing details when I complete the head of the unicorn.
  • White Ball 1 weighs 50.6 g
  • I cast on with the long tail cast on.  The next round is Round #1.  AHHHH I haven't made this mistake in so long!  I'm 9 sts away from the total and I'm out of my tail.  Grrrr time to rip out and start over.
  • As with the other woobies, I do my decreases differently than is written in the pattern.  Slip the first stitch of the round, knit until 2 sts before marker and make a cdd.  The first slipped stitch becomes part of the last cdd.  
  • I finished white ball 1 in the middle of round 15.  White ball 2 weighs 51.2 g.
  • On Round 22 I switched to purple (purple round 1, ball weighs 50.9 g) and folded over the hem.  Now the project will start picking up speed!  Not only am I starting stripes of 9 rounds each, but the rounds will get smaller and smaller.
  • The extra decreases started in the middle of the orange stripe.  I started the additional deceases as follows: S1, K 15, CDD, K14, CDD around.  
  • When I hit 28 stitches, I knit one more round in red before switching to the additional "next round" decreases in white.  My math for the striping was spot on!  Everything went according to plan!
  • As I finished up the woobie I'm super excited that I've already knit the little bits and pieces so I can focus on finishing my fabulous unicorn woobie.  

Unlike the other stripped woobies (zebra and tiger), this woobie has a bunch of loose ends to weave in.  I'm missing the whole carry the ends up with you as you go thing.  I wove in all of the loose ends before tackling the finishing of the woobie face.


I'm glad that I have my woobie zebra on hand to compare to.  The face is a little different but this will help me figure out the placement of the ears at least.  It was a lot easier to place ears evenly when I could sew them along a stripe.  This is going to be a bit more difficult.


The ears were much easier to secure on than I remembered.  I tacked the inside edge of the ears to some stitches a little further away so they would stand upright like a horse versus falling down a bit more like a cow.  (Now I sort of want to make a cow woobie.  There isn't a pattern in the collections from what I've seen but I think you could add some spots and turn one of these horses into a cow pretty easily.)

Horn first or eyes first?  The pattern has you do the face first but I decided to start with the horn so I can decide where the eye placement will work the best.  I'm more confident in my whip stitching then I am in my embroidery skills.  I'm really proud with how well the embroidery came out.  I think that having the horn in place actually did help me find the right stitches to embroider around.


For the Zebra's mane, I used 3 strands at a time and applied them in 3 rows of 7 deep.  For the unicorn, 6 deep will be perfect so I can do a rainbow mane.  For each fringe I cut two 6" colored pieces and one 6" white piece.  I started with red and then worked my way towards the back of the head in the rainbow configuration.


Cutting fringe pieces is much more fun when you are making a rainbow!  I knew exactly how many pieces I wanted and so the cutting went super fast.


I started the first row way too far back and needed to move up again so it started immediately after the horn.  Other than that the fringe application was very straight forward.  Once again, I felt confident with the placement due to the position of the horn.


Someone needs a haircut!  


I'm in love with my little unicorn!  If I were to do it again I might make the mane solid, but I think that the white through the whole mane holds it together.  I'm 21 weeks (almost 22) the day I finished this woobie and I'm so happy to have something for my new little boy that will be HIS and not just a hand-me-down.  I am excited to reuse many of the hats and vests that I made Lucky, but I want to make sure that Boogaloo gets some things that were made specifically for him, too.


Lucky was at school when I finished up the woobie so he hasn't really seen it yet.  I'm wondering if he is going to run off with both of them.  At just shy of 2 years old, we're not sure if Lucky understands what being a big brother means (although he knows that Indy is HIS big brother), but we're optimistic.


Now that this project is done I have to sit down and take a real and hard look at my queue.  What can I finish by Christmas/Chanukkah?  What baby items can I realistically hope to finish before my delivery?  This pregnancy is making my "to do ASAP" queue much longer than it was before!