Friday, April 14, 2006

Kids these days...

What is the with the number of people having kids these days that don't want to know the sex of the child? Two of my friends are about to become uncles for the first time and neither, I repeat, neither family wants to know. I mean, sure, miracle of birth, blah blah blah, but there are purely practical concerns here. What color do you paint the nursery? What kind of clothes do people buy for it? And more importantly, what am I supposed to knit?
Well, luckily I'm clever.
Even varigated yarns tend to have pink or blue in them, and if parents are picky, it might look more masculine or feminine. I don't like green, at least not baby green, and it tends to look boyish anyway. Yellow is safe, and I have a thing about ducks, so I made this little fair isle duck hat. I charted the little duckies myself. This would become my standard "I don't know what I'm having" baby hat, except for a few small issues.
I can't give both friends the exact same hat because one, that would be lazy and wrong, and two, they're roommates. Luckily, Kristine was around to make a few suggestions. She said she uses a lot of white for babies. Since the hat pattern I like to use is pretty simple, I knew I needed a little more to it. She suggested making it with an eyelet row and weaving in the appropriate color when the baby is born. I need to pass these off before the kids are actually born, though. I could have sent it with a plain eyelet row and let the parents weave it in, but I'm pretty sure that's the last thing new parents would want to so. So, and here's the clever part, I wove in both pink and blue ribbons. That way, when the kid is born, they can just pull out the wrong color. It's a lot faster, and also sort of fun and destructive. I think even new parents can handle that. This would also work with just about any kind of baby item, so I now have a solution when these new-fangled parents get crazy ideas in their heads.
If I spawn, I'm so finding out what it is the minute I can. Technology is here for a reason.

1 comment:

Rana said...

My guess about the parents "not knowing" (or, perhaps, simply "not telling") is that they do not want to be buried in pink foofiness (if it's a girl) or rah-rah trucks grr! blueness (if it's a boy). Yellow and green _are_ sort of blah, but the things in those colors do tend to be less annoying.

(I think your ducks are cute!)

As for the room, it's probably safer to paint it a neutral, so that it can grow with the kid - at least until he or she becomes a teenager and paints it all black. ;)