Baby Karma

Any time you get a group of knitters together for more than one glass of chardonnay, someone will bring up the age old topic "people who ask you to knit something for them but then are surprised at how much it will cost."   I am not a professional knitter and don't make my living doing this (would that I could) so I find the rules about knitting for others pretty simple.  If I love you, I will knit for you.  If I felt like hauling off and making you a present, it's a present.  If you asked for something specific that you really want, you pay for the yarn and then ply me with some nice chardonnay and we spend some quality time together to pay for my time.  Frankly, if I love you enough to knit for you, I love you enough to want to spend time with you so it works out pretty well.

And I love babies.  So I will knit anything for any baby anywhere any time.

Sometimes a friend will ask for a baby sweater. 

Like this one.

My lovely neighbor's friend is having a baby boy and you really can't go wrong with a creamy little raglan sleeved number with some nice tortoise shell-ish buttons for a little boy.  A bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay was involved which escaped being photographed by dumping itself into my glass.

There's another kind of baby knitting that I also do that is even more fun for me.  It's secret and anonymous and I call it my Baby Karma knitting.

Like this one.

Yeah, it's the same pattern.  I use it all the time because it makes the world's best baby sweater.  Something about the way the arms fit.  Anyway, this is a Baby Karma sweater.  It was knit in secret and then wrapped in tissue and a bow and left anonymously at the pregnant families door.  Because every baby should start their life out with some act of kindness.   This baby won't remember it, won't ever wonder who knit it and probably won't care.  But his or her (in this case his) little spirit will have started out life with an act of warmth and protection.  And that makes me feel good.

I often say that there's enough misery in the world to go around and I don't need to be actively trying to add to it.  The other side of that coin is that there's never enough happiness in the world (really--who doesn't want more happiness) and I really really do need to actively be trying to add to it.