"Adaptation" Soaker

I haven't made a blog post in a long time.  Not that I think you cared, but I had a baby in March and she has been keeping me really busy!  One of the advantages of being on maternity leave though is that I can spend a lot of time to knit; I was able to finish up a few projects that had been sitting around for a while.  I have been looking for soaker patterns recently as I purchased some fitted diapers for my daughter.  I found this pattern called "Adaptation" by Connie Stults on Ravelry which looks really cute AND does not require short rows!  So I decided to give that a try.

For those who are not familiar with soakers, they are wool pants that go over cloth diapers; simply put they are diaper covers!  The amazing thing about wool is that it can absorbs liquid 30% of its weight before starting to feel damp, and the lanolin in the wool is anti-bacterial (think nipple cream for breastfeeding moms).  In order for soakers to work, you have to use 100% wool.  For this project, I used a skein of the Malabrigo merino worsted in Oceanos from my stash.

My first challenge was to determine the size of soaker I need.  I am using AI2 diapers on my daughter right now; I figured the fitted diaper is going to be as big (if not bigger) as the AI2's so I simply measured her hip circumference with a AI2 on her.  I ended up with 20" which is approximately size medium.

The pattern is very easy to follow.  I used 3.75 mm needles for the waist band ribbing and 4.5 mm needles for the body and leg cuffs (will need double point needles for that).  The pattern did not provide instructions on making the eyelets for the draw strings and I was too lazy to figure it out, so I just knitted 1x1 rib for the entire waist band.  I did increase the length of the waist band to 2.5 inches since I wanted the soaker to stay on my very squirmy baby properly.  The diaper did not take very long to knit up; what really slowed me down was joining the seams.  If you look at the projects on my Ravelry profile, you'll noticed that all my projects are knitted in the rounds or do not require seaming at all. (I work really hard to avoid joining seams!)  I made one baby sweaters that required making up, but it was a disaster.  To make sure I wouldn't ruin my soakers, I watched the videos on mattress stitches that was noted in the pattern.  The videos were really helpful, but as a first timer I was really slow and had to watch the videos a few times.  (Note: If you have never done mattress stitches before, I do not recommend doing it at 1 AM in the morning with a little reading lamp as your only light source!)  After a few tries, I finally got my mattress stitches right and made up the diaper; I decided to work on the leg cuffs after I get some sleep.

I tried the soaker on my daughter before I stitch the leg cuffs; it fitted over her AI2 nicely.  It should fit over the fitted diaper nicely according to my plan!  Picking up stitches is another thing that I have been actively avoiding.  I've only done it for my Featherweight Cardigan and it was quite painful (I made the cardigan full length and that was a lot of picking up stitches to do).  Picking up the stitches for the leg cuffs of the soaker is not nearly as bad; I only have 46 stitches to pick up on each leg.  I knitted 12 rows of 1x1 rib on each cuff, weave in ends, and whoa the soaker is done!

I washed the soaker with Eucalan wool wash and soaked it in the same liquid for 15 minutes to lanolize the soaker.  The soaker is drying now; I am looking forward to putting this pair of soaker pants in action!