Cherry baby

Item: Cherry pink baby jacket and baby hat for infant
Yarn: Baby Merino from Gjestal Spinneri, superwash
Grams: 64 g (jacket) + 18 g (hat) = 82 g

A childhood friend of mine is soon having her first child, and it is announced to be a baby girl!

Picking colours for knitting projects for a baby girl often means choosing pastel pink and lilacs, understandable, as they are very delicate and yummy colours, I think. But in this case, the mother of the baby girl is not particularly keen on pink! In fact, she can't stand it!

But as the brave (and very possibly foolishly so) knitter I am, I'm still venturing for a pink project. For once, I can be quite sure that the end result will look nothing like the rest of the baby girl's wardrobe, as pink probably will be shunned. But how on earth am I to lure this jacket and hat past the keeper of the wardrobe, i.e. the mother?

By using a vibrant mix of cherry, fuchsia, and coral, mixed together in a single lovely yarn! No baby pastels here, no pale pink and no luscious lilac!

The project consists of a jacket and a matching hat. The pattern for the jacket is a very simple raglan sweater, knitted from the bottom up. The end result is a size 0 to 3 months, but probably only for the smaller range of babies. Raglans can be knitted both bottom-up and top-down. The top-down method is perhaps a little bit easier to use when knitting without a pattern, as you start with a suitable neck size, and continue increasing with the raglan technique, until the shoulder width suits its intended wearer. However, this particular jacket is knitted bottom-up.

All the edgings of the jacket have a simple garter stitch edging, to match the hat. Two tiny buttons are sewn on, as a simple fastening, leaving most of the jacket open at the front.

The neck of the jacket is knitted in a different direction than the rest of the jacket. When finished with the required amount of decreases, I've continued the garter stitch edging from the front opening of the jacket up and around the neckline. In some patterns, similar edging is knitted separately and sewn on afterwards. I usually prefer to avoid as much sewing as possible, so I've fastened the edging by knitting one mask of the edging together with one mask of the neckline, one at the time, until the edging has worked its way all around the neckline, from one side of the front opening to the other, "eating up" every single mask of the neckline on its way.

The hat is knitted in the well-fitting and I guess quite well-known "devil hat" design. When I say well-fitting, I mean two things: (1) The design creates an easily recognisable dip down to cover the baby's forehead, making it look a little bit as a the baby has horns (but only in a funny way, not a creepy way!). (2) The design fits the baby's head wonderfully, sticking on no matter what, and keeping every important part warm, both the head, the ears and the forehead.


So now you are very welcome to the world, baby girl!

Finally: socks for my boyfriend and nobody else!

Item: Blue boyfriend socks
Yarn: Vestlandsgarn from Gjestal, pure new wool (and fabulously inexpensive)
Grams: 113 g

My boyfriend is usually never on the receiving end of my knitting efforts. This is not due to any lack of appreciation on his part, oh no, he craves new woolly socks quite frequently! You see, several of his old socks are worn so thin that they have been repaired several times.

So I guess there's a lot of readers out there who struggle with the same issue:

So much to knit, but so little time!

This little and common dilemma usually means that my boyfriend's need are last in line, only prioritised above my own needs on the woolly horizon. But this time I emptied my knitting needles and cleared my plate, and had a single goal in mind: woolly socks for my deserving boyfriend!

The socks are knitted in a variegated yarn, making nice colour changes without having to change the yarn. I'm usually not a fan of this kind of yarn, but for casual everyday socks it's a great option.

The socks are a European size 43/44 on needles size 3.5 mm, for which I needed 113 g of yarn.

(And yes, these are the sexy feet of my boyfriend!)

Giant granny square: still not from Granny, and still not for Granny!

Item: Pinkish giant granny square
Yarn: Leftover yarns, ranging from the cheaper Vestlandsgarn from Gjestal, through Kitten mohair from SandnesGarn, to the more expensive 2-ply merino lambswool from Nøstebarn. Even some yarn leftovers from the seventies made it into the pile, donated by a family acquaintance who was actually knitting back then (in the seventies I had not even made it into diapers yet :)
Grams: 707 g

 Somehow, I seem to accumulate a lot of pink yarn. I do love pink in all its shades, from the richest cherry pink to the most delicate frosty-white pink. I don't discriminate on pink, I'll even through in the lilacs, aubergine, peachy and plum colours. However, I usually don't wear pink! The only exception I'm willing to make, is for shades like dusty peach, sandy pink and similar. So what to do with all this lovely pink yarn? I'll make a giant granny square!

 

There's nothing that eats up leftover yarn like a giant granny square. Since the amounts of each colour of leftover yarn usually is limited, I decided to go for a "two-rounds-per-colour" scheme this time. My previous giant granny square had fewer colours, and required more rows per colour. For this pink granny square, I had several matching colours to choose between. This made it easy to achieve the desired gradient effect.

My previous granny square was designed as a baby blanket, and so is this. There is no better blanket for a little princess just born! The holes in the granny square isolates well, believe it or not, so that the blanket feels really warm. The whites in the blanket are made from thicker wool than the pinks and purples, which makes the whole blanket alternated in thickness.

For newborn babies, I would recommend making this blanket in thin wool and a bit larger crochet needle than recommended for the wool in question, as this will increase the isolating abilities, whilst the blanket remains lightweight. For a bit sturdier blanket, use thicker wool, but with the same crochet needle.

I find the giant granny square looks a bit unfinished if it is without an edging of some sort. A scalloped edging is easy, it only requires some consideration for the amount of scallops that will distribute evenly along one side of your square. It does require a lot of yarn, at least when your giant granny square starts to become giant, so make sure you start in a colour of which you have plenty :)


 I also like to make a flower of some sort to sew onto the centre of the blanket, to make it a little more interesting.

So now I have much less pink yarn in my yarn stash, and a lovely pink granny square for the next baby girl to arrive. Although, I don't know of any such baby girls yet...

Feeling blue, baby boy? Wear some stripes.

Item: Wannabe baby surprise sweater from Garnstudio
Yarn: Dale Merino baby woolin beige, baby blue, and sky blue
Grams: 163 g

 Knitting baby clothing from unusual patterns is always a treat to me. Naturally, since babies are tiny, their clothing is tiny as well, which makes it a quick knit.

This jacket pattern from Garnstudio is a twist on the ever-so-famous Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket. I've been planning to knit the real Baby Surprise jacket ever since I read about it the first time, but still haven't got round to it (it's still in my "Planned yarn consumptions" list, tututut). However, I came across this pattern, and by some mysterious inspiration decided to knit this first. Perhaps having something to do with taking a look at the original pattern for the EZ BSJ, and feeling a certain lack of motivation for interpreting a 40 year old machine-typed knitting pattern, however charming it might present itself?

The twist of the Garnstudio pattern is that it is knit in two pieces, which are sewn together in the end, straight across the back of the jacket (from neck to waist). In other words, you'll knit each sleeve with it's half of the jacket separately, and sew them together afterwards. This technique allows for longer sleeves than the original EZ BSJ (the EZ BSJ only has three-quarter length sleeves), which is not a bad thing in Norway (even though we're headed for summer, it's still only 7 degrees celcius today, brrr).

The most interesting part is that you knit each half identical, and that one of the halves is reversed (i.e., inside-out) before sewing them together. This gave me some additional problem-solving to consider, as I wanted a stripy sweater. When knitting the to identical halves, I had to consider that in one half, the stripes had to be knit from the reverse. Not at all difficult, really, it's just important to remember this during the knitting. It's rather annoying to realise what's going to happen at sewing time ;)

If you take care when sewing the two halves together and fastening loose ends, you'll actually be able to use the sweater inside out. Not very fancy-pancy if the sweater is knitting in one colour, but the stripy effect that comes from garter stitch with several colours is very nice on both sides, I think.  Nice to have the possibility of variation!

I knitted an attached I-cord along all the edges, This helps conceal fastening of loose ends. If you are knitting a garment that is to be reversible, it is always a good idea to change yarn on the ends of your knitting, rather than in the middle of a row. The attached I-cord also helps keeping the shape of the jacket, garter stitch easily stretches and can potentially ruin the shape of the jacket.

The size of this jacket came out rather bigger than imagined. It's a birthday present for my soon-to-be 1-year-old nephew, and by the current rates, it will still fit him on his second birthday. 

So for my baby nephew: if you're feeling blue, wear some stripes, they'll keep you warm! Happy birthday!