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!