September 23, 2004

And the baby gift is completed! A fluffy baby sweater with very clever construction: The front piece is basically just a rectangular piece of fluffy yarn, and the back piece is an extra wide piece in a finer gauge yarn that wraps around the sides to the front. I've never seamed a sweater with this kind of construction before, so putting it all together was like working a jigsaw. As for finishing, the sweater has buttonbands at the back, so I didn't knit the neckband in the round. I picked up stitches along the neck, purled the first row so we'd have a charming little half ridge of garter at the edge, and then worked the neckband ribbing back and forth. [Footnote: If this sweater did not have a closure at the back, I would have knit the neckband separately and sewn it on using free-loop backstitch because babies have such adorably huge noggins and my cast-on edges are stretchier than my bind-off edges.] After the neckband was completed I picked up stitches for the buttonbands and knit them on. And of course, I documented all of this for you in a slideshow because we all like pictures:




Pattern details: Pattern from Phildar's Layette Hiver 2004 using yarns Oxygene and Brumes, and 2.5mm and 3mm needles. I knit the sweater in size 18-24 months so that the recipient can get a good amount of wear out of it. Even though all that ribbing on 2.5mm needles is like a valium at times, I enjoyed knitting this sweater and working the finishing details on it, and I learned some new methods of shaping in the process. The big plus: The baby's mother was really happy to receive it!

P.S. My favorite baby gifts to knit and give are now (in the order shown) sweaters, hats and toys. I tend to procrastinate when I knit booties, so I haven't been knitting those as gifts as much as I used to.

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