Junior's First...

I can hardly believe what I’m about to say, but rest assured it’s true: I have two finished objects to show you!

The first is a little sweater that was a fun and satisfying knit.  This was my very first cardigan and button band experience, so I’m glad I got to try it out in a baby version.  The knitting and finishing were done on Saturday (you know, on the deck with a peach cobbler in the oven!), but I just blocked it yesterday and got the buttons sewn on today.

There are so many wonderful colors in this yarn that I new I wanted to have multicolored buttons to help show them off.  I ended up going to Michael’s (which is not known for its button selection) and was happy to find a bag of purple, green, and blue buttons of different sizes.  Here is how it all came together:

• Pattern: Little Coffee Bean Cardigan by Elizabeth Smith (Ravelled here) 6 month size

• Yarn: Purlsoup Fibers Worsted Weight, special edition colorway Sonia

• Needles: I did the ribbing on size 6/4 mm and the body of the sweater on size 7/4.5 mm needles.

• Mods: I knit the sweater in one color instead of stripes, but other than that I followed the pattern to the letter.

The second finished object is a product of my current “baby fever” knitting trend.  Another hat from the Wee Woolly Toppers collection.

• Pattern: Kilkenny from Wee Wooly Toppers by Wooly Wormhead, size Medium (Ravelled here)

• Yarn: Artyarns Supermerino, awesome yet unknown colorway, 104 yards/50 grams

• Needles: US 4/3.5 mm circular and double points

• Mods: I knit this as written until I got to the crown decreases.  I started off in pattern, but quickly realized it would use up more yarn than I had.  So I ripped back and did more swift decreases in garter stitch.  Made away with under a yarn of yarn left!

This was another fun and fast knit.  It starts out with the purled i-cord, which is something I had never come across before.  But I love how it matches the garter stitch.  You then work some increases to make the ear-flaps (twice) cast on some new stitches to connect them, and start knitting in the round.  That bit was a little fumbly for me, but once everything was connected it was smooth sailing.  The textured body of the hat is also very visually interesting but dead simple to knit.

One of my favorite things about both these projects (besides their obvious cuteness) is that they were each knit with one skein of yarn from my stash.  That’s a great thing about little knits, and I plan to do more stash-busting/baby knitting this way.

I have about 1 1/2 more baby projects to knit and then I’m out of ideas.  If you’re getting sick of mini knits around here, rest assured that I am in the beginning stages of an adult sweater for myself: Coraline.  More on that later…I’m actually headed off to do some swatching for that right now!

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