Thursday, November 18, 2010

Knitting for Baby Lucas

My best friend had her first baby, a boy, on September 2nd ... which provided me with the perfect excuse to knit lots of cute baby stuff! He's now about 2 1/2 months old, and seeing as I'm going to be visiting them this weekend I thought it would be nice to bring him a little something. This led to me going through the things that I had already made for him, so I thought I'd share.

This hoodie, which zips up the back, was one of the first things that I made for him. The pattern is available for free here. It's a fantastic basic pattern, and I've ended up using it several times. I added some narrow contrasting stripes to this one, which was made using Knit Picks Shine Sport in "River" and "Cream".



Since I loved the way this turned out, I ended up making another one for him using the yarn I had left over from the first one. This time I reversed the color scheme, using the cream as the main color and the blue as the contrast. I also increased my needle size in order to make a sweater that would be about a 6 month size - I used US4 needles for the ribbing on the cuffs and bottom and US6 for the main body.




Next, I made the hat and sweater from this layette pattern using Crystal Palace's Bamboozle yarn in "Neptune". This turned out cute,  but I'm not as in love with it as the first sweater. The yarn was a little on the splitty side, so it wasn't as nice to work with, and while the finished project felt nice, it wasn't super soft. Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the completed sweater before I gave it away, so I only have the hat to post :(



I came across this pattern for "no scratch" baby mittens, and they looked sooo cute! For Lucas, they're not really to prevent scratching, but they do make nice little mittens for when he's outside ... it certainly seems like they keep his hands nice and toasty! They required hardly any yarn at all, so I used some of the left over blue Knit Picks yarn from the sweater I made.





Lastly, I made him an adorable little earflap hat with a pompom on top. I used this pattern, which is available as a free Ravelry download. After looking through some of the other projects made using this pattern on Ravelry, I wasn't thrilled with the shaping of the top of the hat, so I did make a few modifications when it came to decreasing for the top. I've made notes on the changes I made on my Ravelry page for this project. Basically, once the hat measuring 5" from the ribbing (which is when the pattern tells you to start decreasing) I ignored the pattern instructions and decreased as follows:

First decrease row: K10, K2TOG around
Next row: K9, K2TOG around
Continue decreasing like this, knitting one less stitch between decreases each row. End with a row of K2TOG around. Thread yarn through remaining stitches and weave in end.

I used Knit Picks Felici self striping yarn in "Rainbow", which is sooooo soft! I love it, it was perfect for this project. I hindsight, I probably should have made sure to begin each earflap at the same point in the stripe pattern so that they would match, but it's not a big deal.





So, after reviewing what I had already made (and considering that I only had a couple of days to work with) I decided to make a quick pair of mittens using the Felici yarn to match his striped earflap hat. I'm using this pattern this time, and using US4 needles for a larger size since he's no longer a newborn. I've already finished the first mitten ... here's hoping I can finish the second one before Saturday!

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