Finished Project: Atticus Baby Sweater

Posted on 07/28/2008 by Andrea | Comments (3)
Filed under : Babies!, Finished Objects, Knitting

My mom and I both went to a baby shower tonight, where we both gave the mom-to-be some knitted items. It's so much fun to give knitted stuff as gifts; I would enjoy knitting even if it weren't for all the oohs and aahs, but they are a bonus.

As I was designing this, I sort of dubbed it the "Atticus" sweater in my head, since that was one of the joke names the future parents came up with for their baby boy. I liked the reaction it got at the shower; one person said she thought it should come with a little set of golf clubs.

Someday I might post the pattern, but it really needs a lot of work. It was something I knitted on the fly, and my notes are terrible. It will need at least one or two test-knits before the pattern will make any sense to anyone other than me.

A little bit about how I made this: I used Trekking Pro Natural (wool and bamboo), a lovely sock yarn to work with. I'm infinitely happier with picking up stitches than I am with seaming, so I made this without any seams. And I had lots of fun designing and knitting it. I'm sure I'll be making at least one sweater for my own baby using this basic template and varying the stitch patterns.

Now that I'm done with baby shower knitting, my attention turns to the Ravelympics. I've been "training" (aka, swatching) for Liesl, which I'll be knitting for myself in black Cascade Lana d'Oro (a gorgeous wool/alpaca blend). I'm excited for this pattern because it looks like it'll be a good layering sweater throughout my pregnancy. And after that? I've got a queue of baby knits a mile long.

Let the baby knitting commence

Posted on 07/13/2008 by Andrea | Comments (1)
Filed under : Knitting

I'm almost finished with a baby sweater, made out of this yarn - Trekking Pro Natura. It's a lovely yarn, made from wool and bamboo.

, originally uploaded by AMK.

The sweater is for a friend's baby shower, so I'm not going to post a picture of it at this point. Knowing I need to have this done by July 28 has knocked me out of my knitting rut. Well, getting to the second trimester of my pregnancy has also helped. I finally have some more energy and the pregnancy is starting to feel more real now - and both of those things are making me much more motivated to pick up the needles!

I stopped at Double Ewe yesterday and picked up three baby sweater patterns and some yarn. I have many more than three baby projects on my mind at this point. The sweater I'm currently finishing is of my own design and it's been such a satisfying experience designing it that I'm starting to get a few ideas for other baby sweaters I'd like to design.

I can sense already that I'm really going to enjoy designing baby knits. They're small, don't require a lot of yarn, and the trial and error part of designing isn't as painful when you're working on such a small scale.