knitting in the dark

It is happening… I have hit that time in life where my friends are having their first babies. Fortunately, I am only close enough to one of the couples to warrant knitting something for their little bundle of joy (otherwise I’d be buried in baby knitting!). My mother made someone a Dale of Norway Riller cardigan a little less than a year ago - and I figured I would just use the same pattern for my friends Ryan and Megan instead of finding another baby sweater pattern. And of course I wanted to use yarn out of my stash so I modified the sweater to use aran-weight Rowan All-Seasons Cotton instead of the suggested fingering-weight Dale Baby Ull.

I wouldn’t usually choose such a traditional pastel color scheme - I love strong colors on little ones - but I already owned the yarn and they didn’t know if it would a boy or a girl. I figured I’d choose buttons after the baby was born to personalize it.

They had their little boy last Thursday and I went shopping for buttons yesterday and nothing really popped out at me so I bought supplies at Fiber Notion in Park Slope to make my own fabric-covered buttons and embroidered the baby’s initials and a little sailboat on them. My embroidery skills could use some (okay, a LOT) of practice, but I’m pretty happy with the way they came out; the kit made it really easy, but I don’t know how well they will hold up. Hopefully long enough for him to outgrow the sweater!

One of the most exciting aspects (for me, anyway) is that my total cost for this project was only $3, excluding shipping it to them.

pattern: Riller (ravelry project page)
mods: less stitches to use thicker yarn and knit seamlessly in the round bottom-up and then down the sleeves

In other knitting news, my friend Rachel who has been living in Australia for the past ten months sent me some tweedy wool yarn from New Zealand for my birthday earlier this month!

I think it might just be enough for a wooly vest… the tweedy grey is so great. Every gift she’s sent me from down under has been lovely - I received a super cute pencil case from kikki.K for Christmas that I’ve been using to hold needles and swatches and knitting tools…

And since it is Sunday afternoon, I am off to my newly formed knitting group. Have a great day!