Ruthless Knitting Archive

I’m armed with a bevy of excuses regarding why I haven’t posted for a while, but instead I will tell you why I am posting today: I have a head cold. A seven-months-pregnant woman with a head cold is a frightfully uncomfortable woman, I must say, and I didn’t get very much sleep last night. Consequently, I cut myself some slack today and spent a good portion of my time sleeping and laying about. And then I thought, jeez, if I can’t get a blog post up today, when can I do it? So here we are.

First, an announcement: i have been busily reincarnating this website in a new location. From now on, all Ruthless Knitting posts will appear at http://ruthlessknitting.com, rather than here at the rather more awkward http://ruthlessknitting.ruthlessediting.com. Meanwhile, all the old posts and such will remain in place. Please update your RSS feeds and bookmarks and check out the site in its new location! i’ve done my best to get everything running smoothly over there; do let me know if you find any bugs. There will be new content over there quite shortly.

Okay, on to the good stuff. I have finished a baby kimono, and lo, it is cute. (Apologies for the rather sub-par pictures: I had to send my good camera in for repairs, and I didn’t have the skills to take non-blurry pictures with my brother’s camera, which I borrowed for these photos.) 

Pattern: One-Piece Baby Kimono by Cristina Shiffman for Mason-Dixon Knitting

Size: Newborn-ish (16" chest, 4" to underarm, 5" sleeve to underarm)

Yarn: Blackberry Ridge Wool/Silk Laceweight (25 percent silk, 75 percent wool; 350 yds per 2 oz. skein) in Deep Red for body, held double; leftover Kona Superwash sock yarn for I-cord

Yardage: 1 skein, slightly over 2 oz.

Source: Yarns by Design, Neenah, WI

Needles: US 5 (3.75 mm) bamboo straights for body, US 3 (3.25 mm) bamboo double-points for I-cord

Gauge: About 21 sts and 26 rows = 4" in St st

Notes: When I had about two inches left of knitting to do on the teensy sleeve of the orange-and-white-striped baby cardigan, I was struck by a strong urge to knit something — anything — else. So I whipped up this little baby kimono as a gift for my friend Martha’s baby, who was born preterm and therefore can be expected to be small enough to wear it for much of the winter.

I modified the pattern slightly because I thought the garter-stitch version would be too thick for my taste. Instead, I used garter stitch only for an edging and kept the rest of the sweater in Stockinette. I followed the directions for yarnover increases because I like the little line of holes this makes along the front, and I omitted sewing on two ribbons, choosing instead to do a single I-cord tie in a contrasting color.

It wasn’t until I had knit about two-thirds of the sweater that it occurred to me that one skein of laceweight yarn might not actually be enough to get the job done. As it happens, I had enough yarn to finish the body — just — but not enough to seam the sweater or to make the I-cord ties. Thankfully, I had some nice deep red leftover Kona yarn in my stash that I used for the ties, which I think gives the sweater a little something extra special.

(Interestingly, when I made a Baby Norgi sweater for Martha’s firstborn, I came so close to running out of yarn that I had to use the little leftover bits from weaving in the ends to finish the second sleeve. Something about knitting for Martha makes me improvident, it seems.)

All in all, this was a fun and simple pattern, and I can see why so many hundreds of these kimonos have been made.