Finished Pattern: Dappled
My baby set pattern went on sale today in Sanguine Gryphon’s Etsy shop! Here are a few of my informal shots of the cardigan and hat set, with Leona as model:
In my initial design of the pattern, I knit a prototype version of the sweater in white, pink, and brown. I called it my “neapolitan baby sweater,” and I gave it to a darling baby named Gwendolyn.
Pattern: My own. Available from Sanguine Gryphon Fiber Arts (along with Gryphon’s lovely hand-dyed yarn!).
Size: Shown in the six-month size, I believe. The chest measures 20.5 inches, and it is 9.25 inches long. The sleeves are intentionally a bit short — about 6 inches long from the shoulder.
Yarn: Prototype is knit in Brown Sheep Nature Spun worsted in N91 (Aran), with dots in Knit Picks Palette in Bark and Petal. The pattern is in Sanguine Gryphon Undertow in Tangle, Seaweed, and an unnamed color.
Yardage: Prototype: one skein (245 yards) of Nature Spun. Pattern version: 2 skeins of Undertow for sweater and hat in the six-month size. The newborn and 3-6 month sizes can be knit with a single skein.
Needles: US size 8 and 6 straights and circular, as well as US size 3 double-pointed needles
Gauge: Prototype has 5 stitches per inch. Pattern has 4.5 stitches per inch.
Notes: This was a fun pattern to create, and it worked out as I had hoped it would the first time, which was awesome. I wanted to come up with a pattern that could be knit using a single skein of Gryphon’s beautiful Undertow, so a baby sweater seemed a good choice. I also wanted to come up with a way to embellish the sweater, and I found this method of knitting circles in one of Nicky Epstein’s books. I can’t remember anything else about the design process at this point — guess I should have written this up sooner!
I wanted the cardigan to snap closed behind the circles. An earlier experience with sewing snaps directly onto my knitting taught me that knitting is too stretchy for this to work well, and thus I had to find a way to stabilize the snaps so they wouldn’t stretch out the knitting and be difficult to open. I went looking for snap tape at the local craft store, but they didn’t have any. I bought plain old ribbon instead. I cut two pieces of ribbon to approximately the right length, sewed one end under on each piece (just tacking it down), sewed on each half-snap in the right place so it would fall behind a circle (just eyeballing all of this, not actually measuring, and sewing no less than four of the pieces on upside down so that I had to do them over), basted the ribbons onto the cardigan with contrasting thread (cutting and basting down the other end of the ribbon in the process), and then sewed the ribbons down as I had basted them. All of this took an age, but I’m absurdly delighted with the result and feel very strongly that it was worth it.
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:34 am
Very cute sweater set! Love those flowers! and the baby is very cute as well.
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:58 am
Congratulations & best wishes with selling the design. I do like the neopolitan best though!
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm
That looks great! Good job!
July 2nd, 2007 at 6:27 pm
My stars, what an amazingly beautiful model for your fantastic creation! Get that child a knitting-model contract! (Any Debbie Bliss scouts out there?)
July 6th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Congratulations on your pattern sale! And interesting/colorful/clear/composed photography! Gwendolyn is so precious and exuberant. Don’t you just love how the pictures show off your creation? I like how the snaps look. (You even have Leona’s half-grin making the hat photo pop.) All very beautiful!