Third Baby Jacket

Here's another baby cardy - a 'regular' one this time, as I selected the 3-6 month size.  After putting in loads of work on making a 0-3 months layette for a Chinese baby a few years ago - thinking an Oriental baby was bound to be nice and small, and her being big enough for 3+ months clothes at birth, I decided that I wouldn't be making tiny things for friends again.  I usually do something for when the little one is a few months old.

This one was a new pattern for me and I enjoyed it.  It was meant to be part worked in size 6/5mm needles and part in size 8/4mm, but I felt that the larger needles left the lacy part just too open, so I did the whole thing on 8s.  (Yes, I'm still using the old English sizes, partly as I have a bag of needles from my mum which are mostly in the old sizings).  As the little girl will be mixed race - half Philipino, half Serbian and therefore a little darker than average, I thought cream would be better than white and so got 2 50g balls of cream Sirdar Snuggly.

I found some lovely peach coloured buttons and decided to embroider a bullion rose design to match, as you can see in the drawing.  Multiple problems ensued.  For one, I'm still not confident with bullions, despite having experienced success on the wedding gift bellpull and a few previous projects, and so I delayed it, and procrastinated, and put it off.

Eventually, I realised I was actually getting stressed out by tiptoeing around it and just made myself get on with it.  The results were not good.  Not good at all.  For one, the thread was far too fine and I didn't have the right sort of colours in thicker types, so the knots didn't show up well at all, nor did they sit well. So, I abandoned the whole bullion idea and did a design in whatever suitable shades of pearl cotton #8 I could find.

I have almost a whole 50g ball of the yarn left, so I'm going to have a go at the matching hat.  Look out for that soon.

I've almost finished my black cardy now.  I've knit all the pieces and am working on the button band.

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2017