Another Baby Ensemble

I knit a baby sweater while anticipating the birth of our granddaughter in June 2023. I used some pinkish yarn from Valley Yarns in a 48% cotton/ 46% modal/ 6 % silk blend. Modal is a fiber make from beech tree cellulose that is a breathable, absorbent alternative to cotton. It is very soft. Not ideal if you are going to wash it a bunch of times, but I had it on hand.

The pattern I used is called “Another 5 Hour Baby Sweater”. It is knit in the round from the top down, my preferred method for sweaters. It is available for free on Ravelry. Click here for the pattern.

The sweater is knit in stockinette stitch flat, with rows alternating between knit and purl stitches. The first three stitches are always knit on every row, even on the purl rows, which makes a mock front band and keeps the knitting from curling over.

I made a mistake on one of the front openings. I purled all the way across and forgot to knit the last three stitches. I noticed it after I had knit about 10 or 12 more rows. I tried to fix it by undoing those columns (one at a time), and reknitting the stitches using a crochet hook. I did not do it correctly on every stitch and eventually gave up, but my attempt camouflaged the problem a little, and it is covered up by the other side with the button holes. I forgot to take a photo.

I don’t know if it took five hours, but it was not long before the baby sized sweater was finished. The color is more accurate in the earlier photos, the following photo looks washed out.

The sweater looked very small. Unless you are comparing it to an actual baby, it is hard to guess what size it is. I remember when my daughter, Britta, was about 7 months old we travelled to see my friend and her infant twins. Being twins and premature, they were quite small. Britta had seemed like an average baby until she was up next to the tiny twins. My friend commented that Britta looked like she was ready to get a part time job in comparison.

I sewed a pair of flowered pants for Britta when she was a baby. The fabric matches the sweater, but they did not seem like the same size as the sweater. This outfit looks cute in the photo, but I did not think the two items would work as an ensemble. The pants seemed to me a bigger size than the sweater.

Over the holidays when Blair was about six months old I got a photo of her wearing the pink sweater, with a onesie and pants I found in her closet. She is wearing a Hanna Andersson cotton knit pilot cap. The flowered pants were at our house, not available to try on.

I used to have Hanna Andersson pilot caps for my son James (Blair’s dad) when he was an infant. Following is a photo of James at two months old looking very pudgy and wearing his pilot cap. For the record, he grew out of his baby fat nicely and is now almost 6′ 5″ tall and slender.

After we got back from Arizona this spring, I wondered if the flowered pants might be the right size. When we went to James and Kelsey’s house I brought the pants along. The pink sweater was too small by this time. The flowered pants were the right size around the waist and bottom, but they were capri length. I don’t think they were supposed to be capri pants. Here she is wearing the flowered pants with a fishing shirt that Kelsey had as a baby.

I remember having a hard time managing all the baby clothes that people gave us. There were clothes that were only worn once, some that were never worn at all. I guess we will never know if the pink sweater and flowered pants might have worked together after all.