Sweet Little Baby Knitting

Finally, a post about knitting.  I say finally because I have not had much time to knit lately, but I love it and am so glad I was able to finish up a project to write about.  Some dear friends of ours just had a beautiful baby girl.  They wanted to do newborn photos and asked if I would make a matching diaper cover and hat ensemble for the event. 

I found two great patterns on ravelry.com.  Pretty much the bees knees when it comes to knitting patterns.  They also have crochet and loom knitting patterns.  All it requires is an email address and you are ready to go! 

Here is what I made:

The patterns were pretty straight forward.  The pattern for the diaper cover can be found here.  I made this in the size suggested for newborn babies and it was still kind of big.  I would size it down by one or two multiples of 8 (8 or 16 stitches) if I were to make it for a newborn again.  I would also probably decrease all the lengths by 1/2 and inch for proportion.  I say this with a disclaimer; I tend to always need to size down patterns.  I don't know if I knit loosely or tend to stretch the yarn a lot or what, but everything I make seems to come out bigger than it should.  I also decided that I wanted the diaper cover part to be a different color from the main skirt part.  Changing colors was simple and I simply just switched when the pattern called for separating the stitches for the skirt out.  My last word to the wise on the skirt/diaper cover, use circular needles.  I tend to choose double points for circulars for knitting small things because I hate having to deal with a long cord.  That does not work for this pattern because when you separate out the stitches to make the little diaper cover, you essentially end up with 8 live needles when you are using double points.  That is crazy and results in a lot of dropped stitches (and for me, the need to start over).  Circulars are the best bet for this pattern for sure.

The hat pattern can be found here.  There are several things that I love about this hat.  First is that it is adorable and knitted up to be a good shape for a little baby head.  I also love that it uses a button because I love buttons and you can find so many cool ones.  The flower slips over the button; therefore, there is potential to make multiple flowers in different colors and it will go with anything.  The last thing I love is that the pattern goes all the way up to adult so I may be making her mommy a matching hat for winter.  How cute is that?

Of course you want to see it on the sweet baby, so here she is:

I love knitting for babies because their stuff is always so cute.  Plus baby things are small so it keeps projects quick and manageable.  Nothing is sweeter than a sweet baby wearing something I made.