To infantity, and beyond!

At the beginning of May, I started knitting a Baby’s first tattoo cardigan from Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation. I used some of my stash yarn, and while knitting, I figured out quickly enough that I had plenty of green and not enough yellow. So I started adding stripes to make sure I would end up with a complete cardigan.

I was planning to add an owl tattoo at first, but I then let go of the idea, since there are colours everywhere already. What do you think? Should I still add it, or will it be too much and is it better to use it for another project?

Materials used

• Yarn: Bergère de France Sport yellow (2 skeins, all gone) and green (2 skeins, about half a skein left)
• Needles: 3mm/US 2.5 (bamboo)

I did face some problems figuring out the pattern here and there. But I am pretty happy with the end result. Once you get through the glitches in the pattern, it’s actually fairly easy. And cute, of course. But I guess that’s the baby size.

Problems and how I solved them

Cardie part	What the pattern says	What I did
Left front/Right front	Change to MC and work in St st last 4 sts. With CC, work in seed st for front band to end	With MC, work in St until 4 stitches remain on your needles. Switch to CC and use seed st for the last 4 sts.
	Work raglan shaping at side edge as for back, at the same time when piece measures x from beg, end with a RS row and shape neck as foll:	Work raglan shaping at side edge as for back until the piece measures x from beg. End with a WS row. Continue raglan shaping at side edge, while starting to shape the neck at the center edge as foll:
	BO x sts and cont to dec x st at neck edge every row x times more	BO x sts at center edge. Continue to dec as follows: Left front: RS: shape raglan, k until last 3 sts, k2tog, k1 WS: p1, sl2 knitwise and p them together, p rem sts Right front: RS: k1, ssk, k until raglan shaping WS: p until last 3 sts, sl2 knitwise and p them together, p1
		There’s nothing in this pattern on whether you need to BO the fronts or not. For my own version, I had 3 sts left on my needles and kept them there, using them again later on to make the neck band. For the trekkie cardigan, I did BO. I don’t know why I had a different outcome, I just made it work. Sorry I can’t offer a clear explanation here.
Sleeve	Change to MC and work in St st, inc 1 st each side	Change to MC, k1, Llinc 1, k until 1 st remains, Rlinc, k1
	Work until piece measures x from beg	Work until piece measures x from beg, end with WS row
Finishing	with CC and RS facing, pu and k15 sts up right front neck…	For some reason, I only ended up with 12 sts instead of 15. Worked as well.

Since I already had this cardigan in my fingers, I decided to make one for my pregnant colleague as well. And since she’s a trekkie fan, I thought a baby trekkie cardigan would make the perfect gift.

For this one, I used Rowan Siena 4ply, which is a lot closer to the yarn the pattern suggests. It’s 100% cotton, which makes it a lot more slippery than wool yarn. It took some getting used to, but I do like the flow and lightness it gives the cardigan.

Then the tattoo. I knew that the Star Trek Voyager series is her favourite, but – not being a trekkie myself – I had no idea whether there were differences in logos or not. I believed google, searched for a good one and created a chart in MicroRevolt’s KnitPro. Only one problem: the smallest chart is 48 stitches wide, which was too wide for the cardigan. That’s the problem with baby sizes… So I started searching Ravelry. There are loads of good charts there, but all so detailed that they were way too big for what I needed. In the end, I figured out that charts for socks can’t be too wide either, so I went for the chart that came with the Star Trek socks pattern.

Materials used

• Yarn: Rowan Sienna 4ply red (3 skeins) and black (1 skein)
• Needles:  3mm/US 2.5 (bamboo)

I got the whole thing ready just in time last week. Not that my colleague is about to give birth just yet, but it was my last week of work before going on maternity leave. The last time I would see my colleague was lastThursday. I got the cardie to her on Tuesday. Plenty of time left 😉

We still need to wait a couple of months before the proud owner of this cardie is born. But I do have one message for him/her: Live long and prosper, little baby of the future.