Helena sweater

Babies must be warmly clothed, I’m sure you will agree with that, gentle reader. And when a baby is expected by a knitter who has knitterly friends, one can be assured that said baby will be warmly clothed, indeed!

Rachel (aka trtlgrl) has been sporting a baby-bump for quite some time now, and I was afraid that trtlbby would arrive in the world before I could knit something for the poor wee tyke, because, as we’ve already established, babies must be warmly clothed. So a couple of weeks ago I spent all of my free, non-sleeping minutes frantically knitting.

I started with this little sweater: the Helena sweater
by Alison Green Will from knitty.com. I changed it just a little bit. I liked the picot edging so much that I made it go all the way around the sweater, instead of just at the bottom. And I have only one tie – an I-cord tie that looks like an extension of the purl ridges at the top of the skirt.

little booties

When I managed to finish the sweater with time to spare, I also whipped up these little booties. In flipping through the book 50 Baby Bootees To Knit by Zoe Mellor, I saw that these had the same picot trim as the sweater. It almost seemed like they were made to go together.

The booties were a fun, fast knit – hardly any time to knock them out. I used the same yarn to edge the booties as edged the sweater. I made just a few changes — see the particulars below.

Contrary to appearance, the booties are both the same size. Perspective is a funny thing.

trtlgrl and trtlbby-bump

Rachel seemed happy with the sweater and booties. Can’t tell if the trtlbby-bump is happy or not, but we’ll assume she is. (Just outside the picture to the right is a pile of hand knit trtlbby swag that guarantees she will be neither cold nor naked.)

And I just made it, as trtlbby will be here sometime in the next week, guaranteed.

The Particulars:

Sweater:

• Yarn: the sadly discontinued Ella Rae Silkience (41% cotton, 39% Modal, 12% Silk, 8% Rayon), 119 yds/108 m per 500 g skein, in colorways 16 – Grass Green and 20 – Berry
• Needles: a pair of Addi Turbo 24″ circulars, US#3 (3.25 mm) and a pair of Addi Lace 24″ circulars, US#2 (3.00 mm)
• Pattern: Helena sweater by Alison Green Will
• Modifications: Instead of having a garter border around the neck and front, I made the picot edging go all the way around. I made a single I-cord tie rather than two garter-stitch ties.

Booties:

• Yarn: Dale Of Norway Baby Ull (100% Merino wool), 180 yds/165 m per 1.75 oz/50 g skein, in colorway 0020 – Cream — I used maybe 1/2 of the total. The trim is leftover Berry Silkience from the sweater.
  
  
• Needles: US#6 (4 mm) Addi Turbo and Addi Lace circulars
• Pattern: From the book 50 Baby Bootees To Knit by Zoe Mellor
• Modifications: I used different needles so that the size is more like 6-month. I used Judy’s Magic Cast-On to start so that the bottom of the foot could be grafted together. The booties were to have little bunny ears and bunny face, but I decided they were too cute as-is and left those off. (Besides, these were supposed to be newborn size. The thought of a 6-month-old trtlbby possibly jamming an ear into her little mouth and maybe choking gave me the heeby-jeebies.)