More Baby Knits - Free Patterns On Ravelry.

The baby is doing fine and growing every day - or at least my belly is! He has started to kick and I'm a bit terrified how active he seems to be, I sure hope he calms down when he gets bigger, because I don't want to turn into a human punching bag. If there's any truth in the old wives' tales about predicting the baby's sex by the heart rate  he might actually be a she - but for now I'm just trying to think of him as a baby without any gender and knit unisex baby clothes in gender-neutral colors.

Starting to knit stuff for the baby has been like opening the Pandora's box for me: once I started I can't seem to stop! The funny thing is that I used to be a notoriously selfish knitter but now I don't seem to have time or inspiration to make anything for myself. I'm just so overwhelmed by all the great patterns to knit, all the lovely shades of yarn to use and how fast the tiny socks and hats knit up - and how super cute the little baby clothes are!

I've been taking the advantage of the free patterns available on Ravelry as well as the chance of using all the leftover skeins and other oddments from my stash. The baby now has matching yellow boots, a kimono-style cardigan and a cute little bonnet. When I bought the yarn I was planning to knit a sweater but as I wrote last week, even though I love the colorway I don't actually really want a yellow sweater. But it looks lovely as baby clothes, doesn't it? I still have a few more skeins left and I'm planning to knit a romper to match the set and use the rest for a striped baby blanket.

 

Hello, Sunshine!

Pattern: Baby Kimono by Elisabeth Jarvis

Yarn: Garnstudio DROPS Cotton Merino #15 mustard

Needles: 4.0 mm

The baby kimono was knitted flat from one sleeve to another. I had some trouble understanding the construction at first but I figured it out in the end. By the way, I don't think anyone in this modern world of unisex clothes cares about the side the buttons are on (especially with baby clothes) so I only made the button holes on the left front and on the right front I crocheted a chain of 6 stitches which I sewed to form a loop.

Demne

Pattern: Demne by Annie Cholewa

Yarn: Garnstudio DROPS Cotton Merino #11 forest green

Needles: 3.5 mm and 4.0mm

Having knitted the kimono first, the Demne cardigan was almost a piece of cake for me. (Otherwise I would have probably given up on the latter - the construction of it is even more complicated!) The construction of the Demne cardigan was very similar to the kimono but with the exception of multiple provisional cast-on:s.

The "knitsofacto" bind off... 

I tried to follow the pattern to the tee because I was interested in learning the new bind-off technique shown at the end of the instructions, but having done it for the first sleeve noticed that I didn't really like it at all. If I even did it correctly: there was no photo of the finished BO edge so I'm not sure how it was meant to look like. In case you are not planning to use the "knitsofacto" bind off, there is no use starting the first sleeve or the right button band with a provisional CO. Just cast on the normal way and go on from there. Note: if you skip the provisional CO remember to start the first sleeve with 6 rows of seed stitch!

Béguin de Printemps 

Pattern: Béguin de Printemps by Lili Comme Tout

Yarns: Garnstudio DROPS Cotton Merino #15 mustard and #22 dark green

Needles: 3.0 mm and 3.5 mm

My friend pointed out that it's important for a baby to wear a hat despite the weather so I thought I should knit some. I found this really cute pattern for a baby bonnet (also a free Ravelry download) and knitted two adorable little hats. For the first one I used leftover yarn from my Docklight sweater. The second one I knitted with the aforementioned yellow Drops Cotton Merino, but I changed the patterning on it to a purl bump zigzag that was used on the Raw Honey mitts. I also skipped the i-cord edge and strings and sewed a piece of fabric to the bottom edge of the hat. The fabric I used was Amy Butler's Cyprus Paisley in color lime. 

Baby Hat 2

Pattern: I Heart Cables by Justyna Lorkowska

Yarn:  Garnstudio DROPS Cotton Merino #21 heather

and for the pompom

Needles: 3.5mm and 4.0mm

The last two things I've knitted for the baby are a pair of baby boots and a cabled hat. I already used this hat patter earlier for the first baby hat I knitted but I liked it so much that I wanted to use it again. This time I used the odd skein of purple Drops Cotton Merino from my stash and added light brown pompom on top of it.

Autumn Leaves Baby Boots 

Pattern: Autumn leaves bootees / Høstløvsokker by Marianne J. Bjerkman 

Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Karisma #11 orange

Needles: 2.5mm

I made some stupid mistakes with the boots - mostly due to my inability to read the pattern correctly but in my defense it wasn't that well written - but they turned out fine in the end however looking a bit different than the sample... You can read my pattern notes on Ravelry to avoid making the same mistakes I did.

All of these patterns are free and can be found on Ravelry. A big thank you for all the designers who have put their work out there, it is really appreciated :)