FO: Baby Velociraptor Sweater

Disclaimer: No dinosaurs were harmed in the making of this post.

One of my knitting group friends is expecting her first baby in a little less than a month, and last December, before the Great Yarn Embargo went into effect, I purchased two skeins of Sweet Georgia Yarns Superwash Worsted in the Riptide colorway, intending to make a baby sweater for this wee one. However, I had trouble finding an infant-sized pattern that a) was intended for a worsted weight yarn; b) wouldn’t be obscured by the dark color and would play nicely with the squishy, finely plied yarn; and c) I liked enough to want to knit. So I did what any sane person would do and designed my own.

Because of the way this yarn is plied, I knew it would be well suited to a cable pattern, but I didn’t want a busy, fussy cable pattern—I figure it’s the baby’s job to be fussy, not her clothes’. I found a fun, swerving cable pattern from a Barbara Walker treasury, and did a bit of a gauge swatch. I discovered that one repeat, plus a few stitches on either side, would be wide enough to theoretically fit a tiny human.

There’s some debate about whether it will ever actually fit a tiny human, but the yarn and this pattern are incredibly stretchy, so I say it will. And if it doesn’t, well, there’s always a doll or something. I did the bottom back and forth in seed stitch, creating a little button tab (with a non-functioning button that I sewed onto both layers of the button tab). Then I joined the seed stitch strip in the round, worked a brief twisted rib on the side, and started the cable pattern.

When it came to the arms, I separated the body and used a cable cast-on to add a bunch of stitches. They were worked in reverse stockinette, and then at the shoulders, I knit a functional button tab onto the front side, and sewed buttons to the back. I loved the pop the yellow buttons provided against the dark blue-green yarn.

Only time will tell if this does ever fit a real, tiny human, but here’s hoping!