The Baby Sweater of Doom

 Due to some computer issues, I'm writing on my phone. I'm not quite done with the tea cozy -- other things, such as the titular sweater, have taken precedence. But it is coming along, and my muslin (made of green flannel scraps from an old project) fits the teapot pretty well. More details on that note should be available soon.

In the meantime, let's talk about baby things.

At this point in my life, a large proportion of my friends have gotten married in the last three years, and most of those are now having children. My advice to all those whose friends are starting to go get married (or are now in long-term relationships): start making tiny sweaters and adding Richard Scarry books to your Amazon cart now. The tiny sweaters take longer than you think, and it's surprisingly difficult to figure out which baby book you want to give people.

The main challenge in making baby things is that babies grow faster than you think, and making small clothes takes longer than you think. You want to welcome a small person to the world in sufficiently lavish style, and so you dust off your Alice Starmore books and get to planning.

Don't do this. If you're a more organized and reliable person than I am, it might work, but when you're in the middle of a baby boom, there's only so much time you can dedicate to each child. While it's very appropriate to put your best work into a gift, it's better to have a simple but completed sweater that both parents (and, presumably, the baby) will enjoy than to have an ornate sweater that's far too small for its recipient. (I knit, for choice, because I enjoy knitting small garments, because my sewing skills are much more tailored to woven garments, and because it's much easier to find cute knitting patterns for babies than cute sewing patterns for babies.)

On that note, in general, don't make newborn-sized clothes. The parents will probably have been given a vast variety of clothes in newborn sizes already. However, people are a little less enthusiastic about the 6-9 month stage and beyond. This gives you more time to work on the sweater, and the parents are grateful that you met a need. Go for the 6-9-month size, or, perhaps even better, the 1-2-year size.

The Mean Value Theorem implies that if you make a garment bigger than the baby at birth and smaller than the baby at adulthood, then, given that the proportions are roughly correct, the child will be able to wear the garment at some point. Lean into this. Use a generous gauge. 

I followed all this sage advice while making a sweater for my friend, whose baby was born in August. I chose what seemed to be a simple baby sweater from Weekend Knitting: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/babys-pure--simple-pullover--cardigan

It's rather charming, with its vertical garter stitch — cute, as befits a baby, but not cutesy. It is now February, and I have had to rip out my work and start again at least five times.

The sweater is made up in four separate pieces: front, back, and two sleeves. (I elected for the pullover variant.) The instructions are not difficult — once you understand what's going on. They are very, very wordy, and I, personally, found it difficult to visualize how the thing was supposed to go together. There aren't any instructions for sewing it together, and there's a knitted neckband that comes seemingly out of nowhere. 

I had to rip out and restart front, back, and the first sleeve. (The second sleeve was fine.) Once I figured out which side was the right side, where the buttonholes went, and how the armscye increases/decreases worked, I made the pieces pretty quickly. Mind you, I started this in early November.

Last week, I finished the second sleeve and was ready to sew the thing together. The instructions have you sew the front and back together at one shoulder (it buttons along the other one), and then pick up a seemingly arbitrary number of stitches along the neckline, to finish it. It took my three tries to fit in the right number of stitches.

After the neckband (which also includes one mysterious buttonhole), you sew the sleeve heads to the armscyes. There are no instructions how to do this on the buttoning shoulder. I finally just overlapped the edges and enclosed them in the seam.

Then, you sew one long seam up the sides of the front and back to the sleeve, and then down the sleeve. I did this.

Then realized I had somehow strained my wrist while sewing, and also had managed to sew one sleeve on inside-out.

I was not happy.

I still need to add buttons. But first, I need to take out those two seams and put the sleeve back in the right way.

However, since I wisely made the sweater in the 9-12-month size, the child is still not large enough for it, and the sweater should be done in time. Should.

Wish me luck.

(Note: due to aforementioned computer troubles, there are no pictures yet. I'll try to add some when I get a chance. For the present, just know that it is very obvious that the sleeve is sewn on inside-out.)