Is she or isn't she?
With some women, it's really not obvious.
I don't name names on this blog, so we shall call her The Artist. She's our pastor's wife's sister, and I'm not 100% sure but I believe what happened was that she came over to stay with her sister and family just before lockdown, and then lockdown hit and she was stuck here for a while. She put down some roots, and then she ended up marrying the son of one of our other elders, so she's here to stay now for the foreseeable future. And she is an extremely talented artist, so we're lucky to have her; she does a whole lot of colouring materials for the children and illustrations for the wider church. If we do an evangelistic leaflet, most likely she designed it.
Anyway, when she first joined us she was as thin as a rake; but on Sunday I noticed that she was looking a little more, shall we say, filled out, and I thought "is she just putting on a bit of weight, or is she pregnant?" As it happens, I have lunch with her mother-in-law almost every Tuesday, so I made a mental note to ask. And, in the end, I didn't have to ask. It turns out that she's not only pregnant, but she's also due on the 30th. I was flabbergasted.
Well, you know what that means, don't you? I suddenly have a baby jumper to knit!
And that, in turn, sounds to me like a very good excuse to talk about my favourite baby jumper patterns, of which I have several. The one in the feature photo is definitely top of the list. Lots of heavy cabling and a V-neck? And it's not a raglan? That ticks all the boxes straight away! (I don't much enjoy picking up all the stitches for a V-neck, but I really do like doing them once I get into them. And I don't like raglans because you have everything sitting around on stitch holders, whereas if it's straight up and down like this one you can knit the neckband on as soon as you've finished the back and front.) I will admit that I do hack this pattern. It looks terribly impressive in the photo, but what you don't see is that it's meant to have a plain stocking stitch back. Well, plain stocking stitch makes me cry, so I just work it to match the front; this requires a few decreases on the last row, but those are very straightforward - you don't need to do any fiddly placing.
Rudolf here is probably my second favourite. The jumper, not the reindeer toy (which I've never knitted). This one is a little unusual in that it's all done on 4 mm needles, rather than using a thinner pair for the welts as is standard practice. I have one word of warning about this pattern, which is that if your DK is a bit on the thick side, you might want to choose a different one. It definitely works best with thinner DK yarns, as otherwise the neck dips very low at the front. Also, in common with quite a few of these patterns, it tells you to cast off at the back neck and then pick up from that horizontal row when you're knitting the neckband. I never do that. I won't pick up dead stitches if I can leave myself a row of live ones. It just makes for a much neater finish.
I did this one very recently for the previous youngest member of our congregation (one of those with a rather obscure Old Testament name). The first time I knitted it, it drove me crazy; I just could not get into the swing of the pattern at first because of the rice stitch being actually within the cable diamonds as well as outside them. But I did like the finished result, so after recovering a little I did another one, and that was when it clicked. Now I can do this one just as easily as I can all the others. I must have done about five of them by now.
This is another really nice knit - simple, but highly effective. That's a slip-stitch rib between the cables which is curiously satisfying to work. I never do the stripes, so that immediately makes it less obviously crickety, but it's definitely the sort of thing I'd do with contrast welts. This was the pattern I used for that wonderfully loud fuchsia pink creation I made a little while ago.
Ah... this one. It has rather odd sizing. Most baby jumper patterns (except those specifically labelled for premature babies) start at 0-6 months, then 6-12 months, and so on. This one has an 0-3 months and 3-6 months size. I now just don't bother knitting the 0-3 months size, since the 3-6 months size is not going to swamp a newborn. Those aren't actually eyelets but columns of purl stitches; the effect is very delicate. The only thing I really dislike about the jumper pattern is the neckband. I am firmly of the opinion that a roll of reversed stocking stitch on top of a neckband is too babyish even for an actual baby. I just knit a couple more rows of ribbing.
This is a nice pattern, but I do have to be near the computer when I'm knitting the middle bit, just so I know which rows to cable and which rows to start and stop the narrow rib panels between the cables. (Like all these patterns, it's a PDF.) And you'll obviously have guessed by now that I hack the sleeves. There's comfortable room for four simple rope cables up them, and that definitely enhances the design. Much as I like V-necks, I normally do the round neck on this one, because the V doesn't always sit too well with the cables.
This one is very much a traditional aran translated into DK to work on a baby; I happened to have a cream DK yarn with little tweedy neps, so when I decided to knit this one for one of the multitude of church babies a couple of years ago, that was the obvious yarn to choose. (Mummy and Daddy love arans, so they absolutely raved over it. I'm not sure the actual recipient had any thoughts on the matter; he was probably too busy trying to make some kind of sense of the world as a whole to take much notice of a cabled jumper!) The three smallest jumper sizes have a back button fastening, which I'm not entirely sure is strictly necessary, but I put it in anyway. It's not much trouble to work.
Incidentally, you may be wondering why I don't do cardigans. The thing is, I do, occasionally, provided I know exactly how the parents feel about buttons. My personal opinion is that it doesn't matter one way or the other, especially not on a baby (for my own clothes I have a preference for buttoning left over right - I just find it easier - but that's not a problem because I can make them like that); however, you would not believe how many parents will reject a perfectly good cardigan because it buttons "the wrong way" for their little girl/boy. So I make jumpers, and then that problem doesn't arise. There was, of course, the woman who showed up at the food bank, looked through half a dozen jumpers I'd knitted, and sadly expressed the opinion that none of them was suitable for a little girl; I had no idea what she was talking about at first, as all my food-bank jumpers are strictly unisex, but it turned out she meant none of them was pink. I can do nothing for that sort of parent except to pray fervently that her poor little daughter is allowed to choose her own clothes as soon as possible. (It is worth mentioning that I once had a friend come to me and demand to be taught how to sew because she was having so much trouble getting ready-to-wear clothes for her daughter that weren't pink. With that attitude I have total sympathy. There are so many colours in existence, and it seems totally unfair that any child should be condemned to wear only one of them, whatever colour that is.)
There are a few more patterns that I like, but if I talked about them all here it would end up being rather a long post, and I have stuff to do... like knitting The Artist's firstborn a nice jumper! I am thinking perhaps a sunshine yellow. That would really sing, wouldn't it?
