WHERE have I BEEN, you ask? Well, after a crazy run of brother-in-law’s wedding, my family visiting, sick babies, and general craziness and havoc, I’ve had my hands full. But I have not been idle! Actually, that’s not entirely true. With the change of seasons, I got a little craft-stuck: I could not, for the life of me, think of anything to make that wasn’t a big fluffy scarf or mittens or some other wintery thing. Plus, I was bored of making the same ol’ projects. So I decided, what the heck. I’ll give something more complicated a try. How ’bout a baby sweater? Sure. And if it’s a disaster, I’ll rip it all out and wind the yarn back into a ball and never speak of it. It will be my disastrous little secret.
So I hopped on Ravelry and searched through their patterns, automatically tossing out anything that was knitted (duh, since I don’t knit), super girly, or super complicated-looking. This left me with just a handful of patterns, two of which I thought had the most potential. Then I got freaked out by the prospect of sleeves, and piecing it together, and ending up with something inside out… Which left me with the Bombay Love pattern from Yarny Days. And PEOPLE, this pattern ROCKS. It rocks in an all-caps, italicized kind of way. It is adorable and so easy it’s shocking.
This short-sleeved little sweater is crocheted in one piece from the top down. There is nothing to piece together, no separate sleeves to make, nada. And it’s worked in double crochet, so it goes very quickly. As usual, I made a couple modifications of my own, but nothing major to the pattern.
Here’s what I used:
- Lion Brand Wool-Ease yarn in Seaspray (for the sweater) and Red Barn (for the edging and closures). It uses less than one skein for a whole sweater!
- A size J-10 (6 mm) crochet hook
- A large-eyed needle
- 2 buttons
A few notes:
- You can easily change the size of the sweater by changing hook and/or yarn size. Mine is larger than hers (worsted weight yarn and a J hook gave me a sweater that I think is 6 month size, meaning, it was a little small on my boys) but it took a couple tries to get it the size I wanted. I started another sweater, again with worsted yarn, but this time with an H-8 (5mm) hook and it’s more like a 0-3 month size.
- The pattern author recommends 2 sc in each corner when you’re doing the edging, or the edges will curl. I’m still having a little curling, so I would recommend 3 sc in the corners.
- I sewed on my buttons so the sweater front is crossed over the other side. I like this look, plus mine turned out a little wide, so this made it narrower. For a very chubby baby, this might make it too slim.
- The pattern author made her sweater closure by knitting a cord with double-pointed needles. Like I said, I don’t knit, so you have a couple options. You could buy a little bit of cord or ribbon, or (and this is what I did), you could crochet a simple closure. Here’s how I made mine: ch 26; leave enough chs to make a loop that your button can pass though; sc in each remaining ch and fasten off.
So gather your yarn and head over to the Bombay Love pattern at Yarny Days. Get a move on!
