Knitting for Babies: Larger Cloudy Mint Layette

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

This is the coincidentally larger-sized layette set that's part of the Cloudy Mint Hand-knit Baby Layette that I heavily modified to match both in eyelet pattern and in Baby Bee Sweet Delight 'Toy Elephant Marled' and 'Mint Charm Pomp' colors. The larger set has the mint pomp color blocking which adds additional interest.

We start with the McDreamy Booties that are mostly the same as the original pattern, although I merged much of it with the seamless top-down baby booties to reduce the quantity of seams and ends I had to weave in. There's something a little funky with the feet part of these, they seem disproportionately small compared to the rest of the bootie, perhaps...

And there's also the Eyelet Ear Flap Hat which is heavily modified from the hat in Lion Brand's Lullaby Layette. Mostly, I made it a little larger by using larger needles and adding an extra repeat of the eyelet pattern. And then I added on some post-hoc ear flaps to give 'em a different style from the smaller, original hat.

The Lullaby Layette Blankie is slightly modified, with 2 green X 1 gray stripes, and a seed-stitch (rather than garter stitch) border. There isn't any garter stitch elsewhere in the layette, except the bottom of the McDreamy Booties, so I decided to swap it out.

The most obvious modification to the Lullaby Layette Cardigan is that I added the mint color blocked yoke. The cardigan is, however, heavily modified in a less easy to detect way. I knit it entirely in the round, with the bottom cardigan piece being one piece (rather than 3!). I also knit the two sleeves simultaneously using the Magic Loop Two At a Time Method - my first time using magic loop, and I decided to do 2AAT, who knows why. It worked out well, though, especially once I got it going (lotsa practice doing the initial set-up...) This pattern is not particularly well-written, even though it's from Lion Brand Yarn, but I was able to figure it out and do my serious modifications. This little bottom-up cloudy mint cardigan is my first hand-knit sweater!

The Teeny-tiny Knit Mitts were modified to have the Purl-3-together eyelet (from the Lullaby Layette) on one side, and Stockinette on the other. I had to modify the number of stitches cast-on to accommodate the eylet, and so these mitts are sized somewhere between the medium and large options. The mint I-cord is actually from a different ball of yarn, as I had run out of yarn by this point in my Layette-making process.