A dear friend of mine was expecting her fourth child. She already has three of the most gorgeous girls you’ll ever see, and this was her first boy. Obviously, most of those little garments saved from previous siblings weren’t going to be any good.
She asked me to make a couple of things for him. She’d found a fairisle babygro pattern on garnstudio.com (click on the web address and you’ll see the one), and she wanted a baby cocoon, too. (Scroll down for details of how I made it).
The babygro took ages. On 3mm needles in Drops Baby Alpaca Silk, the seed stitch was the fiddliest part. And I’m not a speed knitter. But, as you’ll see from the following pictures, it was worth every second:
And here is Arthur, less than a day old, demonstrating the very reassuring fact that there is plenty of room for growth <3
As for the cocoon, the pictures she sent me of those that she liked were of such a simple design that all I really needed was some approximate dimensions. It’s astonishing how much we overestimate the size of newborn babies, even though we’re know they’re (generally) seriously teeny.
The circumference of a baby cocoon needs to be around 17-18 inches, so you need to knit a swatch of your chosen yarn to work out how many stitches you need to cast on for the circumference.
I used Drops Fabel in Sea Mist Print, which is a self-patterning sock yarn, and knitted it in the round on 2.5mm circular needles.
When you’ve reached a length of 18 inches, you need to decrease. I simply used a [knit 4, knit 2 together] knitting the last few stitches if there were fewer than 6.
When I reached 20-ish stitches left, I knitted 2 together all around, broke the yarn and sewed it through the remaining live stitches, pulled to close and sewed the ends in.
And look!
Perfection <3
(With massive thanks to Arthur’s mummy, Imo, for allowing me to share her new baby with you).
