Baby Kimono, Take 2

It's actually taken longer for me to get re-organized, but I'm finally settling back into my routine here. The re-entry is the part of travel that I hate the most. I just downloaded 67 photos off of my camera (and that was a few days delayed because I could not find the cord), and am wondering why I took 17 photos of Shags, my brother's enormous cat. Oh well.

I worked on only one knitting project on my trip, and finished it up yesterday since the last bit required the sewing machine. I made this baby kimono before, and there were some issues I wanted to address.

Last time, there were two aspects of the kimono that I disliked. one was that the decreases didn't queue up nicely and made for an ugly border between the garter edging and the rest of the sweater. Second, when I picked up stitches for the garter edging, there were some small holes that got left behind.

Connie suggested that I knit through the back loop when picking up stitches to avoid the holes. Just that little twist in the yarn is enough to fill the space. She was right, though I wish I'd done it every time and not just where I suspected the holes would show up. I decreased right on the edge instead of one stitch in from the edge to avoid the unruly line of slanty stitches, and made sure to decrease only on the right side so that I had a little better control over the direction of the slants. This did the trick.



This is the finished sweater with the sleeves trimmed and sewn in. You can see that the hole issue and the decrease issue have both been solved. Last time I pinned the trim to the top of the sweater, and a dryer sheet to the bottom so that the sweater didn't get dragged and stretched by the feed dogs on the sewing machine. This worked fine except that it was really hard to pick the dryer sheet out of the fabric when I was done. This time, I used plain tissue paper, and it worked just as well, but was much easier to remove.



Here's the finished little sweater, trimmed and waiting for the arrival of its intended recipient, due in September. There will be a little matching beanie, but I'm still working on it.

The specifics: Harvey's Baby Kimono from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms, in Plymouth Yarns Dreambaby DK. I made the 6 month size, and it took just under 2 balls. Needles: US5 and US 6. Trim and buttons from Button Emporium and Ribbonry (I think I got 2 yards, and have about a foot left.)