Ducky Baby Cardi

I knit a little sweater for the baby girl my friends Nicole and Joe are expecting in March. Hopefully the sweater provides the incentive they need to pick the lovely name of Lorene for their child.

The pattern I used was the in threes:  a baby cardigan. It took a bunch of looking to find a yarn. Ideally I would have used something from my ginormous yarn stash, but I have almost all wool and there’s no way I’m giving a baby gift that has to be hand washed. I also didn’t want to use 100% acrylic. So I went to Michaels, and after much searching I ended up with 2 balls of Martha Stewart Extra Soft Wool Blend yarn. It’s pretty expensive for 65% acrylic but I used a coupon.

This knit up very quickly, but as I’m discovering I am not very good at knitting a smooth stockinette when I am knitting back and forth. I also wanted duck buttons, which given the dearth of fabric stores in my area, was a challenge. I actually found these perfect blue duck buttons on Etsy, but they were in New Zealand and would have cost $15 with shipping. In the end my Mom saved the day by finding what I needed at Jo-Anns. They were still not cheap. I needed 3 and 2 pack was $4.50. D’oh!

I got lots of compliments on this sweater at the baby part and Nicole loved it. Yay! On a side note, I made the 6-12 month size, but it looked a bit bigger than that.