Daisy Sweater for Baby P

My current project - nearly 9 months in the making (NO, not that!) is a little red version of the Yarn Harlot's Daisy Sweater. I'm making it for my friend K's baby. K is an interesting character. She is not a baby person. She is one of those people who will tell a brand-new mother that their darling, minutes/days/week-old baby looks like Yoda. I was very careful how I told her when I was pregnant. She paused fora moment and then asked if she could name the fetus. I said sure. She said that it had to be ethnic (because DH and I are "too white") and she thought it should be named after a dictator, cause babies are "basically evil parasites who take over everything". Like I said, NOT a baby person. So for the duration of my pregnancy she called my belly Ho Chi Minh, or Baby Ho for short. This amused the heck out of my mother, who thinks K is hilarious, and irritated pretty much everyone elseI knew. Personally I chose to go with amused. Mostly because this IS the girl who took me to Paris for my Babymoon :) Got to love her right?

So, when she became pregnant herself I was VERY curious to hear what she would call her own belly. I asked if I could name it but she had a dictator all picked out. Though we call him Baby P for short, the P is short for Putin (bald, tricky, slightly evil). Yup, motherhood for this girl should be interesting.

This is the sweater so far - I just have to sew up, bind off or graft the hood. I haven't decided which one I'm going with yet.















This is how much yarn I have left over. I realised I was going to be short so I sewed up all the seams first and then figured I'd see how it went. I think I will have JUST enough.

Have you read the pattern for the Daisy Sweater? Totally cracks me up. When you have finished all the parts and are working on the neck the pattern reads "if you don't want a hood, BO all sts, and eat chocolate before following the finishing directions for the version of your choice". I love any pattern that has directions for chocolate :)

Then, at the end of the hood it reads "Divide stitches evenly onto 2 needles and graft, OR, if grafting makes you woozy, bind off and sew up". Hilarious.

I haven't decided about grafting versus binding and sewing. I don't think I've ever done it (grafting) before. I pulled up the tutorial on Knitty and we'll see how it goes. Other decision that needs to be made it on the buttons. I got the cutest set at Michael's a few weeks ago and I'm madly in love with both options. Originally I thought I would just go withe baseball theme (cause they match the sweater best):

But now I'm kind of leaning towards the multi-sport option. I just think the football looks a little off. Maybe if I mix them up a little. Too much white with the baseball and the soccer ball together. I'll have to play. Baby P is likely to be athletically challenged anyway (his parents are SMART but klutzy) so it's more for the "boy" theme to make his daddy happy anyway.

Specs: sweater was made from 2 balls of Bernat Softee Chunky. It's very soft and does not require any special washing instructions. Which I think K will appreciate. I used 5 mm addi circulars and I knitted the smallest size. It's going to be large-ish for a newborn, but won't go much beyond the 6 month point. Well, that will depend. My kiddlet is 18 months and only 22 lbs. The sweater kind of fits him. But so do some of his 6 month sweaters so I'm not sure he's a good model. I have a feeling that Baby P will be bigger.