Miracle of the Gulls Baby Cardigan

Finally finished the second version of the baby cardi! Just in time for the baby shower too. The blue one is adorable but my tension was different than the yellow one so is smaller. It might be due to the different yarn, or it could be because I knit them months apart, I am not sure.

But, they are adorable, and I have finished the pattern too.  Even love the little seagulls with the giant crickets chasing them, or the seagulls chasing the crickets, whichever you prefer.

I hope my friend likes the story of The Miracle of the Gulls woven into her baby’s sweater.

If anyone remembers, I mentioned that I wanted to try and make a topsy turvey doll of a seagull and cricket. Well, I did attempt it and am not pleased with the outcome. I am still thinking of working on it to make it better, but am putting it on hold for now. Here are some pictures of my first attempt.

Cricket Cardi

I finished the Baby Cricket Cardi and I love it. The crickets are as large as the seagull but I am ok with that. It makes them more menacing. I am excited to begin the second one in blue to see what it looks like. I tried the buttons that I made earlier but they just didn’t look right so I used a vintage button instead. Oh well, I might have a use for the buttons on another project.

So next up the seagull cardi in blue to test the pattern before I publish it. 

Topsy-Turvey

I have not forgotten that I said I wanted to try and make a toy. I definitely want to create something to go with the Miracle of the Gulls cardis. A topsy–turvey doll would be adorable – with a seagull on one side and a cricket on the other. A similar design to this wonderful Bird and Egg by Susan B. Anderson would work great:

I will need to elongate the egg shape and figure out how to do the cricket legs but I think I can do it. 

Buttons and More Buttons

As I think about the Miracle of the Gulls motif for the baby cardi that I am still designing, I am concerned that the connection between the crickets and the gulls will not be seen. I am making the pattern so you can either knit the seagull motif or the cricket motif. So in order to make the connection, I would like to have a seagull button on the cricket sweater and a cricket button on the seagull sweater. What a great excuse to shop on Etsy! But to my dismay, not many people make seagull or cricket buttons.

So I decided to make my own. I got images of old children’s illustrations and some fine art that has images of crickets or gulls. I then took the images and printed them on fabric. I just used the fabric printing paper found at most craft stores.

I think I want only one button on the cardi instead of several. And I made the images smaller or larger for different size buttons because I am not sure what size I will use yet.  I then put the images in the appropriate size circles in my page layout program. I cut out each circle and used a button tool bought at my local fabric store.

Ta da! Seagull and Cricket Buttons.

Now I need to decide which size to use and if I really only want one button. 

Worse Form of Hell

For this baby sweater, I would like to try and design a cardigan that has no seams. Like almost everyone else, I hate sewing up sweaters. But every pattern I see for seamless cardigans still has you picking up stitches for the button band. I think picking up stitches is a worse form of hell than seaming, so I definitely don’t want to do that. I am going to attempt to make a pattern with no seaming and all bands knitted in.

And here is my beginning attempt. The collar might turn out a little weird so I might need to tweak that. But so far it is going well. The yarn I am using is Handmaiden Camelspin. It is so beautiful and looks like ripening wheat.

I also have some Handmaiden Seasilk in ebony that I will use for the crickets.

I am sticking with Handmaiden yarn (it is incredibly beautiful!) for the seagull version and using Mini Maiden in Jacobean Blue.

The yarn is a bit expensive but so delicious to knit with and the cardis will hopefully only be one skein so you don’t have to sell your car to make a sweater.

Seagull and Cricket

I drew out little crickets and seagulls for the baby sweater but my husband says that the crickets don’t look like anything but blobs.

So I swatched them out and embroidered them to try and help.

The seagulls are adorable but the crickets do look a little blobish. I think maybe if I embroidered the legs, eyes and antennae in a contrasting color (like grey) it might help. I used stranded yarn across the back for these swatches but in the final version, I think intarsia would be better. The spans that the yarn has to travel is just too large. It means I will need a lot of bobbins, I think. I am leaning toward designing a cardigan that has either the seagulls or the crickets on the bottom marching around the edge. Maybe it can be two versions of the same design.