This is a great little pattern! It’s clear, well-written, and easy to follow. I converted it to a cardigan because I find cardigans much easier for smaller babies (and also because the steek gives me a place to hide all those ends!).
I have little experience with making color combinations in Fair Isle-type knitting, and it shows in this piece :) I was playing with warm colors against cool colors, and I thought it would be fun and interesting to segregate them like this. As I worked my way through the yoke, I felt like the warm and cool sections were too disconnected, so I inserted a couple of warm-color rows to create some continuity. I’m happy with how that worked. I also like the many small, not necessarily related motifs in the yoke, making for a mosaic-like effect.
I am thrilled with some of the knockout color combinations that emerged in this piece: Turkis/Frosch (and that kelly-green Versuch) and Cassis/Kurbis/Clementine are rocking my world. More swatching is definitely called for.
Modifications:
Didn’t want to knit this yarn at the pattern gauge, so I chose a needle size that gave me a pleasing fabric and went up a size to compensate. I probably would have been happier going down one more needle size, but this works.
I changed the colorwork bands in the yoke because I got tired of repeating the same little square flower motif, and also because I needed to incorporate colors from the body.
With my gauge, the yoke decreases as written are not steep enough, IMO, and result in a yoke that is too tall (at least in the one-year size), so I made some mods to compensate as I went along. If I knit this again, I’ll calculate it out before I start.
I couldn’t manage these tiny sleeves in the round with so many color changes; I had one big spiderweb of holes running up the underside of the arm. Bleah! So I frogged and started over, working flat. I cast on two extra stitches for a seam allowance, and was able to neatly weave in all the ends as I went along. (This changed the spacing of the stripes a bit, but it’s okay.) When I got to the stranded bands at the top of the sleeve, I joined in the round (using the seam allowance as the last set of increases), and sewed up the rest of the sleeve afterward.
Added a 9-stitch steek to make it into a cardigan. Worked garter-stitch buttonbands to match the hem and cuffs, then decided they weren’t wide enough to accommodate the buttons-over-snaps closures I had planned. So I added applied I-cord in yet another color, with little loops for buttons, and voila! it all came together.
Gauge:
31 sts/32 rows=4 inches in stranded pattern, after washing, blocking, relaxing.
cast on post