Not my first choice in yarn or colour, but it was a good way of using up a couple of balls from my stash.

Cleckheaton Country Naturals has a recommended tension of 22sts on 4.00 needles, but I think its quite a thick DK yarn and used 4.50 needles, achieving a tension of 19 or 20sts and its by no means a loosely knit fabric.

The 3rd pic is probably the most accurate for colour.

I was iffy about this yarn at first, but have changed my mind… I love it! After washing it softened up beautifully and once the buttons were sewn on the colour really grew on me.

The buttons were the right sort of slatey blue to match the flecks in the yarn, and I liked the light/dark “speckliness” of them.

This is a very easy quick pattern. I’ll be making more. It would be lovely knitted in cotton for a summer baby boy…. there’ll be a new grandbaby for me in November, which will be hot weather, so if its a boy I’ll be knitting a few cotton versions.

MODS
I used longtail cast-on, making the first row the RS so that the cast-on would have a garter stitch appearance and blend into the garter edging. Therefore I worked 11 rows instead of 12 rows for the edging, as 12 rows would have meant the right side of the work would show the “wrong” side of the cast-on.

Buttonholes were worked on rows 6, 16, 26, 36, 46. This meant there were 3 rows worked after the last buttonhole, which I think was better as the top button wasn’t so close to the edge.

I omitted the SL1 stitch at the beginning of the rows as I prefer the look of garter edging to the chained appearance achieved by slipping a stitch.

Neckline cast-off:
I used TECHknitter’s excellent tutorials -
Binding off in the middle of a fabric: starting the bind off (see 4th photo)
and
Binding off in the middle of a fabric - ending the bind off

Cast-offs - If on the right side, I cast off purlwise so the cast-off would merge into the garter stitch.

Garter Kitchener Stitch was done using instructions on Knitty.com.

I’m not sure why the side buttonband was only 3 sts wide whilst the buttonhole band was 5 sts. Next time I might consider casting on 2 extra stitches and making both side bands 5 sts wide.