August 2011: I got gauge using 3.75mm needles. I knit longer sleeves and a longer body, so the baby would get more wear out of the cardigan. Sleeves can always be folded up. Plus munchkin #1 was more on the long side.

I’d had these custom mushroom buttons made (made by Buttons by Robin, and btw they’re washer and dryer safe). The buttons look way better on the grey border than on the colorful main body. I also only knit six buttonholes - that way I had 4 buttons left which I can use for another set of Saartje’s booties, or another cardigan etc. I knit the first and the last buttonhole 5 stitches from the edge and spaced the other buttons 8 stitches apart.

I’m really pleased with the finished project, and it looks a lot better than the first clownbarfy swatch (see the last picture for that swatch - it’s on the darker side, so imagine how crazy it looks in bright light). I made my sister promise to hold on to the buttons if she gifts the cardigan to someone else.

Btw, I made a matching hat!

July 2011: I originally bought the Wolle Roedel yarn, thinking that it would have long color changes. Yeah, I should have looked at the skein more closely. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the yarn looked very clownbarfy knit up. There was no way I’d wear socks in that color, and I could at the most imagine baby clothing in that color.

Still, I wanted a more muted color effect, since I couldn’t quite imagine that a parent would dress up their child in such wild color combination. But fortunately I had some Regia silk fingering, and after a lot of swatching I figured that the combined yarns looked pretty good together, and that I could knit up the offset cardigan in approx. worsted weight.

I had originally planned a version of the cardigan like Der Strickaere’s wee moose, but once I had decided on that the color combination, I figured I’d be better off knitting the cardigan like RogueSheep’s cardigan.