Knit 3h baby vest

I love to knit, it keeps me physically occupied while I’m doing something that only requires (some) mental work. Or when I’m stuck somewhere where I can’t do anything else but knit, like in a car for example (when I’m not driving). I’ve been knitting as long as I can remember, and before that my mother and grandmother knitted from the beginning of history, my history at least. So it must be part of my nature. If not, then it must be nurture.

When I knit I like to knit simple things, things that I can knit on back and forth or in circles, for long periods of time before I have to think again or change my stitches. I dislike following patterns, especially if they are complicated and require you to count during the whole process. Not my cup of tea. That’s why I’m very happy that a few years ago I came up with the idea of knitting macbook sleeves. The pattern that I designed fits my knit wishes perfectly, so to say. The whole sleeve is made out of one piece (people keep on asking me how I do that, I keep on promising I will write a pattern, and I’ll do that, I promise), there is no sewing involved (which I don’t like). It’s just perfect, the only thing that I have to do is to combine colours and from that moment on I can just enjoy the knitting flow.

Now sometimes I try to knit different things, but I fail to finish some projects if the design isn’t as simple as I envisioned it to be when I started. I don’t mind if things take a long time to finish, but the time that it takes to finish something, should match my initial expectations. So when I knit a blanket I know this can take me months. When I knit a sleeve I expect it to take an evening.

In my self-imposed training to finish things I did decide though that I had to finish more side-projects than before, and the past weeks I therefore have been knitting some different things – and to my own surprise – I have already finished a few! 

A few weeks ago I finished knitting some very simple mittens for myself, which I’m very happy to have now, for those colder days that are coming up (I thought they would come sooner, but the day before yesterday ticked 28 degrees celsius here in the end of october). And most recently, as in: yesterday, I started and finished knitting a cute baby vest. There are tons of babies coming up in 2014 and I decided to make some things to be prepared for that. 

This vest was a real winner in my opinion. I think I finished it in just about 3 hours and it looks cute and fuzzy. I think it’s suitable for babies between 3-5 months. 

I made this without a pattern, so unfortunately I can’t share something very precise with you. But if you are like me and can somehow imagine how these more simple things are put together, then this is a very quick non-detailed explanation:

This vest is made out of 3 pieces that are crochet together. You have the back side and the two front sides. The two front sides are identical to each other and together they are almost identical to the back side. You basically first knit a strange T for the back side of the vest. It’s a T with a thick base and slightly thinner sides (for the hands). I used needle size 10 and 2 strings of yarn (mixed wool/acrylic and a cotton one) and I knitted the whole piece loosely.

For this 3-5 months y.o. baby vest I set up 28 stitches on the back side and added 14 on both sides when I started knitting the sleeves. For both front sides I set up 15 stitches and added on one side (the side where you have that extra 15th stitch) 14 stitches for the sleeves. I knitted just straight in the same stitch all the time, except for the beginnings where I knitted a few elastic-look stitches. This basically means changing the side on which you knit your yarn every two stitches. So you move it from the front to the back and change the place of your work needle as well. 

When you are almost done knitting all your rows (place it against some other piece of clothing you have for the same age group to see how far you are), you will want to make some extra space for the little baby neck and head. You can just decrease the stitches by stitching together two stitches at once to form this neckline. Start decreasing these in the middle of the back side piece. On the front sides, do this on the opposite side of the sleeve side.

When the three parts are ready, you will be ready to crochet the parts together with the most simple crochet stitch. I chose to place the stitching on the outside, since it made the vest look cuter, but you can do this also on the inside or sew it together (that makes it a bit softer).

And now you’re ready – in about 3 hours!

I wonder if I have lost you all now during this explanation. Probably I’ve lost all the people that have never picked up a knitting needle and I’ve lost the people that are knitting experts right? For the first group, it’s really easy, just try to find some (video) tutorials that teach you four things: setting up your needles and taking the finished piece of and then the two basic stitches or just how to purl stitch. If you know these things, you can start experimenting in trying to form pieces with your hands, needles and threads  & without patterns –  if not necessary.