What a knitter does when a baby is on the way...

No, Mom, I'm not pregnant (heaven forbid). But I do have a friend who is expecting a baby shortly. And babies need warm, cozy, handmade things.
The gender of the baby in question is as yet undetermined. Well, ok, not undetermined, but unknown outside the confines of the womb. With the vague notion of a wee cardi in mind, I browsed the stash in search of a suitable yarn.
See what happened over the weekend?

It isn't yet quite dry, and still needs buttons.  I have some yellow buttons in the button box, but they are a little too citrusy - I think this cardi wants to be accented with a more golden yellow.

The yarn is Fibra Natura Sensational, distributed by Universal Yarns. This is a worsted weight 100% superwash merino with a lovely hand and great stitch definition. I had 3 skeins of Leek Green and 1 skein of Sunlight. This was plenty for the cardigan, with enough left over for the hat and booties.

Now, normally I'd be giving you a link to the pattern at this point, but no. There is no pattern. This was just improvised on the needles. Here is what I can give you from my notes, in case you want to try your own improvisation: I got 4.5 = 1" on size 8 needles, and used size 7 for the garter stitch edgings. I started with 45 stitches for the neckband, and increased 8 stitches every other row until I reached 181 stitches. When I divided the pieces at the underarms, it was 23 stitches for the left front, 45 stitches each for the left sleeve, back and right sleeve, and 23 stitches for the right front. The body was worked straight. The sleeves were decreased 2 stitches every 6 rounds to 35 stitches, then 5 stitches were decreased just before the cuff.

For many of you, this is plenty of info, and you'll be off to the races.  I'd love to see what you come up with.

On another note, have you heard of Design Seeds? I adore this blog. Each day, Jessica posts 4 amazing color palettes inspired by a photograph. I love the dose of eye candy with my morning coffee.

One more thing - I received an e-mail confirming my acceptance as a giver for World Book Night! In this age of digital everything, I'm still enamored of books as physical objects, and I'm so pleased to be participating in this program to spread the love. I've been told I may not get my first choice of book, The Hunger Games, because it was such a wildly popular selection. But the list is so full of excellent books (and yes, I am proud of how many I've read) that I'll be happy with whatever I'm assigned.