Duckies In A Row

 Continuing on my recent theme of knitting for babies. For my husband's best man's daughter (due in less than 2 weeks!), I made this duckie sweater.  I have to admit, I was looking for something that could, ahem, show off my talents on this one. 

I recently dived head first into the world of fair isle knitting.  After all, who can really resist the beauty and intricacy of the patterns - and of course, there's the colors!

For Christmas I received a copy of Mastering Color Knitting and fell in love with all the different techniques.  The book is divided into three sections: Fair Isle or Stranded Knitting, Intarsia, and Double Knitting.  I have mostly stayed in the front section, but the instructions are great - clear, thorough, and full helpful tips.

This lead me to the Duckie Sweater.

The pattern is officially called the Plymouth Yarn 2124 Dreambaby DK Baby Duck Fairisle Pullover.  I purchased it through Webs at that link.  It's a pretty good pattern.  I used the suggested Plymouth Dreambaby Yarn, but opted for pink and white instead of gray and tan.  With a quick change of background colors you can easily personalise the sweater.

 

The pattern is fairly easy to follow, but after using other patterns that knit in one go, I thought the designers of this pattern lost an opportunity to keep all the knitting in the round.  After the bulk of the body is complete, this pattern instructs you to do the sleeves seperately and knit the rest of the top in flat knitting.  With the fair isle pattern, this can get somewhat confusing for newer knitters and also can be avoided.

That said, I will definitely keep this pattern close at hand for future new relatives.  In the mean time, I can't wait to meet the new baby girl and see her in this sweater when the weather turns colder again in the fall.