FO: baby sweaters

The baby sweaters for the cousin's babies are finally done. They languished while waiting for a high-performance computing course to end (painful!), zippers to be inserted and ends to be woven in. They're only about 7 months late.

From a distance:

And closeup:

Pattern

The pattern is Baby's First Tattoo out of Stitch 'n Bitch Nation in the 18 month old size.

Yarn

KnitPicks Merino Style and Plymouth Alpaca Boucle from the LYS for the border detail (replaces seed stitch in original pattern) on US 5 needles.

Mods

The original pattern calls for Rowan 4-Ply Soft, which is a fingering weight yarn. I did most of the work on these over the winter break and was impatient, so I decided to go with a larger gauge yarn. I used the pattern dimensions as a guide to recalculate row/stitch counts in DK gauge.

Future Sweater Project Update

Well, now that Menja is nearly done, all I have to do is make the collar, block and sew, I have
started to plan the next sweaters that I will try to cram in before it gets too hot to do anything but lace. Next up is Ragna, for my DH, who loves cable knitting (but not knitting it himself ;) ).
Then, I was contemplating modifying Lavold's Fjalar, but I will put that on the back burner for a later date, even though I have already ordered the yarn, Moss green Merino Style from KnitPicks. I think a nice earth-toned yarn deserves to go into a truly medieval style sweater... something like Trud from Lavold's designer's choice book one, the Viking Knits Collection...
It's cute and medieval all right, but it's just too skirty for those of us who do not wear skirts all that often. Can you picture that number over a pair of jeans with a belt? No way! Too bulky.
My potential solution: get rid of the damn 'skirt' a.k.a. peplum, and make the damn thing a cardigan. And to be more medieval-ish, make the cables go all the way up. Kind of like armour, I guess. And a narrower cable panel so I can still incorporate waist shaping. And LOTS of buttons, but no buttonholes, instead little loops to hook over the buttons. Go ahead and blame that adorable movie no one watched, Tristan and Isolde, I watched it twice in the last two weeks and I feel all inspired. So here is a badly drawn schematic of my vision...
I like the flaps on Ragna, but Ragna is waaay to big and busy for me. And I love lots of buttons.
The cable panel is 'narrow panel with little lattice' shown as a sketch beside the sweater, but I may go for the wider version, 'wide panel with little lattice', I still have to do the math and swatching for this one.

Susan