Le petit slouch et le grand kimono

Yesterday was spent poorly in bed. Mr Nath came into the room and saw me looking at this pattern. "How appropriate," he said. To cheer myself up, I had decided to use my single hank of LL Lion and Lamb to make myself a beret. I knew my yarn was slightly thinner than the yarn in the pattern, and knew I should check my gauge, but I remembered Elizabeth Zimmerman's injunction to make a hat as a swatch when knitting in the round, and jumped right in.

(Writing this, I realize that since the pattern is written in seed stitch with an equal number of knits and purls, I could have swatched flat perfectly accurately. But I didn't want a swatch. I wanted a hat NOW NOW NOW.)

Anyway, after a few inches it became obvious that while the hat would fit, it was not working out big enough to slouch. In fact, I was making myself a perfectly acceptable, perfectly boring little cap. But when I popped it onto baby Moomin's head, it was suddenly just right. I didn't fancy giving away my Lion and Lamb but I did have half a hank of Shepherd Worsted left over from a cardigan I'd made her, and which I'd been saving to make a matching hat. I knew that Lion and Lamb and Shepherd Worsted have similar gauge, so I dug it out the stash and cast on. And the picture above is the result. You can also see the cardigan, which is a sized-up version of the Mason-Dixon Baby Kimono.

Pattern Le Slouch from Knit and Tonic
Materials Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Watercolor
Adaptations I knit it at a smaller gauge than the pattern requires to make it baby head-sized, and after the increases I knit until the piece measured 4" from cast-on rather than the 6" in the pattern, to make sure it didn't sag right off her little head.

Pattern Baby Kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting
Materials Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Watercolor; two 1" wooden buttons
Cost and source £25 on yarn (from Get Knitted), £1.20 on buttons (from John Lewis)
Adaptations I increased everything by about 25%, so I cast on 50 stitches, knit for 5", cast on 3 stitches at the beginning of each row over 10 rows for the sleeves rather than the 8 rows in the pattern, etc etc. I also included two one-row button holes to fasten it rather than the suggested ribbon (I dislike tying ribbons around babies).