Before the holidays I might have mentioned that I knew a mom-to-be who is also a big appreciator of knitting. I may have bragged just a bit that I will soon have a baby to knit for, a baby that will frequently appear in public wearing things I have made for him. (Yep, baby is a Him.)

Baby is only a few inches tall and not available for modeling shoots but he is already the processor of a set of knit accessories.

Booties and mittens and a hat. I use the term mitten loosely since these don’t even have thumbs. Everything is so tiny which made it the perfect thing to knit on-the-go. And what a fun knit it was. So fast and colorful. There was the added bonus that practically every person who noticed me knitting these little things was driven by a biological imperative to smile and say “awwww”.  Men especially (who probably all thought I was the one who was preggers) wanted me to know that they loved… whatever those little things were.

An unexpected side effect of this project was the new (to me) and unshakable conviction that babies deserve hand dyed yarn. I know. Prior to this I would have said “oh no, cotton or acrylic or something tough”. Hear me out. I have lots and lots of half balls of hand dyed whatever kicking around in my stash. They are the left overs from shawls and cowls and stuff I made for big sized people. Unlike the five crazy people who took this poll and said they threw away their left over yarn, I keep everything. I went digging through my stash and it turned out that all of that hand dyed stuff is superwash wool. Hmmm.  Also, Baby will be kicking off those booties and doing his very best to loose a mitten and even if mommy can hold on to all of it, he’ll out grow these little woolies in a week and a half. So how tough does baby yarn have to be?

Reader: Ummm….what about blankies?

Me: Yes. So true. Those things have to be able to stand up to the toxic waste that leaks out of babies from time to time. No hand dyed yarn in the blankies.

On a side note, babies can pull off outrageous colorways, like the one shown here. Babies can pull off anything including hats that look like sharks eating their heads. What’s a garish color way compared to that?

Hand dyed yarn for baby things. You’re with me on this right?

P.S. The yarn shown here is Kitchen Sink by Bronotta Yarns and I wish I could point you to the place where you can purchase some but I’m not sure its available. Kitchen Sink is a special colorway. The maker of Bronotta would occasionally take all the leftover dye from one of her runs and paint one skein with every color she had on hand. Each Kitchen Sink was different. She would bring them into one of the LYS’s she sells at and I swear they would be bought and walking back out the door fifteen minutes later. I got a skein through clever bargaining and talented begging.

P.S.S. The booties were made using a super clever technique I saw in this crochet pattern. Its easy to adapt that method to knitting. You just make a “T” shape, fold and knit.