baybeasts

I guess you could call this our baby trousseau.

I have been working on it for a while (though I should admit that bean made the incredibly beautiful rug), but I am feeling a new sense of urgency now that there is apparently a real live baby wriggling around in bean’s tummy. I’m working on two rugs, and have plans for any number of booties and cardigans and vests and jumpers and little knitted pants. I think I am obsessed.

The one thing I haven’t done is visited the button shop - 90 per cent of these little things need a button, or two or three. bean and I can’t wait for button day - it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Each one has a story: the brown hoodie (my favourite) was started and unravelled numerous times, but the snail I got right first go; the orange and cream striped hat was initially made for my manager at work when she was pregnant, but I got the colours around the wrong way and had to make her a whole new one that matched the booties that I had already made; I hated the green vest pretty much the whole time I was making it and for some time afterwards, but now, strangely, I adore it; the tiny dark blue dress was made from our friend K’s mother’s old ring binder of crochet patterns that I just can’t bear to give back yet because there are some more wonderful patterns in there; I started making the white dress for another friend’s baby but then loved it so much that I couldn’t bear to let it go and so had to knit her something else (which also turned out to be stunningly beautiful); the wool for the maroon shawl-neck jumper was outrageously expensive (hand dyed) but I do not regret a cent of the cost; the four hats are all actually properly known as helmets - the bottom two come from the ‘pretty baby helmet’ pattern…and so on and so on.

I am really looking forward to these garments accruing more layers of story, of vomit and cuddles and showing off; to having photos of them filled with chubby arms and warm soft bodies; to telling these stories to our children, remembering how small they once were.