Maybe Baby Kimono Coat

It has been blocked and seamed: 

I have added button loops and sewn on buttons:

I have even added a picot cast off to its bottom edge:

Believe it or not, it is ready to dispatch to my gift recipient in the south of France.  

It really did only take five months to get my cast off knit to this point too - yes, I know. I present yet another clear piece of evidence that I am not a completer-finisher.  I am not proud of this fact but it seems to be confirmed that I am the kind of knitter who thinks that a garment is complete the moment that it is cast off.

I am not sure why it happens but I seem to lose motivation as soon as I reach this point.  It is very strange and completely incomprehensible to me that my actions seem to tell me that I am happy to risk the waste of a lot of hard work and good intent by not finishing and dispatching something that I have made, on time.

Do you suffer from this and how do you deal with it?

In this case, my gift recipient is a little girl in France, who should have had this top for Christmas or for her first birthday in February.  I have finally managed to nail this knit as I feel embarrassed to have missed both deadlines.  In addition, I am worried that it is running very late for both her size and for the weather in the south of France... 

...so really, I just hope that her parents like it, that it fits and that she gets some wear from it before the weather becomes too warm?

Pattern Notes

Yarn

Alpaca-DK 'Raspberries', Rabbitworks Fibre Studio, British Columbia

Pattern

Kimono Coat, #606 The Second Little Sublime Hand Knits Book

Buttons

Hearts, Three Bags Full, Vancouver

Worked

5 return rail commutes per week between 22/08 and 29/09 2008 (26 commutes).  Then, occasional knit nights in Vancouver and a good sit down (after telling myself off) on Saturday 4th April.

Pattern Modifications 

I chose this pattern as it was a sideways knit and I was working with variegated yarn - I wanted any striping, flashing or pooling to be vertical, rather than horizontal.  Like so:

 

I swatched for this knit as I wanted to check gauge and see how my yarn worked with the rib pattern.  My swatch was encouraging but when I started to work the sleeve, I did not like how the rib and my yarn were turning out.  So I ripped back and reworked the pattern in plain sticking stitch (stockinette). 

 

My false start indicated that I was going to end up with significant pooling, rather than the striping that I had in my original swatch, so I worked with two skeins of yarn from that point onwards.  Just to try to keep the stripes going that I had seen in my original swatch.  In truth, I think that my final result is a bit mixed on that front! 

I used a picot cast on, cast off and as already indicated, I added a picot cast off to the bottom edge after I had seamed the top.

In terms of gauge and size - my gauge was off (as usual).  So, to obtain the correct garment dimensions for a 1-2 year old, I used the 9-12 month size number of stitches and followed the row instructions for the 1-2 year size.

With the exception of the back section - here, I added another inch of width as I was worried that the garment would be a bit narrow.  The impact of this change is that the front panels did not overlap fully.  

However, I like the effect this created - the buttons now sit inside the line of the neck edge, rather than over on one side towards the sleeve.

According to my measurements, my blocked garment has turned out correctly for the 1-2 size.  However, a lot of people have told me that my top looks like it will fit a 3-5 year old.

As I have no access to a child of the correct age to test this on, I will dispatch it to my gift recipient, keep my fingers crossed and hope for a photograph.  If everyone is right though, I can relax a bit as there may be hope that this top will still fit - even though it is very late?!