FO: BICO for a baby

as opposed to my big girl! I made this BICO (and hat and booties) for my son's art teacher. She's having her first baby and well, I crochet things! As with Abby's BICO, I began this Baby It's Cold Outside on a whim as a stashbuster. I found 2 skeins of Peacock Baby Rainbow yarn in a blue/green/yellow colorway in my stash, grabbed a 6.0mm hook and started hooking (with 2 strands)! I edged the set with some bright yellow, Caron Perfect Match 'Lemon' left from Abby's ripple afghan.

For the BICO, I followed the pattern for a 12 month size in order to end up with a 6 mo size with my hook and yarn. The only exceptions to this is that I made the neck hole a tad smaller and I made a change so that the front panels would match better. If you've read the BICO CAL thread at Crochetville, then you might remember that as people made BICOs with a "non-Homespun" yarn, they noticed the rows of hdc didn't match up perfectly in front. When you join the yarn to make the left sleeve and front panel the instructions have you join at the sleeve end and crochet a RS row on top of the previous RS row. Instead, I joined at the neck edge, crocheted a WS row and continued for 3 rows to the neck opening. On the fourth row, when I get to the neck edge, I can't ch8 to add 6 hdc on the next row as that would make the neck hole too big. I needed to add these 6 hdc on to this 4th row, so I did. When I reached the neck edge on the 4th row I added 6 hdc using the chainless hdc foundation row. Then I crocheted row 5 into these added hdc and the rest of row 4, and continued for 2 more rows to complete my sleeve. Now, as I ended at the sleeve edge, I had to slip stitch in the first 19 stitchs and then begin the front panel (the lines of which now perfectly match the right panel!)

For the hat, I wanted to make it using hdc to match the BICO, but all the baby hat patterns I could find were sc. So, I winged it! I based it on the LB velvetspun hat pattern (without the top knot) and I used my daughters 22 inch "big baby" doll to size the hat. I started with 8hdc in a ring - increased so the stitch counts in rows 2-6 were 16, 24, 24, 32, and 40. I worked even rows until long enough to cover the dolls ears! Then I did two rows of yellow to match the BICO edging.

The booties were a variation on Bev's Very Easy Booties. I was using double stranded baby yarn, instead of worsted weight so I basically made them to match her measurements, not her row counts. I replaced the last row with yellow, for an edging.