Knitting: baby sweaters

I have been a bit of a stranger to my knitting needles lately. The summer has flown by with lots of hiking trips and quite a bit of sewing (which also deserves a post... soon) but I did get a tiny bit of knitting done. Literally, I have been knitting two tiny things:

When all other knitting inspiration fails me I usually find myself in need of a baby shower gift or two-- human reproduction is reliable that way. My thought process for these started with a color palette-- I inherited some yarn from a friend* who has decided she is done knitting.* What I got is a selection of cool blues and purples-- I wanted to flex my color design muscles and use up this windfall.

For the first sweater I chose a deep plum and dusty light purple-- and my go-to baby gift pattern Beyond Puerperium. I tried stripes and I tried a contrast band but neither looked good to me. Here's what ended up happening:

The embroidery took a long time because: a) I had to figure out how to make the stitches on knitted fabric-- there was a lot of starting over! b) Once I had the hang of it I kept stopping to admire the effect, kind of like a photo negative or sun print I think. I did not document my many attempts to stitch leaves for those flower stems-- suffice it to say they didn't look right and they aren't needed.

The second sweater started with two medium blues-- to my eye without much value or hue contrast between them, so I didn't have high hopes for the combination. I played around with stripe width and landed on a ratio that I find very pleasing:

The slightly lighter blue has more contrast with the slightly darker one when there is more of the lighter color-- I wish I could say confidently that this is color theory at work, but my eye at least tells me it is true.

Baby sweaters are a snack-sized amount of knitting with a feast of finishing, usually by the time I have one sleeve done I begin to wonder why I always end up making them.

It's probably because they are adorable-- and another perfect small canvas for playing with color and pattern.

*Hi Vickie!
*Which I find sad, but that didn't stop me from snatching up her yarn before she could change her mind!