Rainbow baby sweater

This was the first sweater I ever attempted back in 2019, for my firstborn baby D, to match his baby blanket that I made with the same yarn. I was going through a cable knit phase (let’s be real, I’m still obsessed with cables!) And D was a rainbow baby, so of course I made his sweater and his blanket in rainbow.

Front view
Back view

I often knit while doing other things; my neurodivergent brain has a hard time focusing unless my hands are occupied so I knit during work meetings and classes, while gaming with friends, while watching TV, etc. Most of this sweater was knit in October of 2019 during the Fall Summit at Kayford Mountain , hosted by RAMPS and
Appalachians Against Pipelines . I led a workshop at the summit on the intersection of environmental justice and racial justice. More importantly I learned a ton about the horrors of mountain top removal, and met some incredible organizers. That weekend was one of the most powerful and impactful experiences I’ve ever had as an organizer.

Here’s a press photo from the action we planned as a culmination to that Summit weekend.
I was not holding a sign, I was on call for the legal bail out team. Luckily, no one got arrested during this protest.

I think that was the last annual summit that they had before covid, but I hope someday I can bring my kids back to Kayford, show them the dead mountain, teach them about the fight to save the parts of these incredible and ancient Appalachian mountains that we haven’t yet destroyed. I hope they appreciate how deeply their lives, their history, their roots, are tied up in this land and in this fight!

Here’s a picture of the devastating aftermath of mountaintop removal, taken from kayford mountain. Photo credit to Vivian Stockman in 2010.

Anyway, more about the knitting! I had a hard time finding a rainbow cable knit sweater pattern, so I made my own modifications to a simple monochrome pattern I bought from ravelry. I followed the pattern for sizing and construction, but I replaced their cables with ones matching the blanket I made for D. I used a total of 8 colors of yarn, connecting the color blocks with intarsia technique. The hardest part of the project was that at some points I had to have all 7 rainbow colors going at the same time, so avoiding tangles was a challenge.

Here’s my chart for the front cable color blocks, replacing the front chart of the purchased pattern
And here’s my chart for the back panel. These charts were made at stitchfiddle.com which is one of my favorite free pattern making apps.

“Rainbow baby” is a term used to refer to a baby born after a loss. I had a devastating and traumatic miscarriage in 2017, followed by years of difficult infertility treatments. We finally welcomed our precious rainbow, baby D, in January 2020– so he has a LOT of rainbow stuff. And his little sister,  baby C, wears all of those rainbow hand-me-downs! So, nothing about the term “rainbow baby” has anything to do with us being super gay, but ngl I see it as a happy coincidence that all the rainbow clothes make our kids’ wardrobes look fabulously queer!

This is one of the only photos I could find of baby D wearing his sweater, from February 2020, when he was just a few weeks old. He grew out of it shortly after.
Here’s baby C modeling it now, at almost 3 months old. She’s a much smaller baby than her brother, it’s still too big on her!
I also made a matching toddler sweater for our nephew W (then 18months old), it was mostly gray but with teal cuffs of leftover yarn from his baby blanket. But I don’t have any pictures of that one, so here’s another cute picture of baby C instead.

To be honest, I think I got a bit too cerebral in my design of the rainbow color blocks with jagged tops fading into grey– it was supposed to represent the “rainbow baby” theme of the emergence of joy at D’s birth intertwined with the ongoing grief at the loss of our first baby. But I honestly think it looks a little weird, and I now wish I’d kept the rainbow color blocks going all the way to the top of the front and back panels, and only used the gray for the neck and arms.

This was the best back view of the sweater I could get while the baby was modeling it

Also, it turns out this style of sweater is remarkably impractical for a newborn! Neither of our babies ever wore it (or any other over-the-head sweater) in infancy other than for brief moments to look cute in pictures. This “heirloom quality” sweater should last through generations of babies if none of them ever wear it long enough to get destroyed! All in all, not my most successful project ever, but still a fun little design that I’m glad I made!

The cuteness of this baby really steals the show from the sweater. Of course I may be biased, since I made her too!
I’m editing this post a year later to add a picture of my tiny baby C, still wearing the sweater at 13 months old. As a toddler she LOVES this sweater, which is hilarious because her brother couldn’t even wear it comfortably past the newborn stage!

#Knitting #Showcase #Throwback #politics

*** In loving memory of my first baby, nicknamed gummybear, who would be turning 4 years old this week if they had lived to be born ***

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One response to “Rainbow baby sweater”

  1. Let’s try a sweater – The Owl Weaver Avatar
    Let’s try a sweater – The Owl Weaver
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