I have an announcement to make!

The ChemKnits family is growing!

I have an announcement to make... the ChemKnits family is growing!  Early next winter another baby will join the ChemKnits family, given me the opportunity for a ton of new baby crafts.

Lucky's 2013 pregnancy announcement

For Lucky's pregnancy announcement, we did a cute guitar family photo.  A baby guitar, mommy guitar and daddy guitar.  (Indy wasn't super left out, he had his own instrument)  Why the guitar?  Well this was the first thing we purchased for baby Lucky when we discovered that I was pregnant.  It turned out to be one of his favorite toys, too.

This announcement was inspired in part by the Snowy Penguin Set that I designed for Lucky last fall.  I liked the idea of expanding our penugin family to incorporate my latest WIP.  I modified the following mosaic lowercase chart for the lettering and a separate chart for the numbers.  I decided to add a 5 stitch border around all edges because I wanted to make sure the colorwork could be photographed with a decent border.

The chart (including empty space) is 67 sts x 47 rows.

I used KnitPicks Chroma Worsted in Galapagos (27.1 g, 53.3 yards) and Berroco Peruvia color #7145 (10.3 g, 17.4 yards) on US size 3 needles for  this cute little announcement. These are both yarns that I had in my stash and have been used in many other projects.  It feels good to use something that I had to create something as special as a pregnancy announcement.

I put off starting this project until I was almost 15 weeks pregnant.  We announced with Lucky when I was 13 weeks.  We certainly weren't in a rush this time!

Cast on 67 sts in Chroma.  Start knitting in stockinette with a purl row.  The chart starts on row 6 with the bottom of the numbers and is knit. I knit the bottom stranded except for after the top of the toddler penguin where I did an intarsia/stranded hybrid. 

When chart was complete I knit 5 rounds in stockinette and then bound off knitwise.  Some light blocking and my little announcement was ready to go.

I wanted this photo to become my cover photo on facebook, but I knew that the aspect ratio of the knit announcement was a little off.  What should be in the blank space?  I filled the blank space with a little dinosaur outfit we picked up for our little baby.  One of the first outfits we purchased for Lucky (before knowing the sex) was a set of dinosaur jammies, so it was nice to do the same thing for this little one.  Plus, we're going to create a dinosaur themed nursery so that is our little hint with this announcement as well.   With a little adjustment in photoshop (reducing the color saturation from the clothing) and the announcement was ready to go!  

These knitting pattern was created by ChemKnits for your personal or charity use. You are not to sell, distribute or reprint this pattern without the permission of ChemKnits. © 2015 ChemKnits