The picture at the top shows the two I have waiting to be delivered (just as soon as the mother to be delivers). The brown one is for the nursery lady who will cease to be the nursery lady. I did worry that it was a bit keen to knit her a cardi but it is quite a big deal leaving your little lad with a stranger (all be her a professional) and this lady made it all a bit easier for me.
The stripey cardi is for a friend of the admirals (and his lady who is obv the one bearing the bump). He once told me (I was probably knitting while he sat drinking with the admiral) that his mum used to knit for him and in particular he remembered a jumper that was stripey like dennis the mennace. Since then I've never been able to see this chap as anyone other than Dennis. He is a troublesom chap who has a strange ability to fill my menfolks with more booze than they can handle (the admiral on a regular basis, my Dad at our wedding - mine and the admirals, I haven't married my Dad!). We don't yet know if the baby will be a Dennis or a minnie but either way I'm sure it will cause some mischeif as it grows up.
I have made a couple of changes to the pattern, firstly the raglan shaping for the armholes, I always move in a couple of stitches so you get that fancy seam with the parallel lines of stitches along the seam. It also means that when you are joining the sleeves together (with a nice bit of matress stitch) you aren't having to hunt through the cast off edge to find the next stitch. The second little change I do is rather than cast off the stitches for the neck, I pop them on a holder. This means I don't have to pick up stitches when I come to knit the neckline (or hood) which has to be a blessing.
I also wanted to show you this example of the same pattern that I made for my little pirate. It was one of the few things I knitted for him and I remember casting on whilst on holiday with my sister and my husb. We went to stay on Lundy which was amazing and relaxing, but not ideal when I had morning sickenss in pitch black as they turn the electricity off overnight. I put a zip on this instead of using buttons but as you might guess from the photo of the back it wasn't too successful and I'll stick to buttons now.
