Let the Knitting Begin

Some of you may know sparrow is exactly one half of the folk-blues duo, The Wallings Jr.  We've been working on recording an album with a great Nashville producer, Vince Emmit.  Last year we raised some significant funds using IndieGoGo, a site that provides fund raising space online for charities and artists.  As part of the efforts we offered various gifts in exchange for certain levels of donations, two of them involving a knitted something from sparrow.  Naturally, the "Knit and Caboodle" level totally sold out, so now sparrow has 16 knitting projects due this summer. Les sigh.  At least knitting is fun.

Yesterday, the first knitting project began:

The Baby Sack, aka The Baby Snuggie

This is for a lovely couple from OKC who are about to head out to Europe as missionaries (thus the first on the list status).  They have a friend who is very pregnant, so they wanted a handmade gift to present to her before they leave.  Here is what they initially sent:

Cute, right?  Sparrow set out to find a (hopefully) free and fun pattern to match.  This is what came up:

Very cute!  This is called the 'Owlie Sleep Sack' from a great site Comfort Wool.  Here's the sack sans bebe:

 Notice the little scallops on the top that form the stretchy band?  Those are little owls that go all the way around the top.  This is a nice addition because (A) it provides a little give in the top to help hold the baby in and (B) it gives the knitter a little something extra to break up the monotony, otherwise you're basically knitting a hat.  Win!

This was started yesterday in grey (as requested).  So far, the project is about 20 rows in, and that's after about 6 hours of work.  The sack is 85 stitches in the round on size 3 needles....this is going to take a while.