Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn't work out the way I wanted to.

"Sometimes I try to do things and it just doesn't work out the way I wanted to.
I get real frustrated and I try hard to do it and I take my time and it doesn't work out the way I wanted to.
It's like I concentrate real hard and it doesn't work out
Everything I do and everything I try never turns out
It's like I need time to figure these things out..."

So I've been working on a knitting project for months ... it started out with a concept for which I had no pattern and some changes I wanted to make ... I figured out in my head what I thought I wanted ... a long, tube-like stretchy knit "sock" with a hood, to snugly swaddle a new baby in.

My first attempt was a gift for my neighbor. I knit a 21" tube, then used short rows to curve around to the front for a hood. My initial big problem was that my binding off was too tight, not stretchy like the rib, and so the hood opening ended up being a non-stretchy face-sized hole.

Here's the first one, which my neighbor was gracious enough to put on her baby for a photo shoot as well as critique.

Here's my neighbor's Baby S. quite content and happy -- once he got into it.

In addition to the face hole being too snug, she also recommended making the body of it wider/stretchier, because it was a long way down the tube, a little difficult to get baby's head all the way into the hood. She admitted that it was difficult enough that she probably wouldn't put him in it again; I was thankful for the honest critique.

I had already started on Swaddle Sock 2.0 when she brought baby S. over in 1.0 -- and the 2.0 I was working on was stretchier, but with a much thinner yarn, so the overall circumference was less. (I thought I'd taken a picture of 2.0, but I can't find it. It looked like a very nice sweater sleeve.) I decided to put 2.0 on hold and start over again, with thicker yarn and more stitches for a wider-yet Swaddle Sock.

Which I finally finished, this morning.

I've been nearly done since a day or so after Seven's birth, but I was stuck on how to do a kitchner stitch graft at the end, to seam up the hood, if I was knitting in rib and reverse-stockinette. It took me a lot of searching and two sample swatches to figure it out. I'll post that discovery in another post, though.

Anyway, here's the finished Swaddle Sock 3.0

And here's little Seven, enjoying it muchly ... once she got into it.

The good news is that, once in it, she was snug and content and slept quite nicely.

The bad news is that, like version 1.0, even being stretchier and wider around, it was still a long squirmy road from the bottom end up to the hood. And newborn babies don't really like having their little faces covered up. As we struggled to gently pull it down over her and move her to the hoodie end, it twisted, so the hood ended up not facing front, so by the time we were all situated she was none to happy. Until I nursed her and she snuggled right down, quite pleased.

But if I can't figure out an easier transition to swaddled down in it, we may not use it much after all.

Maybe that's why there were no patterns online for what I thought I needed?