Kina cardigan

A commute-knit, this short sleeved cardigan for Marina was pretty quick – think I started it in November and finished it just before Christmas.

It’s a beautifully simple pattern by a french brand called Kids Tricot (which I found on ravelry) and the finished garment has a lovely shape. The knitting itself is simple: mostly stocking stitch with a garter stitch border all round. You knit top-down from the cast-on neckline. The complicated bits – and they’re not hard to master – are the increase rows, the short rows to make the cap sleeve edging and the button hole.  Very very simple, and utterly satisfying as the entire garment just appears in front of you, fully formed. So if you can knit, purl and increase, try it – it would give you the biggest ego boost! Try it! The translation english could do with the tiniest of tweaks, but that’s me being a real fusspot.

The only complicated bit, was using a different yarn than the recommended one – I used DK Rowan Cotton Glace yarn, so ALL the stitch quantities had to be recalculated. The pattern says a gauge of 26 stitches, whereas my gauge required only 18 stitches to create 10cm of stocking stitch with 5mm needles. So I twiddled and fiddled and diddled and scribbled and finally realised all the stitch quantities simply needed to be multiplied by 0.7, which gave me the right dimensions. But if you look at my printed-out pattern that shows my working out, you’ll see it took about four goes to get right! That’s not counting the false start using 4mm needles }:(

 

All in all it was a really inspiring knit – dead easy and very satisfying, especially as the yarn was repurposed from an infant sweater and hat I made for Marina last winter. Anyhoo, I’m thinking of doing a longer version as a dress, with slightly puffier sleeves.

And the pattern goes up to 12 years, so, providing my enthusiasm lasts, looks like Marina is saddled with a WHOLE DECADE of hand-knit short sleeved cardigans!

Apple a day dress

Yet ANOTHER woollen moth casualty – this time they munched multiple holes a much-loved green woollen wraparound skirt. Greedy. Bastards.

So, I size it up for a toddler’s tunic dress, just cutting approximately around another jumper dress and keeping the existing hem and side seam. As I’m cutting, I notice one of the offcuts looks like a leaf (see? between the armholes of the front and back?), and the apple motif follows quite naturally.

And then I’m off down memory lane… I had a dress with an apple on it as a child. Here is the original apple dress.

So I cover the mothholes with an applique apple. As it’s a fuzzy woollen, I’m guessing it won’t fray, so don’t finish any cut edges, or use interfacing to stabilise the apple. (Two machine washes later & I’m proved right – all stable AND unfrayed). The rest is dead easy: machine stitch the apple into place, followed by the side & shoulder seams, then fold the seam allowance once on the neck & armholes and stitch. It’s a bit wonky – my cutting, I’m afraid, but I figure it’ll wear ok.

The neckline looks pretty small all of a sudden, so I make two self-

covered buttons and loops for a shoulder fastening, and a small facing for each edge. This takes ages but I like the finished look.

However, in the cold light of day, it turns out the neckline is too BIG, so I run a little elastic thread through it with a darning needle – this works perfectly and Marina seems to like it!

NB After about 85 blurred photos she suddenly climbs on the sofa and strikes a slightly eerie doll pose. For a second. Then runs off and jumps around a bit more. Photographing a toddler to show off a garment is REALLY hard work. How do you do it?

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Oh and I also made this hat from the offcuts. It’s simply a rectangle, sewn up the short side, hemmed at the bottom and tied around with a strip.

She wouldn’t keep it on for more than a second, threw it off and now we cannot find it ANYWHERE. Prolly been munched to dust, by a bunch of delighted moths.

Red fleece mittens

A GENUINE whip up. My projects take hours. This one took minutes. About 59 minutes, to be precise, but there is a finished pair of little fleecey mittens on the kitchen counter.

The weather’s turning and my poor daughter’s hands are an icy deep pink when we finish the 12 minute walk to the childminders in the morning. Most of the mittens I’ve seen in the shops are so-so, or a little expensive. So I’ve been plotting to make some mittens for her. And tonight I had some steam left when I got home from work so I pulled out the machine and got cutting. And pinning. And sewing. And now they’re finished!

Some fleece, from Goldhawk Road – about £4 per metre. A great pattern, super easy to follow, from purl bee. Adapted by

• reducing the print output to 75% to get the right size approximately
• extending the mitten length by approx 2″ instead of handknitting the cuff.

Longest, most challenging part of this project? Waiting till morning to see if they fit her!

Lilac Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap

Nice bit of forward thinking: winter will be upon us and Little Miss will need a hat. Last winter, the only hat that actually remained on her head had a chin strap. It was a hand-me-down from my beloved sister-out-of-law and it kept both my niece & nephew warm through 70s Bavarian winters.

So, I hunt about for a similar pattern and find the Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap - then get some soft Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino wool in a light lilac (340051) from John Lewis.

Using DK instead of the recommended “baby weight” (which is what exactly?) means my gauge is all out of whack so I adjust it by

• casting on only 107 stitches
• using 4mm needles
• on the increase/decrease row, reduce the stitches between increase/decrease to 15, 16, 16, 16, 16, 15.

NB These adjustments are part measurement, part guesswork – I’m no deft mathematician, nor experienced gauge calculator. I just choose the needle size cos they are the smallest circular needles I have. The stitch looks ok so I knit a few rounds in garter stitch as per the instructions, then try it on Little Miss’s head. It’s clearly too big, so I mark out how many stitches go round her head and start again casting on fewer stitches. Then divvy up the non-increase/decrease stitches as evenly as I can.

I keep trying the hat on her as I go, so make only two further adjustments:

• only repeat the increase/decrease row 8 times
• add a 10 row garter stitch chinstrap with two cast-off buttonholes.

Overall, it’s a really simple pattern, if you know how to knit, purl, increase and decrease. And it finishes up satisfyingly quickly, speeding up rapidly as you decrease towards the wee point.

I locate a silver metal button that I *think* came from a dirndl skirt of my mother’s (she lived in the Austrian/German alps for a chunk of the sixties). My older brother recognised it immediately anyway (“Wow”, he said), and he’s not a button kind of guy.

Problem. The hat has not stayed on Little Miss’s head for more than two seconds. Hence no modelled pics. Any tips?

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Update

A week after completion and the hat stays ON.

Could it have anything to do with the hypnotic qualities of CBeebies?

A sugar high?

Or the sudden drop in temperature over the weekend?

Who cares! Result! Pics!

change – what you think?

I changed the look of my blog. I have done this a few times before then gone back to the original theme. But this time I was more certain about the change.

Do you like it? Or prefer it as it was?