Pink Lacy Cardigan

Whole thing

I got another Sirdar knitting pattern from ebay to keep up the variety of the cardigans I make for the Special Care Baby Unit. I actually had some Sirdar Snuggly (apt name) 4-ply so I was using the yarn recommended in the pattern for once! It is quite an easy pattern. The insetting of the sleeves is a bit different from others I have done lately.

 I already had the yarn - it was left over from the multi-colour cardigan I made DD some years back (see post of 11 May 2011), so I was keeping to my yarn diet, but I didn't have any pink buttons, so I got some cheap from ebay.

Lace detail

When I took it to the hospital, I saw a different lady and she commented that parents really appreciate having something to clothe their babies in, which is nice to know.

(By the way, what happened to April and May - I was going to blog at least once a month, but they keep going past too fast for me!)

Winter is Coming Cushion Cover

sewn side

knitted side

I was going to do a post about all three cushion covers I have made, but unfortunately realised I have no photos of the ones I made for DD in their completed state, just the progress photos. I have asked her more than once to take photos of them but I am still waiting...

This one was done for a Ravelry swap entitled Winter is Coming. For people who are not Game of Thrones fans, this is the motto of House Stark and was also apt as it was an autumn swap. The lady I got to send to likes autumn colours.

The sewn side (yes, I know this is a knitting blog, but sometimes things have to involve more than one craft!) is made from the cut-off bottoms of some friends' curtains, which I acquired in a craft swap meet. The border (down the left and right side in the picture) is the very bottom of the curtain. I cut two pieces the same and inverted one, so that the two halves (there is a seam down the middle) are (more or less) mirror image.

The knitted side is made entirely from stash, except for the burgundy, which I bought quite cheaply (so still sticking to yarn diet, more or less). I asked the recipient to imagine looking at a picture an autumn garden at the edge of a forest, then the picture is smeared (whether by hand or Photoshop) diagonally. The brown represents tree trunks; the two shades of beige (not easy to discern in a small photo, but there really are two) represent dead leaves; the burgundy represents copper beech leaves; the multi-coloured yarn represents a mish-mash of leaf litter etc; the yellow is the odd ray of sunshine through the trees; the pink is the odd faded rose in the garden; and the tiny bit of blue, which really should be at the top, not the bottom, is a little patch of blue sky. Yes, maybe I did get a bit fanciful and carried away with this, but it was that sort of swap and it was very well received, I am glad to say.

Pink Diamond Pattern Baby Cardigan

Yes, it's yet another baby cardigan for the local special care baby unit, but it's a pattern I haven't done before. Also I've been doing 3 ply ones so far and this one is in 4 ply and for a change it doesn't have raglan sleeves (I'm sure there's a proper term for the sort of sleeves it does have, but I'm not sure what it is). The Acorn Suite (SCBU) have stated that they want newborn size cardigans, but looking at the pattern (Sirdar Tops and Pants 3613) and comparing the number of stitches with other patterns, I thought their 0/3 months size would be a bit big, so I followed the instructions for the largest of the premature sizes - and it still looked a bit big for newborn to me, but the nurse who checked it when I brought it in confirmed that it was the right size. She commented that she was checking because sometimes people bring cardigans that are too small (may have said before, but they don't clothe the babies until they are newborn size - presumably keep them in temperature-controlled environment!).

Just as an aside, my Mum admired the stitch pattern of this and copied it for her next square towards our latest blanket for Refuge.

Lacy Baby Cardigans

What happened to July, August and September?

Lacy Cardigan - Cream:The yarn for this was bought some time ago from Allders which has since sadly closed!. I think they were selling it for £1/50g. The ball bands had been lost and it was bound in till receipt paper, so there was no clue as to what brand it is, but it feels like Sirdar Snuggly.  I decided to use it to make a cardigan for a band member/friend's 'Bump'. The pattern, which I had fairly recently got from ebay and not used before, is just called Cardigan.  The instructions are for three sizes (19 to 21 inch) in three different yarns (3-ply, 4-ply and DK).  I used 3-ply and followed the instructions for the smallest size, which I would estimate is a bit bigger than newborn size, which was fine for this one, as it will no doubt fit Bump at some stage.  I was in a bit of a dilemma (or should it be trilemma if there are three possibilities?) about the buttons.  The yarn is a sort of buttermilk/creamy colour and I have some buttons which are a very good match, but rather old and tatty, or somewhere I have some yellow buttons, which I think are a bit too yellow and the other possibility, which I went with in the end, was some white, slightly translucent buttons I got from ebay some time ago. Being translucent, they take on the colour underneath to some extent. The end result is shown on the left, as nearly as possible being worn by the baby it was knitted for. (Acknowledgment: this photo was taken by DD, who went to the shower held for the mother and handed it over for me).

Lacy Cardigan - Pink I was quite pleased with the result of the cream one and decided to do one for the local hospital, as I hadn't done one for them in a while.  I used some pink 3-ply Robin yarn which was given to me by a member of the Croydon Knitting Group for the purpose of making cardigans for the hospital.  I wanted to do this pattern again, however, as mentioned above, the smallest size instructions come up a bit bigger than newborn size, which is the size they want.  So I decided to try to be a bit clever and knit using 3-ply yarn and the needles recommended for the 3-ply instructions in the pattern, but to follow the 4-ply instructions and make the parts all ½ and inch shorter.  I used some more of the slightly translucent white buttons, as I don't have any pink ones, and the result is as on the right. Ideally the top button should be a row or two lower, but I think it turned out rather well for an experiment and I may well do a white or blue one the same soon. I took one photo with flash (above) and one without (below) and have included both as the flash one is the truer colour, but the non-flash one shows better detail.

Bit of Technical Stuff - For those who are interested in the mechanics of knitting: I have used a slightly different technique for the decreasing on these ones.  Usually you get k2tog on one side and k2tog tbl (or ssk or sl1, k1 passo) for the other side and I have always found that the K2tog tbl was never as neat as the k2tog. I have read various suggestions for rectifying this and not been satisfied with my results using them (not saying they don't work for other people).  What occurred to me after much thought over some long period of time is that it's not so much the k2tog tbl that looks untidy, it's that the in-between rows don't lie in line with it like on the k2tog side.  It is just the stitch on each previous row that is the problem, so I tried knitting just that stitch (on each relevant row) taking the yarn round the needle in the opposite direction from usual.  I'm not sure if that makes sense and I don't really know how to show it with a drawing (plus being rather useless at drawing anyway).  I suppose a video would do it, but I really don't want to get into that at present (maybe one day).  Anyway for me it works pretty well.  The k2tog tbl side is still not quite as neat as the k2tog side, but a great deal closer to it than I have ever achieved before and I will be using this method in future.



First crochet flower!

My posts are like buses - none for ages, then three at once!

I have been trying on and off for some time to find a flower pattern, knitted or crocheted, that I could make for various purposes, e.g. to be sewn onto a hair clip.  As has been mentioned before, I have had no success in following crochet patterns, except for the very straightforward crochet for beginners type book (can't remember the name at the moment, but may edit it in later).  However, I saw a pattern in this month's Simply Knitting for a bag with a flower on it.  I thought doing the bag may be a bit ambitious, although I now don't completely rule that out for some time in the future, but the button looked doable.  I already had the pink yarn, but felt a flower needs a yellow middle, so I "had" to buy some yellow yarn, which I got at the same shop and the same time as the flower for the BlackBerry cover.  This is the first purchase, other than the occasional very cheap purchase at a charity shop, I have made of yarn in a long while - and this particular shop's prices are very reasonable (and I used a tiny bit of it to sew the flower button on the BlackBerry cover - because flowers have yellow middles ;-) so it's already been used for two things).

I dug out a 3.5mm hook and sat down with it, the two yarns and the magazine and about an hour later, the result was as shown on the left. (For some reason I couldn't get both the centre and the 'petals' equally in focus).  I know other people knock out flowers 19 to the dozen in a variety of patterns, but this is a real achievement for me, so much so that I even told DH (and he's really not into knitting or crochet).  He duly made an impressed grunt, which was all I was after.

I suppose now I'll have to find or borrow some other flower patterns and give them a go.  Even if they are not successful, at least I know I can do this one!

Latest Baby Cardigan

In my last post I said I had three works in progress.  I am pleased to report I have now finished one of them - the latest baby cardigan for SCBU.

I don't normally do photos of unfinished items here, but the colour on the photo without buttons is closer to the correct colour, so I've included both this time.  I've lost track of where I acquired the pink yarn from, but it was all tangled when I got it, so I sorted it out and wound it up into a ball and decided it would about do a baby cardi.  It was just about enough to do a v-neck one, but unfortunately I chose to do a round-neck one, so ran out.  Fortunately, however, I had some white left over from other items, so did the button band (not visible in the photos) and the neck band in white.  I think it looks OK.

Buttons were the next problem.  None of the local shops had any pink or white - or any other colour - buttons of the right size, so I ended up ordering 100 from ebay - 50 white and 50 blue - for £2.60, which is cheaper per button than local shops are anyway, so I was quite pleased - and they arrived quickly too.  It's not quite clear from the photo, but I used 7 white buttons for this cardi (blue would have looked a bit odd I think!).  I still have quite a bit of blue 3 ply to knit up into baby cardis, so the blue button are already earmarked for use and no doubt the white ones will find a use before long.

This cardigan was taken to SCBU this afternoon.  The other two WIPs are progressing and I will post more about these later.