Playing with sizes

What a difference yarn thickness and needle size can make to knitting the same pattern.  Loving Hands members have access to a range of patterns devised for us by a well-loved member,  Mayflower (as she was known on our forum), who sadly died a couple of years ago.

I have made most of her patterns, and an old favourite is one of her premature baby cardigan designs.  The sleeves are knitted first, then you start knitting the whole cardigan from the bottom up, with the sleeves knitted in when you get to the yoke.  It is straightforward to follow, and has minimal sewing up to be done at the end - just the sleeve seams in fact.  It is the sort of cardigan that I loved to dress my own babies in - easy to get on and off, attractive and - well it looks like a baby cardigan should!

Last week I knitted it in white baby double knit on size 4.00 needles, with the usual reliable result:

With a 15 inch chest, it will fit a large preemie or a small newborn baby.  But the great thing about Mayflower's patterns is that most of them are designed to be knitted in any thickness of yarn, as long as you use appropriate sized needles.  She does this by telling you how many rows to knit, rather than by measuring the length of a garment.  So I set to with the pattern again, this time knitting with 4 ply yarn on size 3.25 needles.

What a contrast!  Here the two cardigans are, side by side:

I really was surprised at the huge difference in size.  The peach 4 ply one turned out with a 9 inch chest, suitable for a 2-3 lb size preemie baby.  This 4 ply yarn is a Brunswick baby yarn from the US, so perhaps it is slightly thinner than a UK 4 ply would be.  I now need to experiment with other 4 ply yarns in my stash to see if I can get in between these 2 sizes.

One of the many benefits of knitting for charities is that size isn't so important: somewhere out there, there will be a baby who will fit the particular size that you have made!

Playing with colours

Brrrrr!!  In my last post I may have thought that spring was on the way, but today it is grey, cold and blowing a gale.  So it seems just right to show the aran hat I made yesterday.  I had some oddments that went well together:

At first I thought I would use the plain blue for the rib and the short change variegated blue for the body of the hat.  I knitted the hat in the round on a small circular needle, and as I came to the end of the rib, I wondered whether I should go for stripes rather than contrasting sections.  Then I wondered what effect would be created if I knitted one row of plain, followed by one row of variegated yarn.  So I had a go:

When knitting in the round you can do single row stripes, which in fact don't look very much like stripes at all.  I liked this effect, so carried on to complete the hat:

Overall it gives a rather shadowy effect, which I think adds interest to the hat.  I shall play some more with this technique!

And now for something completely different....

.........knitted nests!

Soon spring will be upon us (yesterday was very sunny here in Somerset, even though the temperature dropped to below freezing overnight), and that's when wildlife rescue centres become inundated with baby birds and animals which have somehow become separated from their parents.  At this time of year there is a huge need for nests of varying sizes and shapes which can act as substitutes for the ones the babies have come from.

As part of Loving Hands Winter challenges, we were encouraged to make nests for wildlife centres, ready for the spring influx.  Using patterns from this Nest Guide, I have started making nests and caves:

These need to be knitted and crocheted very tightly so that little claws cannot get trapped in the fabric, and they need to be quite dense so that they will stand upright with firm sides.  The small nests were knitted on size 5.00 double pointed needles with 2 strands of dk.  The cave was crocheted with one strand of aran and one of dk with a 4.50 crochet hook.

Secret World Wildlife Rescue Centre is situated quite close to where I live in Somerset, and they have a collection point in a local supermarket for people to donate suitable pet food, kitchen towels and other useful items for the Centre.  I shall pop these in on Saturday when I do my shopping.

Busting my stash in different ways

I've spent the last couple of weeks finishing off  projects and using up some more of my stash.

This is the second cowl made from the would-be aran blanket that I wrote about in my last post.  Again, when doubled over it wraps twice around my neck and is beautifully warm.  I have been tempted to wear it myself as our central heating boiler gave up the ghost last Thursday, and for various reasons the installation of its replacement is only being completed now as I write this.  I am looking forward to a toasty warm weekend after a week of huddling over the living room gas fire!

This man's scarf was crocheted with several different strands of yarn in black, blue and white.  It is over 6 feet long and very chunky.

I was donated a ball of Rico creative micro dk.  Although it is acrylic, it feels and looks very like cotton.  I wasn't sure what to make with such a pretty yarn, but then I remembered the Colin vest pattern that I have made once before.  I adapted the pattern slightly to knit it in the round rather than knitting the front and back separately, and I really like the resulting 22 inch chest toddler size top.

Finally, I have finished the corner-to-corner baby blanket that I have been making at our Monday night craft club meetings.  It is about 28 inches square, in cream coloured dk.  I find c-to-c blankets very quick and easy to make, particularly when talking, eating cake and drinking tea!  This one has been added to the box of items I am getting together to send to Cuddles UK.

Not much progress so far this month on the hat and boy's jumper targets, but I am just starting the second sleeve of a grey aran jumper, and I have a hurricane hat on the needles too.  Pictures soon!

The blanket that turned into a cowl

Last year, I had the bright idea of knitting an aran blanket in strips rather than squares.  Less sewing up, fewer ends to darn in, what's not to like, I thought.  4 strips, each 12 inches wide, and 6 feet long, will make a sizeable blanket.

I cast on 60 stitches on size 5.00 needles and set off using a broken rib stitch.  I did the first strip, using 3 different lots of aran yarn.  I got to about 4 feet long (I was getting bored by this point) and slipped the stitches on some spare yarn.  My reasoning by now was that I would do 6 strips each 4 feet long, and end up with the same result.  I started the second strip, and again got to about 4 feet long.  When I put the 2 strips side by side they just didn't look right.  The colours went together, but using different brands of Aran weight meant that the strips weren't uniform in width.  Also, the colour changes were totally random, which gave a really messy effect.  To frog or not to frog?

Rather than make a decision, the strips were relegated to the back of the cupboard, only coming to light when I weighed my stash at the start of January.  I laid them out again, and then realised that, instead of a blanket, I had the making of two scarves or cowls.  At 12 inches they were really too wide for scarves, but would make brilliant cowls.  I knitted another foot or so on to the first strip, made some buttonholes, sewed on some buttons, and I now have a really cosy and warm cowl which will double up and wrap twice around the neck.

This is the cowl full width.....

.....and this is it doubled over.......

and this is it wrapped twice around my neck!

Knit for Peace is a charity that sends knitted and crocheted items to people in need in the UK and abroad.  In their latest newsletter they mention that they are really short of scarves at present, so these cowls, together with some scarves, will be sent off to them shortly.  

As for the blanket, I think I'll go back to making squares!

Bits and pieces

One of the good things about weighing my stash ready for another year of stash-busting is that it reminds me of all of the odd bits and pieces of yarn that I still have, especially those that are of a thin ply.  Mixed together, they can make an interesting thicker combination.

I found a bag of pink 2 ply that I bought somewhere.  It had originally been coned yarn but its previous owner had wound it into cakes.  2 strands of pink combined with one of white 4 ply and one of lilac 4 ply gave me roughly a chunky yarn equivalent, which, when knitted on size 4.00 needles gave a pretty and dense fabric suitable for mittens.

I need to apologise for my photography skills at this point - the photo of the mitts make them look different sizes, but they really are a pair!

I had enough of each of these yarns to be able to crochet a hat and scarf suitable for a young girl.  This made hat number 5 for this year.  I thought that an earflap hat would work well with chunky yarn.

I have to confess that I have already bought some more yarn this year (obviously 20 kilos is not a sufficient stash size), but at least this month I have used up more than I have bought.  A large yarn retailer sent me a voucher for £5 off a £15 spend, and also threw in free postage, so I succumbed and bought 700g of James Brett Baby Marble.  The flip side of stash counting is that you realise where the gaps are in the yarn range you have, and I had no baby variegated yarn.  This just had to be remedied, I am sure you will understand!

And another hat

For the fourth hat of this year, I tried a bit of very simple stranded knitting using up some oddments of double knit.  The hat was knitted in the round on a circular needle, and transferred to dpns for the decreases.  As I had 84 stitches, I looked for a very simple design that was divisible by 6.  The arrowheads were simply a repeat of 3 stitches in each colour, moving around one stitch on each round.  The overall pattern is rather effective.

When my boys were little, I knitted several intarsia jumpers with pictures of characters from children's TV.  I even charted my own designs, based on pictures in their story books.  But it is so many years since I have done any colourwork that I don't feel confident to try anything complex.  Perhaps I shall use my hats and jumpers challenge to re-develop some skills in that area.