the blue blog archives: i'm thankful for a little girl to knit for

This Thanksgiving I'm thankful that I can knit with pink yarn til my heart's content! Currently, I'm knitting up pink and pastel leftovers into what I'm calling the "i heart fair-isle" hat. I was teaching a fair-isle (or more correctly, color stranding) class at my lys and needed a little colorwork project to work on while my students swatched checkerboard and Norwegian stars and what not. I looked through all my pattern books and came upon an old fave, Small Sweaters: Colorful Knits for Kids. I remember thinking to myself, when I got this book about six years ago, that I would make this sweater if I ever had a girl. Oops, better get on that! (I also remembered loving this classic kid-in-a-handknit picture from the book!) For now, however, I needed a hat pattern - not too complicated, something I could maybe resize for a larger gauge to accommodate the short class time and the yarns I had on hand. I found this set, with a sweater, tights (yikes, imagine knitting a whole pair of color-stranded tights!) and, hooray, a hat.

With the large hearts being a neat multiple of 12 and the rows of small hearts filling out the top, I could easily adjust this pattern for width and length at my very different gauge. It knit up quickly in an evening (plus a little extra time for the usual gaffes like knitting the first 7 rows of pattern with the background and foreground colors reversed - doh!). Only a couple more rows of hearts left to do and my daughter will have another new hat and I will have another new obsession: adding fair-isle projects to the when-I-have-a-girl knit list!

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving filled with delicious treats and inspired knits.

posted by alison at 3:46 pm | in baby, it's cold outside

Comments

How adorable!

Posted by: Bo at November 28, 2008 11:17 AM

Love the hat - esp like the dusty pink main color & the way the other colors work with it. That photo of the entire outfit is an example of too many knits worn together. Each item is adorable by itself but looking at them all together makes me dizzy!

Posted by: Donna at November 28, 2008 1:46 PM

Hey, that's Tone and Lise's book :)

Back when I worked at Rauma's I remember rewriting some of the patterns from this book, because some of them have bad shaping. Like missing short-rows for the tights (the front and back is the same, and that is - as far as I know - not the case for most kids)... They also make shawl colars that don't fit regular people :-P

May be that has been taken care of in the English translation, but if you decide knitting something from this book I would recomend reading the whole pattern carefully first. Just a tip.

The patterns and colours however are stunning :) Love the fish sweater and bird sweater :)

Posted by: Helene at November 28, 2008 5:28 PM

I've seen this book in the library, but you've really brought it alive. I look forward to your knits because my teenage daughter doesn't wear pink (anymore).

Posted by: Angie at November 28, 2008 6:36 PM

How fortunate you are. Just adorable !

Posted by: Carolyn at November 29, 2008 4:07 PM

There is something about knitting for little girls that is so sweet. The pastels in the hat are adorable!

Posted by: Jenn at November 30, 2008 11:04 AM

Oh I know. I'm loving having a baby girl. I want matching PJ's for Hannukay.

I got yarn the other day to knit her a strawberry hat...and I also want to make a pumkin hat, which might be for her or for another girl. not sure.

as you know i'm not a huge pink fan, but my little girl looks good in it :-O

Posted by: Orli at December 1, 2008 2:08 AM

I can't imagine wearing (or knitting) a full body set of clothing like that. Warm yes, but by the time I finished knitting the tights and the sweater only one of them would probably fit the intended recipient!

Posted by: Seanna Lea at December 1, 2008 11:31 AM