My lovely little sister gave birth to my first niece last weekend and since she is my best friend in the world I thought it only fair that her daughter’s first handcrafted things should be from her (hopefully favourite!) Auntie.



Unfortunately, I have no photos of the amazing hat I made to go with the dress – I followed the Candy Cane pattern from Susan Anderson’s Itty Bitty Hats, and used the suggested needle size with the leftover DK cotton. This gave me a very tiny hat that also happens to be the only hat that fits Bailey’s head right now so it should get some good use. I used the same colour chart as for the dress.



Sugar Plum by Kirstie McLeod.
This pattern was published in the UK magazine ‘Simply Knitting’.
Needles – 3.75mm bamboo
Yarn – Sirdar Luxury Soft Cotton DK, Debbie Bliss Cotton DK
My Ravelry project page

Easy pattern overall, I felt the decrease instructions could have been better as I wasn’t over the moon with the way the decreases looked. I don’t know if I’d use the pattern again but that’s probably due to my impatience – it took me longer to weave in the ends than it took to knit the damn thing. That said, I really do like the dress and I’m semi tempted to knit another in one colour for my own daughter. However, this pattern just reaffirmed for me that cotton and I don’t get along. I like a yarn with tease and cotton is not that yarn.



Saartje’s bootees by Saartje De Bruin.
This pattern is available free on Saartje’s website (Link to pdf file in English or Link to pdf file in Dutch)

Needles – 2.75mm Aero steel needles
Yarn Rowan 4-ply soft
My Ravelry project page

Awwww I just love these little booties. The photograph really doesn’t do these justice (well actually, my forgetting-to-block-the-straps didn’t to these justice) but I really love these little booties. Unfortunately my sister has birthed a child with the largest feet I’ve ever seen on a baby so I think if these get worn once we’ll be doing well! I suspect what I’ll end up doing is putting them into a box frame instead. I did really enjoy knitting these and they came together very quickly, my sole criticism is for the way the straps attach to the button. I ended up making a chain of slipknots (I assume similar to a crochet chain but tighter) to create this strap but it felt like a very haphazard way to finish off such a pretty creation. I’ll definitely make these again, but probably with a little research into the strap problem. Hubby suggested using pop snaps but I didn’t want my sister to have to press a pop snap into Bailey’s foot so we abandoned that idea.



Cabled baby hat by Julie Hentz
This pattern is available free on Julie’s blog (Link to pattern page)
Needles – 5mm bamboo DPNs
Yarn – I used some of my own kool-aid dyed blue faced aran leicester.
My Ravelry project page

I really enjoyed making this hat, but it came out HUGE. There’s no way this is a newborn size and I was getting perfect gauge on this pattern. I tried it on my 15 month old and it was admittedly a tight fit but she could have got away with rocking it as a yarmulke. I knitted this up in some yarn I’d dyed with kool aid which looked really pretty skeined up, but looked awful when knitted so I ended up overdyeing it with some grape kool aid. The previous colour is still sort-of visible but it’s ended up being quite a pretty effect

On the needles just now, I have the Irish hiking scarf. I’m using my long sought-after Namaste glass needles with a chunky cotton/wool blend. It’s going to end up being more of a wrap but I live in Scotland where it’s perpetually freezing so it’ll get used!

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Posted under for the kids, knitting