Category Archives: Flat knitting

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A prayer for a baby

The last couple of weeks have been crazy, to say the least. A dear one is fighting a medical problem and there is nothing the rest of us can do, but stand and watch. It sucks to be helpless, right? While this loved one is fighting for life, a cousin of mine is due to give birth to a whole new life. It is great news that she is still carrying the baby inside her at 38 weeks, considering she had a premature birth scare two months back. She has been going through a lot of bad times on the personal front and it was saddening to see her face yet another emotional issue. Thank the almighty, it turned out to be just a scare and things are fine now, but when I heard the news, my decision on the spur was to cast on for a baby blanket with a prayer weaved in every stitch for the baby.

I wanted something mindless, so the focus is on the prayer rather than to keep track of what row I am on. Garter Rib Baby Blanket fit the bill perfectly. I wanted a bigger blanket than I usually make (so the baby can use it in its toddler years too) and hence cast on a larger number. A larger garter border was added to go with the larger blanket. Once the first few rows are done, then it is just one long, mindless knitting. The K3P3 ribbing could have gone faster if I knit continental style, but I was happy with the progress.

I used a new yarn this time. I was told by the Our Own Store guy it is Vardhaman, but our well trusted Rav knitters choose to differ. It is is acrylic, fingering weight for sure, so let’s live with that. I used this yarn held double and with 4.5mm needles, it gives a nice, airy, drapey blanket which is light enough to wrap swathe the baby, but thick enough to keep it warm.

I tried steam blocking acrylic for the first time and I am amazed by the result. I used my Philips Steam Iron which has the ability to give out constant steam. Though it was a slow and tedious process to steam block a big, bad blanket with a measly steam iron, it was all worth it. The uneven stitches evened out, the blanket became drapier and softer. I am wondering why I never treated my previous FOs with a dose of steam.


Ravelry Project Page
Pattern: Garter Rib Baby Blanket
Yarn: Acrylic, fingering weight, held double
Needles: US 7 4.5 mm

 

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Pingu

My little one was never much of a TV watcher. We had to work on his TV watching skills until he started enjoying a bit of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Chhota Bheem and Bugs Bunny. I am a cartoon lover myself and used to love watching Pingu when I was a kid. I later introduced this to my husband and it was only natural N became a part of our gang. It was love at first sight for N and boy, is he hooked. He needs a daily dose of Pingu to complete his day. While watching one of the episodes, he casually mentioned if we can buy a stuffed Penguin for him. A mother would have replied, ‘Sure, we will buy one’. A knitter’s reply is of course, ‘Why buy? I will make you one.’ So, here is Pingu.

 

Pattern: Pasha by Alexandra Virgiel
Project Page

I used our standard 4-ply acrylic yarn, held double. The pattern is simple and easy to follow. It uses short rows to shape the back and the tummy. The back and the front are knit separately and then seamed together. Wings and feet are attached to the finished body. I hate seaming and am not very good at it, which shows in this project. I don’t think the little guy minds. Pingu has received a lot of hugs already.

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Set-in Sleeves: How to

I had been hearing great things about set-in sleeves for sweaters. They say it fits really well and gives more room for movement and so on, but when I heard it uses short rows to shape the sleeve cap, I was hesitant to give it a try. Definitely not an adult sweater because if I goofed up, it would mean redoing all the work and my knitting time is already at a premium. So I decided to give it a try with a child’s pullover. I made a pullover for N and made set-in sleeves and I really love the look of it. The shoulders do not droop like in raglan, and neither do they look puffed up like drop shoulders. This is a neat technique to avoid sewing them in (which I hate).

Here is the sleeve in all its glory. Can you see the wraps which I left unpicked? I actually like that look.

Now that I tried it, it turned out to be simple. You pick up X number of stitches around the armhole. Divide that by 3. Place one marker after x/3 stitches and another one after x/3 stitches, so you basically divide your sleeve into three parts. On the right side, knit to the second marker, wrap and turn the next stitch and knit back to the first marker and wrap and turn the next stitch. Continue doing this until you work all the unworked stitches and reach the beginning of the round. Then on, knit around and do the standard decreases. It may sound complicated, but trust me, it is very simple. Once you visualize how this is done, it is a piece of cake. Also, I was advised not to pick up the wraps and I am glad I followed this advice. The wraps make such a nice ‘lining’ around the armhole edge and does not alter the look of the pullover.

Here are some diagrams I made when I was learning this technique. I included an example to make it easy to understand.

 

Let us say you picked up 51 stitches around the armhole. It need not be a multiple of 3, but you can always go up/down a stitch or two without compromising on the fit, so let us assume you have a multiple of 3. Divide that by 3. 51/3 will give me 17. Place a marker (red) after 17 stitches from the underarm. Place antoher marker (blue) after 17 sts from the red marker.

 

After you pick up all the stitches, you will be back at the beginning of the round. Now, you will be knitting your first RS row. Knit till the blue marker. Remove the marker, wrap  the next stitch, place the blue marker (so that it is placed after the wrapped stitch) and turn the work. The marker’s position is changed so that you always turn the stitch after the marker. If you are experienced enough to know a wrapped stitch when you see one, then you don’t need to reposition your markers. You can as well remove the markers after your first wrap.

 

 

All WS rows will be the same. Knit till the red marker. Remove the marker, wrap the next stitch, place the  marker and turn the work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All subsequent RS rows follow the same pattern. Knit till the blue marker. Remove the marker, wrap the next stitch, place the marker and turn the work.

 

 

 

 

You continue doing this until you have reached the beginning of the round by wrapping all the remaining stitches. At this point, you should have a neat sleeve cap and you are ready to begin knitting the sleeve in round. Follow your standard decrease methods and in the end, you should have one well-fitting sleeve. Admire your work and the fit.

I am glad I mastered another skill in the knitting world. I know, there are many more to go.

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Yellow, yellow…

Looks like test knitting is the only kind of knitting I am involved in. I recently finished test knitting the Wheatspikes Vest for Sole and before I knew it, I had signed up for another test knit. I am expecting a few additions in my cousins’ families, so want to knit something warm for the expected babies. I love knitting things for infants because they knit up so fast that they are done before you realize it and kid knits are so cute, aren’t they?

Inge Sandholt’s cardigan is a cute, little cardigan, knit flat, bottom-up using sock weight yarn. I had bought some 2-ply acrylic yarn from Surya Emporium intending to use it for an intarsia-cum-fair isle pullover for my husband, but that never worked out. I started off with the main color but had a fear that I might run out of  yarn, so added a few stripes of a contrast color. It turned out to be a wise decision because I did run out of yarn and I had to knit the sleeves in contrast color.

The pattern is well written and is sized from 0-3 to 24 months. It is ideal for someone who is a newbie knitter and wants to try simple lace which involves slipped stitches and yarn overs. The back was the most boring part to knit. The front parts keep you engaged with the 4-row mock cable pattern. Sleeves, of course, get done in a jiffy. It helped that I made them in stripes so I looked forward to the next color change.

The cardigan is generously sized – even though I knit this one in 0-3 months size, it should easily fit a 6 months old baby. I think it will look great on a baby girl. It does have a feminine look to it.

Pattern: Frank & Mathilda by Inge Sandholt
Yarn: 100 gms. of main color and ~50 gms of contrast color
Needles: US 2 2.75mm straights
Ravelry Project Page

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Wheatspikes Vest

When I saw this vest offered for test knit, I decided to volunteer. Not that I have a girl to knit for, but the vest was too cute. I don’t have many girly colors in my stash and I had been wanting to use Phildar Copacabana which Preeti had sent me sometime back. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to use this yarn and so I did.

The vest is knit bottom up in pieces, but can be easily adapted to knit in round, which is what another test knitter did. The pattern is well written and I, for once, did not find any errors in the pattern. Unambiguous and easy to follow instructions and the pattern comes in sizes from 0-3 months to 24 months. It knits up quickly and is perfect for that last minute gift or to use up a lone skein or two. I used around 1.5 skeins and still have half of it left. Wondering if I can make a couple of coasters with it – I just love the fresh, bright colors of this yarn.

I didn’t make buttonholes on the sides thinking the neck ribbing will be stretchy and can stretch over a kid’s head, but when I tried this on my son, there is hardly any elasticity in the ribbed neckband. It could be the yarn’s characteristic or it could be because I knit on a tight gauge. I did go down a couple of needle sizes than the recommended one to get the required gauge, so it could be that! I need to rip the shoulder seam apart and make some buttonholes now.

This goes into my gift stash waiting for a lovely girl to come and claim it.

 

Pattern: Wheatspikes Baby Vest by Sole Pitencil
Yarn: 1.5 skeins of Phildar Copacabana
Needles: US 5 3.75mm straights
Ravelry Project Page

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Mrs. Redjeans

I am very lucky to have a supportive family. Be it my decision to work after having a kid, or taking up a new exercise regimen or my hobby – my family is very supportive. My mother-in-law especially loves the fact that I knit. She does a bit of crochet here and there, but she thinks my knitting skills are really good. She hasn’t seen any projects from other knitters who are far more better than me, so she is blissfully ignorant and I don’t want to correct her. When my biggest admirer requested for a sweater, I just had to do it.

I looked through a lot of patterns and finally decided on Mr GreenJeans by Amy Swenson (ravelry link). I liked the way cables add shaping to the cardigan. I thought this will be flattering on a typical Indian woman (read pear shaped). A very well written pattern, seamless (yay!!!) and is generous on the different sizes. For those with little girls, the same pattern is available for little girls too.

 

I have knit raglan cardigans before for babies, but was not sure how it will look for an older woman. When my mom tried this on, all my doubts vanished – it looked great on my mom. The neck is too deep for my taste, but looks good. I added buttons all the way down to make the cardigan more practical. The only problem I had with this cardigan is the button band. The bands are knit after picking up stitches along the edges of the body and are worked in 2 x 2 rib.  Since this rib is stretchy, it pulled the body stitches along with it and the cardigan looks like it is crunching up its nose and making faces at me. The buttons try to keep the ribbing in place, but it doesn’t help the look.

Yarn is from Surya Emporium, Commercial Street. It’s a 4-ply Vardhaman acrylic yarn. I held double to get the gauge. The yarn is soft and squishy and has great stitch definition. I had bought this yarn to make a baby blanket and chose this color because it was neutral, yet cheerful. I have been using this yarn over and over again, but it still doesn’t get over. I have another 100 gms of yarn left! Buttons are from Pydal. I think the yellow ones add a bit of variety to the monotonous red color.

The sweater was a Diwali gift to my mother-in-law and she loved it. Mumbai has been especially cold this winter and she is making a good use of her gift.

Pattern: Mr. Greenjeans by Amy Swenson (Rav Link)
Yarn: 4-ply Acrylic in Red bought at Surya Emporium
Needles: US 5 3.5mm. Straights for the body and DPNs for sleeves
Buttons: 4 numbers from Pydal
Ravelry Project Page

 

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In Threes

In Threes is a simple, yet elegant cardigan for a little girl.  The male version of this is Wyatt, which I test knit for Kelly and it is equally cute. I had added In Threes to my wishlist and when Kelly saw that, she generously sent me the pattern as a gift.

I had always wanted to knit this for a girl, but didn’t have any recipient handy. After Kelly’s generous gesture, I had to find a recipient to knit for! The victim was my niece, but sizing was a problem. My niece is almost 8 years old and this cardigan runs upto 6T. After some swatching and gauge checking, I chose a yarn and a needle which would give me the size I want with the numbers from the pattern.

Ever since I had a boy, I have been buying yarn in boys colors and the only neutral yarn I had was this red one. It’s a 4-ply acrylic yarn from Surya Emporium. I held it double and with 4mm needles, I got a gauge of 17 sts to 4″. The pattern calls for 19 sts to 4″, which was fine by me because the cardigan will turn out bigger.

 

I initially planned to do the yoke in colorful stripes, but blame my choice of colors, the yoke turned out messy, so I decided to stick to one color.  I did make some modifications – got rid of the garter ridges on the sides and added sleeves. I guesstimated the sleeve length hoping that I get it right. All the details are on my Ravelry project page. It’s a good thing that I kept notes as I went along because I wouldn’t have remembered anything now – the cardigan was knit last September! I am not too happy with the buttons, but that’s the best I had in my stash.

The cardigan was gifted to the girl during Diwali which she promptly modeled for me. Turns out the sleeves are quite short, they come upto just 3/4th of her arms – so my guestimates are not that good after all. Apart from that, the cardigan fits well – good length and a comfort fit. The girl was happy. I am guessing she would have been happier if I had added a crocheted flower to it to make it more girly.

Pattern: In Threes by Kelly Herdrich
Yarn: 4-ply Acrylic in Red bought at Surya Emporium
Needles: US 6 4mm. Straights for the body and DPNs for sleeves
Buttons: 5 numbers from my stash
Ravelry Project Page

 

 

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Chocolate ice-cream

… with mango sauce and cream. That’s what this blanket reminds me of.

When my friend Anuradha broke the good news that she is expecting, I decided I will knit something for her baby. I was thinking of making a sweater and a hat – something small so that I can knit it in my busy schedule. To my surprise, Anu decided to take up knitting too. She started with a hat and made a cardigan and a vest. Now that she was making these stuff already and was a knitter herself, I couldn’t possibly give her a teeny-weeny sweater, could I? I had to make something good enough for a knitter. That’s how this blanket got created.

Crochet has been on my need-to-learn-this-skill-because-the-FOs-are-so-awesome list, but never got around to doing that. When I was finalizing a blanket pattern for Anu’s blanket, I decided it had to be crochet. One, if I don’t learn crocheting now, I probably never will and two, I have heard crocheting is way faster than knitting. I used the Neat Ripple Pattern by Lucy (or Attic24 as she is known in the crochet world) and loved it. She has detailed photos for crochet newbies like me. The photos were a big help!

After an initial swatch, I had enough confidence that I can finish this blanket. Next step was the choice of colors. I had bought this yarn from Pydal’s for what would have been a vest for my hubby. I soon realized that this yarn is too flimsy and has no stitch definition, so the most natural choice was a baby blanket. I had lots of brown and just one skein of yellow and off-white. After a bit of calculation, I decided to do a row each of yellow and off-white for every five rows of brown. I knit until I ran out of the off-white yarn.

There are so many mistakes in there that I can’t count. For starters, the edges are wavy and uneven. Expert crocheters tell me that the edges are meant to be wavy, so one less mistake to worry about. The starting rows are too tight, so the blanket is narrower at one end and wider at the other. Since it’s a blanket, I hope it’s ok and I hope the baby doesn’t  mind.

I worked on this blanket for an hour everyday for 3-4 weeks. It would have taken even lesser if I wasn’t so new to crochet. So, it is true, crocheting is definitely faster. My next blanket is going to be a crochet blanket.  I have even bought yarn for it. Going off to look for patterns. Crochet ville, here I come!

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Wyatt

I had been planning to knit a pullover for Ninad since ages. I knit Wonderful Wallaby for him, but that turned out too big. Serves me right for not swatching before starting the project. Now that I had a pullover which wouldn’t fit him for alteast another 6 months, I had to make one which fit him now. Right around the same time, Kelly was looking for test knitters for her latest design, Wyatt, and I jumped at the occasion.

Wyatt has a very interesting construct. You knit the front bottom-up, and once you are done, you cast on for sleeves on either end. Knit the sleeves for a few inches. Cast off some stitches at the center for neck opening, cast on the same stitches on the next row so that you get a nice, wide, neck opening. Once you are done with sleeves, cast off sleeve stitches and knit the back and voila, you are done. There are seams, but since this construct technique is so incredibly clever, I don’t mind seaming. I slipped stitched along the edges using a crochet hook which I prefer over the traditional sewing using the tapestry needle. Ravelry Project details are here.

Sanhita-di had picked up some yarn for me when Gia visited us. Though I have never met Gia, her lovely yarn was passed on to me. The yarn is soft and squishy, in a lovely pastel green shade. Lucky me, I got the exact gauge with 4mm needles on the first attempt itself. I took 4-5 days to knit this but that’s only because I don’t knit for more than half an hour a day. With a very demanding toddler, I am lucky I get atleast this much knitting time!

Kelly gave me the final version of the pattern, which is usual in test knitting deals. But, Kelly went a step ahead and gave me her popular cardigan pattern in threes baby cardigan because I was looking for a top-down seamless cardigan for girls. Thanks Kelly. That was very sweet of you. No prizes for guessing what I am knitting next.

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Childhood

My youngest nephew (or should I say nephew-in-law) and I share a very special bond. When my sister-in-law was expecting this little guy, I wanted to make something handmade for him. I had seen my aunts knit sweaters and booties for infants, so I planned to do the same. Our landlady of the house where we lived at that time was an expert knitter and agreed to teach me knitting. Off I went to Surya Emporium, Commercial Street and bought my first pair of knitting needles and a ball of Wendy’s baby yarn. She taught me the basic knits and purls and helped me knit my first pair of booties. Thus began my knitting saga and I have not looked back since.

The little baby who was the recipient of my first knitted object ever is a handsome 4-year old now. I made my first big project, a baby cardigan, for him when he was around a year old. When I met him last, I saw him wearing the same cardigan which he had clearly outgrown. My sister-in-law and mother-in-law refuse to let go of this hand-knit sweater. (Didn’t I say my in-laws are extremely supportive?) I was touched by their appreciation and decided to knit another sweater for my nephew, which he can comfortably wear.

Childhood (ravelry link) by Natalie Wilson catches your attention at the first glance. The striped sleeves and hood, the striped button bands – these add life to an otherwise plain cardigan. The pattern has instructions for a non-hooded option too. My biggest problem with this pattern is that it is not seamless. I know, I don’t have any rights to complain because I knew it was seamed before I began the project, but still, I want to rant that this cardigan wants you to seam at every possible place – sleeves, underarms, left and right joins, button bands (can you believe it?). I did modify the pattern a wee bit to attaching the button bands as I went to avoid two seams. I don’t exaggerate when I say I spent more time on seaming than knitting. If I make this cardigan every again, I will convert it to seamless first.

These yarns are few of the very first I added to my stash. I bought this with a plan of making a ruffled top for my niece, but that never materialized. I was skeptical of using these colors for a boy, but I think they look ok. Yarns are from Patel’s store, Jayanagar – the standard, Vardhaman 4-ply acrylic yarn. Buttons are from Pydal’s.

The sweater turned out ok. There are quite a few mistakes in there, but not visible, thankfully. I can’t wait to give this to my little nephew who is the very reason why I knit today. Every year on his birthday, when he turns a year older, I realize I am growing as a knitter too. You see, I am a 4-year old knitter now!