Tiny knits for a tiny person

One of the best things in life is when you get to be a godparent to child. As a godmother, I'm assuming I have to right to loose all control when it comes to Christmas presents. This time, I made two little knits for our little goddaughter.

What: Unicorn Trails Child Sweater / Sophie McKane

How: Circular needle 4.0 mm

From: Kässäkerho Pom Pom Donegal DK + scrap yarns, 106 + 24 g

One category in the Indie Design Gift-A-long is garments: cardigans, sweaters and dresses. And of course, being a statistician, I had to optimize. You see, the rules state that kids' clothes are ok as long as they're not for a 1 year old or younger. If they are, they're counted in the baby category. So I was very happy to run into this lovely little pattern for which the smallest size was 2 years. And even better, I just so happen to have a one year old goddaughter so it'll be perfect for the spring or next fall.

The design is a cute and simple cardigan with color work yoke and sweet little pockets. My stash had just enough mint colored DK tweed yarn for the main color and then all I had to do was to dig up some scrap yarns for the color work.

I'm more than happy about the beautiful scrap yarn gradient from dark purple to sassy pink I managed to find. I haven't been holding on to the smallest left overs for nothing.

And hey, how cute is that cardigan!

What: Elfbaby hat / Robynn Weldon

How: Circular needle 2.75 mm

From: Kässäkerho Pom Pom Donegal Tweed, 34 g

For the baby category I found this sweet little elf cap. The pattern was really nice. It had several options for the edging - and of course I just had to go for the most difficult one with twisted purls...

If the edge took its sweet time the rest of the hat flew off the needles. A big reason  for that was the yarn. The tweed yarn felt like melted butter. I don't think I've ever tried a softer yarn than this one.

I'm really bad at tossing away left over yarns. I hold on to the smalles little scraps thinking that one day I'll figure out a use for these. And today was one of those days! I had more of the yellow yarn so I worked the edge with it and then started striping 3 rounds stripes as far as the grey would last. I did run out of the grey yarn just before the end but that's fine because there's this funny little knot on top and it kinda hides the fact that the yarn ran out.

At first I thought I don't know any baby to give this to. But since it almost fit me (let's not go to those pics!) I figured it would be just perfect for our goddaughter.

Christmas flowers

This fall my cousin had a baby girl and I had the perfect excuse to knit a cute little dress.

What: Sproutlette dress / Tanis Lavallee

How: Circular needle 3.25 mm

From: Canon Hand Dyes William Sock, 88 g

I've seen so many wonderful dresses made from this pattern that I've been just aching for a reason to knit one myself.

The only problem was yarn! Oh yes, you would think that there would be some yarn for any project among my 30 kg stash - but no. At least not if I might need more than one skein. Crisis! Finally I browsed through everyone else's projects on Ravelry and found out that one skein should be enough for the smallest size. However, I had heard from a friend that the sizing of this pattern is a bit tight so I would have to modify as I go.

I went trough my stash and selected the fingering weight skein that had the most meters in it and bravely set forward to knit. This delicious raspberry colored yarn is one the prize yarns from Tour de Sock two summers ago. It was just the perfect amount of sweetness without being too girly.

The dress is knitted top down seamlessly. First, you knit the garter stitch raglan top with a leaf motif in the front. It was nice but I found an error in the chart. Well, the chart worked as it was but there was one row with more decreases than increases and it caused me to have two sts too little after the raglans. I just added them on one row after the chart and it doesn't show too much in the finished dress.

The back has a slit to make dressing up easier. The sleeve sts were left on holders for later and then you would add a ton of stitches for the skirt part. The skirt was endless rows of boring stockinette, and then finally more garter stitch with leaf motifs. The whole thing was finished off with a lacy bind off. Though, I had to stretch the holes quite a bit the get my dress to look like the ginger bread edging of the sample photos.

Because I was warned about the sizing, I started off with the largest size. It wouldn't be very nice if you could only wear the dress for a few weeks, no would it? However, since the largest size would use more than one skein of yarn, I decided to knit the stockinette stitch skirt a bit shorter. I was aiming for the skirt length of the smallest size but it turns out, I'm apparently not very good with the measuring tape. In the end the hem was shorter than it should've been even for the smallest size and as a result, I was left with extra yarn. So things didn't quite go as planned but I did manage to knit a super cute dress.

I was saving this post for after Christmas but I just heard a few days ago that certain someone had opened their presents beforehand! Yes, I'm talking about you!