Knits 'n' Pieces

Although I didn’t post here for a long time, I was actually pretty busy this spring. My son is going to school this autumn, so this was the last spring in the kindergarten for him and I made some thank-you-gifts for the teachers.

Kindergarten teachers got Asti shawls.

Pattern: my own (published in Käsitöö in spring 2008, will be available in English as soon as possible)

Material: Aade lõng Artistic and Aade lõng Natural DK

Needles: 3 mm

For the music teacher I crocheted a table mat – piano.

Pattern: my own

Material: Hjertegarn Diamond Cotton 8/4

Hook: 3 mm

The chess teacher also got a table mat – chessboard, of course.

Pattern: my own

Material: Hjertegarn Diamond Cotton 8/4

Hook: 3 mm

The gym teacher got a crocheted ball. On the motifs I embroidered names of all the children in their group.

Pattern: my own

Material: different wool from my stash

Hook: 3 mm

I was asked to make bunny bootees for a 3-year old girl. I did similar bootees in baby sizes couple of years ago. So now I had to improvise a bigger version. As this time these bootees are more slippers, I used sock yarn, hopefully that is more durable than pure wool would have been. I made the ears of new bunnies shorter, as this time these bootees are for a bigger child and it would be bad if the ears interfered walking around. When my daughter saw these bootees, she wanted a pair for herself too, so I made the same bootees (same size too :)) for her as well.

Pattern: my own

Size: heel to toe 16 cm

Yarn: about 50 g of grey Novita 7-veljestä Kantri (75% wool, 25% polyamide; 150 g/300 m ), about 15 g of white Novita Wool (100% wool; 50 g/135 m)

Needles: 4 mm (Kantri) and 3 mm (Wool)

Well, as the winter came unexpectedly, as usual, and now Christmas is right around the corner, I have not had the time to work on the instrusctions I wanted to.  So hopefully I have time for that in January.

In the meantime I’ll show you what I have been working on. As my daughter didn’t have a warm winter hat and I loved the cabled design in the Novita magazine (winter 2008), I decided to knit that hat for my baby.I modified it a bit, I used short rows on the top (or as it is knitted sideways, on the left edge), otherwise it would have been too bulky. As I used finer yarn than that suggested (Gedifa Akona instead of Novita Mambo), the hat was a bit too shallow, and to make it deeper, I worked some garter stitch rows to the bottom edge.

Then I had quite a lot of yarn left over and I decided to make mittens as well. But of course I ran out of yarn in the middle of the second mitten and I bought another ball and ended up with left over again. So the neckwarmer had to be knitted too. The cables on mittens and neckwarmer are the same as on the hat, but otherwise I just improvised knitting them, I didn’t even think ahead, just knitted and tried them on to my daughter. Worked out ok, I think :) She is so cute, isn’t she? :)

Pattern: hat is a bit modified version of the pattern in Novita winter 2008, mittens and neckwarmer are improvised

Size: for a 3-year old, circumference of the hat about 50 cm

Yarn: 3 x 50 g Gedifra Akona (50% wool, 30% polyamide, 20% alpaca; 50 g/69 m)

Needles: 6 mm (hat) and 5 mm (mittens and neckwarmer)