Category: kids

Thrumming Along

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I was recently commissioned by a friend to knit some thrummed mittens for her and her two boys. They are wonderfully warm mittens, perfect for these frigid Cow Town winters. I still had lots of bright colours of Cascade 220 and some taupe-coloured Merino roving left in my stash  so I was able to start on them right away. I decided to do them in a random stripe pattern of four colours. Since I’m terrible at being random or overly creative when it comes to these things, I hit up the handy-dandy Random Stripe Generator, input the colours and rows I wanted, and refreshed away until I found a pattern I liked. Also, since I have a terrible memory, I looked up the Yarn Harlot’s thrum tutorial. Then I did a swatch to figure out how many stitches and rows per inch (aka stitch gauge and row gauge) I had for my yarn and needle choice and did a little math to determine how many stitches I needed. I made a chart in Excel and added my stripes, thrums, thumbs and decreases and badda-bing, badda-boom, I had myself a pattern. I’ll include the chart here for anyone who might be curious, but with the warning that you have to do some reading between the lines (or just go ahead and ask me questions) if you’re going to try and make a mitten from it. I’m also going to show a little detail on how to make thrums.

Lets start with the chart…

The V’s represent where the thrums are added. Dashes are purls.

And now a brief tutorial on how to make a thrum. The usual advice is to make up a bunch so that you can just reach for them when you need them, and that is certainly most efficient, but I am neither usual nor efficient. I usually make enough for a row when I get to a thrum row, it breaks up the monotony.

Pull off a small piece of roving about 3 inches long (our lovely Queen for scale).
Fold each end in to the middle.

Give it a twist. I like to give mine a little more twist just as I’m about to use it as I find they like to untwist if left to their own devices.

And then a little about how to add the thrums…

Insert needle into stitch to knit, place the thrum over the needle, bring the yarn around like usual…
…then pull the yarn and thrum through the loop as usual.
On the next row, knit the thrum and yarn together through the back of the loop.

And then you knit and knit and knit some more. And then you have oh-so-cute, oh-so-warm mittens.

Furry on the inside
Happy on the outside.


Giddy’up

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Since it is mid-October I’m having a bit of a crafting crisis. On one hand, we woke up to an inch of snow here yesterday so I am kicking mitten and hand production into high gear. P’s head and one hand are covered, but that other hand is still out in the cold for now. I’ve come up with new hat and mitts designs that are being tested right now. They are fairly simple and quick so I’m hoping to release them as free patterns that I’ll post on the blog as well. More on that to come.

On the other hand, it is getting awfully close to Halloween and I’m really hoping to be able to make the kids’ costumes this year. For the first 3 years of motherhood there was just no way I was going to go out of my way to make costumes when they had perfectly cute ones at Old Navy for $15. Last year we did make A a pretty cool costume out of a box – he was a construction worker…

But this year I own a sewing machine, and even kinda know how to use it. So I went out the other day and picked up this Simplicity pattern and plan to make the kids cowboy/girl costumes. I figure they can double-up as Stampede outfits next year. I’ve decided to skip making the pants and skirt, they can just wear their regular jeans, so I’m only making the shirts. As I was looking through the fabrics I realized that if I’m going to be making a shirt, why not make it something durable and nice that can be worn everyday. So I bought these beautiful fabrics and I’m going to use buttons or snaps instead of the velcro the pattern calls for. I’m hoping to get working on them this weekend, so maybe next week I’ll be able to post the finished product.

The Knit That Keeps on Giving

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About 2.5 years ago I knit a very cute sweater for A. The pattern was Owlet by Kate Davies, and I chose a deep red colour of King Cole Merino Aran. I had a lot of fun knitting it and it worked up very quickly. The owls’ eyes are supposed to be buttons but at that time I hadn’t found Suzy Q’s (my favorite vintage button shop) so I used wood beads instead. A wore that sweater until last fall (my kids grow very slowly) and got quite a lot of use out of it. Now that it is getting downright cold again here, I dug it out to try on P. Sure enough, it fits her perfectly and the red colour is fine for a girl too. Since both kids will have worn the sweater it has now probably secured it’s place as a family heirloom and the classic design will probably still work for the grandkids someday.

Everyday Hoodie

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Okay, I couldn’t wait any longer, it’s time to release the Everyday Hoodie. Although the Boot Cuffs were my first published pattern, I actually wrote this pattern first (it just took a LOT longer to get right). I’m not sure exactly when I started it, but it was sometime in late spring. Then I had to write it up from memory and reverse engineering since I wasn’t very good about keeping notes as I went. Then I had to do the grading (figuring out the pattern for multiple sizes), followed by knitting a second one in another size just to make sure it was okay. Then I had others test it, followed by having a technical editor go through it with a fine-tooth comb to be sure I didn’t make any errors. Since this was my first pattern, and not a simple one at that, the whole process took a lot longer than it should have. Hopefully future sweater patterns will go much more quickly since I have some experience now.

This pattern came from a desire for a simple, top-down hoodie with clean lines for easy toddler wear. In order to keep the fabric sleek, ribbing, garter and seed stitch have given way to hemmed edges. To keep the look of a basic hoodie this pattern features a zipper closure and front pockets. The optional ribbon draw-string is not particularly functional, it just gives the sweater a little extra personality. The fingering weight yarn makes it a nice, light, versatile sweater to throw on for extra warmth.

I’d like to give a big Thank You to: Jodi and Ian for letting their adorable baby pose for some pictures; Ryan Barr for the wonderful photography; Pat Bostwick (aka “Mom”) for brainstorming and testing; Eleanor Dixon for technical editing; and C for helping me every step of the way.