I’ve been a knitter of sorts for almost 40 years and can confidently say that if I can imagine it, I can knit it. However there’s one thing that I’ve never been 100% sure about: darning in my ends. My darns are always secure and neat but after hearing a judge at a knitting competition say that that best knitters darn in their ends so you can’t even find them, my confidence in my technique flew right out the window (along with any desire to enter any more knitting competitions).
The Purl Bee has set me straight with her tutorial on eight different ways to darn in your ends when knitting. I was doing it properly all along!
The Purl Bee is a great blog, not just for this article. So even if you know how to darn in your ends when you knit, check it out anyway. You’ll be glad you did!
As promised, here is Charlie’s new hat! Not only is it proof that I can crochet, it’s also proof that sometimes I buy patterns that were written more recently than 1969 🙂
Here are the details, because this hat is so ridiculous that everyone should make one!
Pattern: Blockhead Man Hat by Darleen Hopkins – $4.50 US Yarn: Cascade 220 (not superwash, just the regular kind) Hook size: 5mm/US size H Size: medium/large (Charlie likes his hats loose and long so he can pull them down over his ears but the smaller size really was going to be a bit tight) Skill Level: Super easy but make sure to keep track of the end of your rounds!
Charlie insists he’s never going to take this hat off, so I had to sew a name label in it because of his school’s clothing policy (I.E. put a name label in all your kids clothes or we’ll look at you with the same expression we use on the 5 year olds when they’ve done something silly).
Of course, I could find neither the name label tape, nor the laundry marker that I bought for this purpose (It’s probably in my sewing box which is the only place I didn’t look), so I made a label with vintage seam tape and a Sharpie.
Fold the ends of the tape over and fasten the thread with a few stitches over the top of each other. Then over-sew to the hat, catching just the back of the stitches so it doesn’t show from the outside.
Make sure to leave a slight “bubble” in the label so that there is enough room for the crochet to stretch.
Here it is seen from the side.
I have my fingers crossed that Charlie doesn’t still manage to lose it. Whenever his Dad or I pick him up from school, he’s always managed to spread his belongings all over the classroom verandah so you never know!
Now I’m off to play with my our new Rainbow loom, which arrived during breakfast this morning!
I love knitting for babies and one of my favourite things about it is the huge range of cute, and sometimes bizarre, novelty buttons that you can find to sew on them.
As a mother, however, the one thing I hate most about knitwear for babies is trying to do up the buttons on a cardigan wrapped around a 4 kilo mass of wriggling baby, especially when the buttons aren’t chosen to be functional.
If you’ve ever knit something for a baby and it has never been worn, it might not be because the parents are ungrateful un-knitworthy hand-made hating ingrates. They might be, but they might have just had a difficult time doing up the buttons. So from my years of experience doing up cardigans on wriggling babies, here is my guide to choosing buttons for baby garments.
The irresistible but poky novelty button.
These are the type of buttons that have little poky bits sticking out everywhere but they’e cute so we must put them on all the things. Star shaped buttons are the WORST. Unfortunately they are also adorable.
These buttons should be used strictly as a decorative element, as trying to put them through a buttonhole that is in constant motion just causes yarn snags, sudden knitwear hatred and wild emotional swings (especially if the person trying to do them up is sleep deprived).
I am not a functional button!
The irresistible but mostly round novelty button.
This type of button works well on knitwear most of the time. If it has any part that sticks out, like the cat’s ears, they are smooth and won’t snag.
The only time I would avoid using buttons of this type is if my yarn is particularly splitty as it still might snag, but who wants to knit with that kind of yarn anyway?
I am cute and functional! Most of the time.
Round decorative buttons
These are my favourite type of buttons to put on baby wear. Printed with cute characters or flowers, special 3D look patterns or interesting moulded but completely smooth shapes. The buttons below are all vintage but you can still get printed buttons with classic children’s characters in most shops that sell buttons.
They’ll never snag the yarn, no matter what you’ve knit with, how wriggly the baby is or how tired the person trying to do them up.
Putting my buttons where my mouth is
Figuratively speaking.
This is a baby surprise jacket that I knit for my nephew. I used vintage pale green buttons for fastening the front and a poky novelty ladybird button purely for decoration.
Two types of buttons used in the right spots.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on choosing buttons for baby and toddler knitwear so please feel free to leave a comment below!
I test knit the pattern (I’ll show you my hat once it’s dry), and was very pleased to find that I translated it properly and managed to correct the errors and add the missing information (it didn’t say how long to knit before casting off).
I tried the finished hat on my son Charlie, who is about the size of the average seven year old, despite only being five, and it fit perfectly! All my experience in knitting hats paid off and I didn’t have to add or unknit any rows. Phew.
Now I wonder what to tackle translating next. There’s a very cute looking baby cardigan, or I could really challenge myself and see if I can make heads or tails of the chapter on knitting Latvian mittens…
When it comes to knitting, sometimes I have a habit of closing my eyes and jumping into projects that I have no idea if I am capable of achieving. It’s like the extreme sports version of knitting, you get addicted to the adrenalin rush and forget about the times you ended up in hospital, or in this case, the times you swore at your knitting and threw the whole lot up against the nearest wall before storming out of the room. Expletives optional.
When I started translating and correcting the knitting patterns in Home Work (a book of mostly lace edgings published in Toronto in 1891), I knew very little about knitting lace. By the time I had gotten halfway through I realised that thanks to my research and Margaret Stove, I had learnt so much I could now design my own.
Today I’m learning to read knitting patterns from 1956, written in Latvian. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I found this book on Ebay last month and the patterns are so beautiful that I couldn’t resist it, even though I didn’t know a word of Latvian (I can now translate “stitch”, “knit” and “and” without help, lol). I have to admit, I even fell in love with the paperboard cover.
The wonderful thing about these patterns is that they have very little text, relying mostly on schematics, colour charts and sketches of the finished item. This makes it possible to translate them using a combination of Google Translate, the technique and stitch pattern sections in the book (yay for knitting charts), and the things I already know about Latvian knitting. Specifically, I hit a section that I was sure should be a two colour cast on followed by a two colour herringbone braid a couple of rows later and sure enough, after comparing terms in the technique section, I was right.
At the moment I’m working on translating a pattern called Zēna Cepure, which is a child’s hat that reminds me of the bonnet from the bouncing baby set in the original Homespun Handknit, only knit in the other direction.
I intend to translate the whole book eventually, so if you’d like to know about the patterns as I upload them, please feel free to subscribe to the blog over there on the right where it says “Subscribe to the Blog via Email”
, I had learnt so much I could now design my own.
