Chloe

Today I have the last of the baby knits - for now, anyway. Little baby girl arrived safe and sound last week and I think I will wait a bit before I knit anything new till I can get a gauge of what size she will need in the future. There is also the matter of summer coming up too when she won't be needing a lot of knits unless lightweight cottons.

So today we have 'Chloe', a lovely stripey ruffled edged little cardi designed by Alana Dakos of Never Not knitting. The design only costs $4 and you can use it from sizes 0-3mths right up to age 10-12. It's also a top down seamless construction so very few ends to sew in - yay! It's extremely well written so you could use the basic structure of increases to knit your own variations - solids, intarsia pattern, lace, embroidered daisies:-) I've also seen longer variations too, with and without the frill, crocheted edgings...... I've got a few new ideas already!

There is no button band so you have to make sure you wrap the alternating colours up the side neatly  - as this will be visible on the inside edge. I pressed it carefully so you couldn't see it from the front at all. A light press with a damp cloth really helped the ruffle lie flat too. (all my yarn is 100% wool though so if you are using acrylic or another man made yarn, don't use a cloth at all, just steam it about an inch or so above without touching your knitting with the iron - she says from experience!)

There is no neckline edging either so your cast on row had best be neat as it becomes your top visible edge:-)) I used a long tail cast on but thats just my preference as it gives nice even edge with a bit of stretch. You can also go to the knitting help cast on videos if you want to have a litle play at learning new cast on methods. I love this site:)

The button loops are just a crocheted chain matching whatever colour stripe was in the right place and the buttons are more jolly daisies - which will match the little red booties for as long as they fit.

The only modification I made was to substitute DK yarn for the worsted weight stated. Worsted is meant to give you 18st - 4"/10cm and my DK was giving me 22st - 4"/10cm so for the 0-3mths, I just went up a size and its worked pretty well. The width is pretty close to size 1 and you can continue increasing every 6 rows at the end if you think the DK is running on the short side. I didn't find that a problem at this size although I'd be more careful if I was knitting a larger childs sizing.

Gosh, that turned into a bit of a pattern review! But best I write it all down now as I'll need to remember these things the next time I want to knit it:-)) Now I think I need something different on the needles - a lace shawl maybe? Like the lovely peacock shawl or Jane's lovely Luiza? I think I may have to dye up some yarn especially for both of these.

I'm also going to reaquaint myself with Vivian this afternoon. It's raining outside, no gardening today although the plants are loving all the water and are growing like weeds - I'm sure the weeds are too! But anyway, a perfect wet day to be sitting inside knitting and watching an old film or two, don't you think?