Knitting for premature babies

It seems a long time since I wrote about knitting on this blog – probably because it is a long time!

I recently bought a different pattern with a larger range of sizes for baby’s cardigans than the pattern I usually follow. It just happened that I had chosen a ball of the recommended yarn before buying pattern JB001 from James C. Brett.

V-necked cardigan

The pattern was straightforward, but I took the precaution of writing out the rows and stitches for the decreasing of the front and raglan edges at the same time. I adapted the pattern to avoid side seams in the way I described earlier. There are instructions for a round necked cardigan/jumper and for a V-necked cardigan, which was my choice.

Two cardigans of the smallest size may be knitted from a single 100g ball of Supreme soft and gentle baby DK yarn with some yarn left over.

Avoiding a side seam

Knitting news

As most of my lockdown knitting has been premature baby cardigans and children’s hats, which have featured here previously, I have not written a knitting post for a while. This post is about a completed project and one I started recently.

A request to knit a cardigan for a young relative was accompanied by a photo of a shop-bought garment. For once I had no suitable patterns. However, I subscribe to a knitting email. Soon afterwards they offered a downloadable pattern for a pretty cardigan. The yarn for the pattern is Euro Baby Babe Jazz, which is a multi-coloured polyamide/acrylic yarn. I chose Fairy Forest as the shade, ordering it from The Knitting Network’s website.

Cardigan

I was very favourably impressed by the speed of delivery and the minimal, but effective, packaging. Fairy Forest is mainly green and blue. I began knitting in daylight. When I first saw the yarn by (energy saving) electric light I had a shock – it looked blue and yellow. (Do you remember That dress?) Fairy Forest is a magic colour-changing yarn!

I adapted the measurements from the pattern to (hopefully) fit the recipient. I had spare yarn for two hats.

The edging is bell-edging, which is straightforward to knit and very pretty. It was a new stitch-pattern to me.

Knitting kit

My current project is using up yarn from the two Aran-weight garments I have made in recent years. A friend I met at the craft group (which I stopped attending a few years ago) highlighted a charity project on Facebook. The idea is to knit, crochet or weave scarves to equal the length of one of the long-distance footpaths in this county. Dark colours are preferred. The scarves are for homeless people in this county and beyond it.

I cast on 29 stitches using 5.0mm needles (US size 9 pins), which gives the recommended width of 6 ins. There were a number of suggested stitch patterns on Facebook. I decided to use a mixture of knit and purl rows to give a ridged effect. My plan is to have a similar block of the pink yarn at each end of the scarf. I wound the pink yarn until I had two balls of equal weight.

Knitting a long scarf may take a while…

…and may not be the best way to help a homeless person. It is one way of helping and using up yarn, which is otherwise just taking up space.

Another hat pattern

A friend passed some yarn on to me for the purpose of knitting hats for Boxes of Hope. One ball was soft and fluffy. After two false starts (fortunately it was easy to unravel) I made a hat by a different method.

Hat before stitching seam

With 6.5mm needles cast on 12 sts. and knit until the yarn runs out. Pull back one row and cast off. (If there is plenty of yarn knit to the circumference of child’s head.)

With smooth yarn and 4mm needles pick up stitches along one side. I picked up 69sts.  K. 1 row. P. 1 row.

Next row (K. 21 K 2 tog.) 3 times. (66 sts.)

Finished hat

P.1 row.

Next row (K. 9 K. 2 tog.) 6 times. (60 sts.)

Next row (P. 2 tog. P. 8) 6 times. (54 sts.)

Next row (K. 7 K. 2 tog.) 6 times. (48 sts.)

Next row (P. 2 tog. P. 6) 6 times. (42 sts.)

Next row (K. 5. K. 2 tog.) 6 times. (36 sts.)

Next row (P. 2 tog. P. 4) 6 times. (30 sts.)

Next row (K. 3 K. 2 tog.) 6 times. (24 sts.)

Next row (P. 2 tog. P. 2) 6 times. (18 sts.)

Next row (K. 1 K. 2 tog.) 6 times. (12 sts.)

Next row P. 2 tog. 6 times. (6 sts.)

Fasten off. Join seam by over-sewing using the smooth yarn.