There is no getting away from it, the birthdays continue. Fortunately these are the last two in my family this year, my grandchildren. So the fingers have to keep moving. I went looking for an idea and once again landed on the Drops website. I found what I was looking for.
I had already bought the yarn. The original plan was to crochet a little dress, but the yarn simply did not work for crochet. I cannot even remember what it was now. Angora wool with silver thread in it or something like that. Pretty and sparkly, but crocheted… no. So I decided to knit instead, and not a dress but a cardigan, and I found one of those too. I started making it for a four-year-old girl. The measurements are on the diagram. But when I started casting on… my yarn is fairly fine, and I used 3 mm needles (the recommendation was 2–4 mm). I even made a tension swatch and got 27 stitches to 10 cm. The pattern says 202 stitches. So I did that. According to my swatch I should actually have needed 216 or more. In any case, I unravelled it, more than once, because with those 200 stitches I could practically have made a cardigan for myself. Not quite, but still…. Eventually the number that matched the measurements was 140 stitches. So that is what I started with. Knit, measure, knit, measure. For the waffle section I increased by 22 stitches. I did not knit the sleeves in the round because I do not like doing that, and besides, I was thinking of embroidering something on them. Which of course I never did, and thank goodness, because I never even got as far as embroidering the sleeves.
Once all the pieces were finished, I steamed them and… I had an overwhelming urge to add ladybirds. I had even found cross-stitch ladybirds and butterflies and all sorts of other little creatures somewhere in a craft album. I loved them and in my mind’s eye the whole cardigan was already covered in them. Off I rushed to Karnaluks again for embroidery thread. There was not much choice, mouliné or wool. I chose mouliné because I had used wool embroidery yarn on my own cardigan and the colours were all so pale and feeble. On a child’s white cardigan I wanted something brighter.
Straight home and start embroidering. A ladybird went onto the first front panel. I stitched the whole thing in one go without even standing up in between. Perhaps I should have, then I might have looked at it from farther away with fresh eyes 🙂
I finished the embroidery, put it over the back of a chair, and when I was in bed trying to go to sleep I kept looking at it. I could not understand why on earth I had put that great red blob there….
In the morning I woke up and started unpicking it, my favourite activity. It took so long that I decided to continue at work, because there are always waiting periods. And what tools did I use? My manicure tools. They worked perfectly. The ground around the car was covered in bits of yarn, and afterwards I picked them up just as I would from the floor at home 🙂
So much for the ladybird…. It really was a hideous red blob. But then came the next disaster.
A dark mark was left behind to remind me of the ladybird, and no matter what I tried I could not get rid of it.
I did not mope for long. I knew something had to go there, and once again I found it on the Drops website.
And this is the final result.
And then I also made a hat, again from the Drops site, though I crocheted this one.
And with a few details of my own added, this was the final result.
It will do 🙂 There is still hope that it fits as well.
The model is her older sister, so it is a little small on her. The skirt still fits, though. I made that for her a couple of years ago, I think… or longer. I cannot remember any more.
