The Sufficiently Animal-Themed Gift

My honorary niece Olivia loves animals and wants to be a vet when she grows up. When I was looking for a pattern for her 2024 Christmas present sweater, I looked for one with an animal theme.

I soon found the one you see depicted above, which is 59 Sweater with Cat's Head, by Bergère de France. I liked the idea of making Olivia a hat in the same colour yarn as the cat's muffler, but not the hat shown here, which makes the child model look like one of the Snorks. I searched for a suitable basic child-sized tam pattern in a DK weight, and soon found this one.

As for the yarn, I was able to pull some pink and dark brown DK yarn from my stash, and I bought some oatmeal-coloured Drops Karisma from Romni Wools for the main colour. I looked in Fabricland for heart-shaped buttons for this project, and found some in a dark pink instead of the red the sample used, but the two pinks worked together and that was good enough for me. 

The completed sweater in a size 10. I'm actually not a fan of making picture knits (so slow and fiddly!), and this was my third one this year, but it was worth it for the pleasure it will give the three children they are going to. I did hit a snag when I ran short of the oatmeal yarn by *two* skeins. I had to order more, and it took months for the order to come in, and then the dye lots weren't the same. The new dye lot proved to be not an exact match but fairly close, and I was able to work the two extra skeins in without the difference showing. 

When making this sweater and tam, I used 47 grams of the pink and 3 grams of the brown from my stash, and had 21 grams of the newly purchased oatmeal left over, so that's a net stash decrease of -29 grams.

Making the tam was quite straightforward. It should look very cute with this sweater.

Whenever I'm assembling a birthday or Christmas gift for Olivia, I always give her "something to wear, something to read, and something to play with". The something to play with in this case was a crystal unicorn kit from the clearance section at Michaels, and the something to read was a copy of Kate DiCamillo's Tale of Despereaux, and also a copy of The Daring Book for Girls. I've actually had this copy of The Daring Book for a year or more, and I think it's figured in at least one photo of Olivia's gifts before, but ultimately I ended up holding it back because I added something else to the gift. This Christmas she will actually receive it. I just hope this gift will be sufficiently animal-themed for her liking. 

A Three Penguin Gift

 

When it came time to pick out a pattern for my grandniece Holly's present for Christmas 2024 (that is, in the early fall of 2023), I browsed Ravelry with the words "cute dress for a toddler" on my mind. 

I soon found the pattern you see depicted above, which is no. 33 Robe Jacquard M0717 by Bergère de France, and thought it qualified, with its simple picture knit that a toddler could identify and understand. 

I went through my stash to see what I had that would be suitable for such a project. I found some black and off-white DK very quickly. I had no yellow, and I was also skeptical that penguin feet are actually of a shade remotely resembling the sickly greenish yellow used in the sample. I googled for images of real penguins to see what colour their feet were exactly, and found their feet to be typically more of a yellowish orange, which was fortuitous, as I had a small amount of some nice orange DK on hand. I didn't have enough of the orange to do the ribbed edges in it, or anything that was suitable for the ribbing in my DK box, so I looked through my fingering box, and found a leftover variegated I'd previously used for my grandniece Cauliflower's sweater earlier this year and that I could use double strand to make it the right weight. I had nothing for the main colour, so I made a sampler by knotting together some short strands of the other colours, and took it to Romni Wools, where I chose some Drops Karisma in pale blue that went well with my contrast colours. I also thought the dress looked too short, and decided to lengthen it by two inches, and I bought an extra skein of Drops Karisma for the purpose.

The completed dress in a size 18 months. Holly turns two in May, so she should be able to go right into at Christmas and wear it until spring. I think it would look sharper and more pulled-together if I had been able to knit the ribbed edges in orange, but it's not bad as is. The variegated has a little rust-like orange in it, which helps. 

I used 1 gram of the orange, 6 grams of the off-white, 44 grams of the variegated, and 10 grams of the black to make this dress, or -61 grams of stash yarn total, and I had 35 grams of the pale blue left, which works out to a net stash decrease of -29 grams for this project. 

In my experience, toddlers don't tend to care very much about their clothes, or for that matter even to wear clothes at all, so I bought something to go with the dress to make the gift more fun. This plush penguin toy came from Dollarama, and it amuses me that it's leaning into the dress like it's photobombing it. 

I think Holly will like playing with a penguin toy that matches her dress, and she may even learn to say the word "penguin" for the first time because of this present. 

A Frugal But Quality Gift

 

My grandnephew Bug turned 11 in the summer of 2024, and of course a sweater must be knitted for the occasion. 

 

 

 At least fifteen years ago, a woman who worked at the company where I then worked gave me three bags of Bouquet Sock & Sweater fingering yarn in burgundy, blue, and gray, saying she would never use it. In the years since, I had made two boys' sweaters and three pairs of socks from that yarn. When I happened to catch sight of it in my box of fingering yarn late in 2023, I realized the colours of that nice quality yarn were just right for Curtis, and decided to browse Ravelry for a pattern that would use up the last of it. I soon zeroed in on the handsome pattern depicted above, which is 50-06 Fana genser, by Sandnes Design. 

The finished sweater. I didn't have the right quantities of the three colours to make the sweater as it was designed, so I had to tweak the colour scheme a little, but I was quite satisfied with the result. I think I like it even better than the sample photo. But I did not use up all of that sock yarn as I hoped. I used 104 grams of the blue, 61 grams of the burgundy, and 50 grams of the gray yarn, for a net stash decrease of 215 grams. After making three boys' sweaters and three pairs of socks out of that yarn, I still have 180 grams of the blue, 136 grams of the burgundy, and 105 grams of the gray left. Oh well, it will keep, and in fact I am currently working on a project for which I am using some of the gray yarn.  

Along with the sweater knitted out of gifted yarn, Bug also received the mechanical dinosaur kit (purchased from Dollarama), and the packet of Harry Potter buttons (purchased at Value Village) you see in the photo above. (As I wrote last year when Bug got a thrift shop Harry Potter notebook as part of his birthday present, I won't buy new Harry Potter merchandise because J.K. Rowling is a transphobe, but I think buying it at thrift shops is fine.) So this was a frugal but quality gift.