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.