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. 

Some Sewing, Shopping, and Shipping

For my honorary niece Olivia's 8th birthday, I did some sewing and some shopping. 

 

 

 

For most of Olivia's existence, my practice has been to make her a wool sweater for Christmas and a cotton summer dress and matching purse for her birthday, which is in May. This year I decided to go with a cotton jumpsuit, partly to change things up and partly because I thought Olivia might get more real wear out of it, but mostly because when I saw the above pattern, which is McCalls M7917, there was no resisting such a cute design.  

I chose a cotton print to make it with that is pictured at the head of this post. It's the "Cookbook" fabric, by Riley Blake Designs.
 

 

 

 

The finished jumpsuit, made in View C and size 8, and the matching purse, the purse being made from a 20+ year-old pattern from Vogue (V9893) that I've used and reused half to death. I didn't seem to have anything I could use on this purse for trim, but looking at the photo of it now, I wish I'd tried harder and come up with something. It looks so plain that way.  

 

 

 

I also bought Olivia a thrift shop copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, and a dollar store unicorn craft kit that Olivia can paint and assemble herself.  

In the fall of 2023, a hoped-for visit to Olivia's house had to be cancelled. I hoped it could be rescheduled to January 2024, so I didn't send her intended Christmas present to her in December 2023, and then that trip didn't happen either. By the time March 2024 rolled around and I'd given up hope of a visit in the near future, I decided just to hang onto her Christmas present and send it along with her birthday present. Then I was late getting her birthday present ready. It was the end of July 2024 before I finally shipped Olivia's combined Christmas and birthday gift to her. (Bad aunt! Bad!) 

But Olivia didn't seem to mind the delay, and she had the pleasure of opening quite a large, elaborate gift that contained not only the jumpsuit, purse, book and craft gift contained above, but also a sweater, hat, novel and designer activity book AND a witch costume complete with broomstick and cat for the doll she'd received from me for her 7th birthday, one Miss Rainbow Sparkle Unicorn-Animals. Lindsie called me right after Olivia opened her gift, and though Olivia took a shy fit and wouldn't come to the phone to thank me as Lindsie wanted, I could hear her squealing away in the background. 

Olivia's favourite item out of all of those things was the black cat. My idea was that the cat would be Rainbow's pet cat (or familiar, when she was wearing her witch outfit), but Olivia didn't see it that way. The cat was hers and only hers, and she named it Blackie. I suggested some other names that might be suitable for a black cat (i.e., Ebony, Sable, Raven, Coal, Midnight), but no, Blackie it was and would remain. 

I'm also happy to say that as I type this in late October 2024, I have Olivia's Christmas 2024 present all ready to go, so she'll get her Christmas present in good time this year, taking this honorary aunt at least temporarily off the naughty list.

The "Take a Look at Me Now" Truck Sweater

My little grandnephew Sawyer is obsessed with vehicles and tools, or, as my family and I say to each other either sagely or resignedly, "He's a Swan man." I met Sawyer for the first time on Christmas Day 2023 when he was 22 months old, and he had very little interest in interacting with all the family around him. He spent the entire time playing with the toy racetrack in the basement rec room, and when upstairs, with the decorative toy train that ran on a track around the Christmas tree. He would not even take time away from his toy trucks to open his Christmas presents. His father opened Sawyer's gifts for him, and if the present was a vehicle of some kind, it would be handed over to Sawyer and he would be delighted and play with it, but otherwise he wouldn't so much as look at it. My gift to him was a dinosaur sweater and a toy stuffed dinosaur, and Sawyer never even glanced at them. My takeaway from that day, besides the one big smile that I got from him when I spoke to him about the train set (and that glows in my memory like a light), was that going forward my gifts to him needed to be vehicle-themed if I wanted him to give them the time of day.

For his second birthday in February, I sent Sawyer a storybook about trucks and one of those matching card games with pictures of trucks on the back. And though I'd chosen a striped sweater pattern for his Christmas 2024 sweater in the fall of 2023, some months later I decided to have a look through the Ravelry database to see what kind of vehicle-themed patterns it offered.

I very soon zeroed in on the cute little number above, which is the s34-15 Tiny Trucker pattern, by Drops Design. It's a free pattern. 

For the yarn, I purchased 100 grams of Sandnes Garn Double Sunday in 8082 Forest Green, and 100 grams of Sandnes Garn Double Sunday in 1015 Putty. Sawyer has blond hair and hazel eyes, and green and cream are colours that suit him well.

The completed sweater. I knitted the body as far as the armholes, then when making the first sleeve, realized I would not have enough green to do both the sleeves. 

Rather than buy another skein of green and only use a bit of it, I looked through my stash to see what I had that could be used to piece out the other two new yarns. I found a partial skein of olive green DK that seemed to work, so I knitted the two sleeves insofar as I could with the rest of the forest green yarn, using it all up, then knitted in a block of the olive green on each sleeve. I was worried I would run short of the putty too, so I knitted somewhat beyond where the putty colour was supposed to start. (I think I made the right call on that -- I had just 9 grams of the putty left when I finished the sweater.) Then, when the sweater was finished, I used the olive green to embroider on the truck. 

I think my frugal makeshift version looks just as good as the designer sample, though I do wish I'd ripped out a little of the forest green on the body, knitted in a stripe of olive, and used the dark green to do the truck duplicate stitch. But it looks nice the way it is, and I saved myself the price of two skeins of new yarn by working in a third colour from my stash.  

I bought a colouring book with lots of cars in it, and a box of crayons to go with the sweater, and it's my hope the truck sweater and the car colouring book will at least warrant a look from Sawyer. 

When I finished this project, I had used all the new forest green yarn, all but 9 grams of the putty, and 18 grams of the stash olive green, so that is a net stash decrease of 9 grams. 

A Straw Hat for Summer

One of the items on my wardrobe needs list this spring was a straw hat. I had a twill fabric trilby with a tartan band that I'd sewn myself in 2015, and a commercially made ivory knit floppy hat that must be nearly twenty years old, but I also seemed to have a number of summer outfits neither of them worked with, and I wanted to be able to prevent sun damage and (more) wrinkles with some style, not to mention receive fewer scoldings from my dermatologist. 

After scouring the nearby Dufferin Mall and the Stockyards for a suitable straw hat, I bought the classic panama straw you see above at Walmart for $21.47. I thought the PVC leather band and plastic ring trim was ugly, but I could remove it and retrim the hat myself. The problem with inexpensive hats often is the trim, by the way. So many of the hats I saw when shopping for a hat this past spring were a good shape and not bad quality and trimmed in an inexplicably tacky and/or hideous way. If you find an inexpensive or thrift shop hat in a size and shape you like and a trim you don't, keep in mind that you can change the trim pretty easily and inexpensively, but do watch out for the glue that will be left behind. You probably won't be able to replace a wide hat band with a narrower one, or leave it untrimmed, because you'll need to cover up the dried gobs of glue that will be left behind. This is why in traditional millinery hat trims are always sewn in place, making it possible for one to refresh an old hat with new trim without anyone being the wiser. 

When I got the hat home, I did some googling and searches on Pinterest to get ideas on how to retrim a straw panama. According to my research, hey are usually simply trimmed with a band of black or white grosgrain ribbon, with perhaps a flat bow on the side. This was fine by me, as I wanted a simple hat I could wear with everything. On my next trip downtown, I purchased a metre of wide ivory grosgrain for $2. 

 

 

The finished hat. Retrimming a hat is always harder for me than I expect. I have trouble visualizing it, always end up redoing it a few times, am never confident in the results, and even when I declare the job done always feel I haven't gotten it quite right. But I think this one is fairly satisfactory. It's simple and fresh looking, and will go with any of of my summer outfits. Not a bad outcome for $23.47 and the time and effort I put into this relatively easy project. 

Pleasantly Generic and Useful

My grandniece Cauliflower is to turn 15 this summer, and as always, her birthday will be marked by a sweater from yours truly.  

Cauliflower is probably physically full-grown now, and wears a women's size small in sweaters and tops. Surreal as I find it to be the great-aunt of a grandniece just three years away from becoming an adult, it does open up the sweater pattern options, there being far more patterns for women than there are for children or tweens. But I didn't spend long browsing. I decided that since her sweater from last year was a solid colour and a worsted, that this sweater would be patterned and either DK or fingering, I looked through the knitting patterns I have saved to my Pinterest board, and I soon came across the one you see above, which is the Gardengate pattern, designed by Jennifer Steingass. 

For yarn, I purchased 450 grams of Sandnes Garn Sisu in Blue for the main colour, and 100 gram skein of Lang Yarns Super Soxx Silk for the contrast colour. The colours should look good on Cauliflower, who has light brown hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. 

The finished sweater, which I knitted up exactly as specified by the pattern in a size 36. The colours and the pattern are pretty, but I'm not too thrilled with the proportions of this sweater. The yoke is very deep and the sleeves look too long. I just hope it doesn't sit too poorly on Cauliflower. 

I returned two skeins of the blue yarn, and had just 13 grams of the blue and 57 grams of the variegated contrast colour left, for a stash increase of 70 grams. 

As for the little extra trinkets that I like to include when giving one of my grandnieces or grandnephews a piece of homemade clothing, I purchased a little notebook and pen and some hand lotion from Dollarama. I don't know what Cauliflower's tastes are, and at 50 I am probably hopelessly out of touch with what teenaged girls like these days, so I stuck with pleasantly generic and useful.