The Off the Mark Dress & Purse

 

When it came time to select a pattern for my grandniece Holly's Christmas 2026 dress, I turned as always to Ravelry.

 

 

 

 

 

I soon decided on S27-9 Forest Dance, which you see pictured above, by Drops Design. It's a free pattern. As for the yarn, I went to Romni Wools during their Boxing Week sale as always, and found... nothing. I could not seem to find a DK yarn that seemed suitable for a dress for a little girl of three and a half. I eventually just gave up, purchased the yarn I'd found for some other projects, and then made a stop at the Stockyards Michaels, which isn't far from Romni Wools. While there, I found some Loops & Threads Luxe Merino in Pine, which is a flecked dark green. I couldn't find a yarn I liked for the contrast colour, but I bought three skeins of the Luxe Merino, then rushed back to Romni Wools just before it closed for the day, where I bought a single skein of Drops Karisma in Orange, although I thought it was more of a burnt orange or rust colour.   

 

 

 

 

The finished dress in a size 3/4. As I recall the project knitted up with no problems. I knitted it in two colours rather than in three as the pattern called for, and the only other modification was that I added a picot edging to the hem and cuffs in the burnt orange, as I thought the dress looked a little plain without it. It's not a bad little dress, and it will suit Holly's colouring beautifully, though I have been told since that Holly loves pink and purple. Oops.

 

 

 

 

I made a little purse to go with the dress, using the Squircle pattern I've used countless times before. To make the purse match the dress, I used the pattern from the hem of the dress around the top, and added a line of picot crochet around the top. And as I always do when making one of these little knitted bags, I cut a round piece of stiff interfacing, fitted it into the bottom of the bag, knitted a second bottom for the bag, then sewed the second bottom in place over the interfacing piece. Doing that makes the bag hold its shape better when it has things in it, and also makes it sit better. 

 

 

 

 

 As for the rest of Holly's present, I picked out a few little things at Dollarama: a stuffed toy lamb, a unicorn-themed colouring and activity book, and a box of crayons, as Holly really likes to colour. I thought this wasn't such a bad little gift, and then I was told that Holly really likes ponies and sharks, so I'm way off the mark. Holly will just have to chalk me up as some hopelessly out-of-touch fossil of a great-aunt.  

When One Hat Leads to Another

 

Of late years, I've been trying to avoid making myself any new knitted tams, given that I have seven of them. But in 2025, I began thinking about how I didn't have a hat that worked with a certain scarf that I have. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The scarf, which you see depicted above, is one I bought from a Salvation Army thrift shop here in Toronto in 2002 for $2. It's made of a floral print copper-coloured velvet on one side with a dark red velvet and three brass buttons on the other side. Velvet scarves like this one were a trend in the late nineties. They don't seem to be in style now but I don't care. As far as I am concerned, a beautiful, useful item like this is always in style. I've gotten many compliments on this scarf, and after all these years it's still in nearly perfect condition.  

 

But none of my hats looked quite right with this scarf. I decided I wanted a hat that would coordinate with it, and also work with my quilted velvet olive jacket and olive wool overcoat (which were also purchased at Toronto thrift shops in the early 2000s, for $17 and $8 respectively) that I usually pair with this scarf. So, I decided to let myself make just one more hat. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I searched Ravelry for a suitable pattern and came up with the Lacy Swirls Hat, by Ann Regis. I searched for yarn that would work with the scarf. That was a longer and more time-consuming search, which I had to conduct in person, taking the scarf along with me for comparison. I should have been sensible and selected a superwash DK, but when I saw some gorgeous skeins of  Sandnes Garn Tynn Silk Mohair in a rich copper colour in Toronto's Eweknit yarn store, my raging mohair fetish got the better of me and I bought two skeins of it. 

 

 

 

 

 

The finished hat. I made some modifications to the pattern. The pattern called for two colours and I just used one. It called for a DK, and I had bought a lace weight. I used two strands of the Tynn and 4.5 mm needles to knit this hat, which got me close to the gauge the design called for. The pattern also called for a plain ribbed brim. My vision for this hat involved putting three decorative brass buttons on it. I won't usually put non-functional closures on an item because that tends to cheapen the look, but in this case I had some crested brass buttons in my button tin that would look so nice on this particular hat, and I also thought they would make the hat and scarf look more in accord. I consulted my knitting library to find a suitable cable pattern, with the idea that the buttons would look more integrated into the design if I could sew them into one of the cables. 

I consulted all the knitting stitch books in my knitting library, and ultimately selected edging no. 222 (p. 118) from the Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible, by Hitomi Shida. I just had to cast on 96 stitches instead of the 90 the pattern called for to make the brim cable repeats work out evenly, and then increase to 99 stitches for the body of the hat. 

 

 

 

 

 

The hat is beautiful, and goes quite well with my treasured velvet scarf, but... it's not very warm at all. And now I'm planning another, much warmer hat in a butterscotch colour so I can wear my olive green coats and the velvet scarf on cold days, though the second hat at least won't be knitted. I'll just have to try to take enough pleasure in my nice new hats that I can forget that my hat moratorium is in tatters.

Holly's Hobby is Colouring

 

In late 2024, when I was planning my knitting projects for 2025, I searched the Ravelry database for a pattern that would suitable for my grandniece Holly's Christmas 2025 dress. 

 

 

 

 

I soon decided to go with the Seamless Flower Dress, designed by Ewelina Murach. Back in 2016, I used this design to make a dress for my grandniece Cauliflower, and I had really liked the pattern. As for the yarn, I purchased 300 grams of Garnstudio Drops Karisma in Rose. I would have gone with a red this time, but Romni Wools didn't have a nice red DK in stock at the time. No matter, as this is definitely a dress that looks pretty in pink. And it turns out that Holly really likes pink. 

 

 

 

 

The dress, which I made in a size 2, knitted up without any issues. (That is, none that I can recall well over a year after finishing it.) I did remember that I didn't like the lacy effect of the lines leading to the floral design on the front when I made Cauliflower's dress, so this time around I knitted those stitches in a way that didn't leave holes. 

 

 

 

 

I didn't have a pink button that was the right shade to work on the back neckline of the dress, so I used this odd white one that I happened to have. It's actually one I found in my back yard garden years ago. It wasn't at all damaged or worn, so I brought it into the house, scrubbed it up, and tossed into my button tin, figuring it would come in handy at some point. It has a slightly iridescent colour to it that made it work pretty well with the pink of this dress. 

 

 

 

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll know that my rule is that when I make a little girl's dress, there must also be a purse made to match. For this one, I used the Squircle purse pattern that I have used many times before. The purse looked a little plain, so I made a little rosette and tacked it on. I should have looked harder for a nice rosette pattern, because this one looks too rough and ready.  

 

 

When I make a Squircle purse, I always cut a round piece of stiff interfacing to fit into the bottom, then knit a second bottom piece and stitch it in place over the interfacing. The purse will then sit upright on its bottom and hold its shape instead of just flopping over. I ran a little short of the rose-coloured yarn I had bought for this dress, so when it came time to knit the bottom insert, I knitted it in some cream yarn I had on hand. 

 

 

 

 

Holly Hobbie merchandise was big in the seventies, and I think it had a brief resurgence in the early nineties, but there's little of it available for sale these days. So when I just happened to come across this excellent condition early 1990s vintage Holly Hobbie mug in a thrift shop one day in 2025, I snapped it up for Holly. 
 

 

 

 

Besides the dress, purse, and mug, I also wanted Holly to have something she could play with, so I also bought a colouring book with a pack of crayons embedded in its front for her. She was just two years and seven months old at Christmas 2025, and I wasn't sure she would be colouring yet, but I figured that if she wasn't she soon would be. 

It turned out that Holly was very much into colouring, so much so that the colouring book was the only part of her gift she had any interest in. Oh well, perhaps she'll come to appreciate and enjoy the dress, purse, and mug in time. 

Scrapping With Sawyer

 

 

For my grandnephew Sawyer's Christmas 2025 project, I didn't have to look too far for a sweater pattern.

 

 

 

 

I quickly decided to go with the Sverrigsgade pattern, designed by Sanne Bjerregaard. I'd used this pattern before, when knitting my honorary niece Olivia's Christmas 2022 sweater. It is quite a nice design, but the real selling point was that I'd been able to make it entirely out of stash yarn. For Sawyer's version, I didn't have enough of any colour yarn to use for the background colour of this sweater, but I had some DK yarns that would work for almost all the contrast colours. I made a sampler of wine, sage green, heather green, dark green, and cream yarns and took it with me when I went to Romni Wools to look for a coordinating main colour and one of the contrast colours. I purchased 200 grams of Wendy With Wool DK in Biscuit and 100 grams of Drops Karisma in Orange (or what I would describe as a rust). 

 

 

 

 

The completed pullover in a size 4. It's not bad. I had to get creative with the contrast colours and use more of them than the pattern called for in order to be able to finish the sweater with the yarn I had, which affected the cohesion of the total look more than I liked.

 

 

 

I bought a toy truck from Dollarama to complete the gift, figuring that a boy of two months shy of four was not going to be too interested in a new sweater, and Sawyer has been obsessed with vehicles and tools since before he could walk. 

All the interactions I had with Sawyer on Christmas Day 2025 were vehicle-themed, because Sawyer ignores everything else as irrelevant. When he was playing with the train set my sister-in-law had set up to run around the Christmas tree, I said to him, "The train is going to run over your toes and cut them off, Sawyer," and nudged his foot off the track with one of mine. He took that as his cue to repeatedly and joyously kick me in the leg, which as I told him, was not a nice way to treat his aged and decrepit great-aunt. 

At any rate, I could be sure the truck would be well-received. And it was. When Sawyer unwrapped his gift, he wasn't able to open the box the truck came in by himself, and so took the two items over to his father, my nephew Luke. So far as I can recall, the conversation went as follows. 

Luke: Oh, you got a crane truck. And a nice warm sweater. Here, put on the sweater.

Sawyer: Can you open the box?

Luke: Put on the sweater!

Sawyer: No.

Luke: Put on the sweater and I'll open the box for you.

Sawyer: [puts on the sweater] 

Sawyer didn't wear his pullover for more than five or six minutes, but he was not to blame for that. The house was warm and he was running around so much that he must have found it too hot. I did get to see him wear the sweater for those few minutes, and it fit well and really suited his colouring of brown hair, greenish-brown eyes, and fair skin. 

I'll have to be sure to select a vehicle-themed design for Sawyer's Christmas 2026 gift. He might be able to open his own toy boxes by next year, and then what leverage will his father have for getting Sawyer to wear his sweater? 

Daisies in December

 

In 2025, when I was planning my honorary niece Olivia's Christmas present, the plan began with a sweater.

 

 

 

 

 I searched Ravelry for a good pattern, and ended up deciding on one I had made before: s34-7 Daisy Delight, by Drops. My first go at this pattern was in 2021, when I made the sweater and cap for my grandniece Cauliflower. I'd been really pleased with the design at the time and it seemed like the best possible pick for Olivia's 2025 Christmas sweater. This time, I envisioned the sweater in red rather than in the old rose I used the first time. I purchased 400 grams of Drops Karisma in Weinrot (or what I would call a burgundy red), and found some small amounts of cream and green DK yarn in my stash for the daisies and their centres. 

 

 

 

 Here's the sweater in a size 9/10. As I remember, it knitted up quickly with no problems, and I liked the red, which was both pretty in itself and would flatter Olivia. 

 

 

 

 I made the hat as well, and it was a quick easy project. 

 

 

 

 

 

As for the rest of the gift, I bought a thrift shop copy of Bernice Thurman Hunter's Booky trilogy (which I enjoyed as a kid), and then bought a bracelet weaving kit, set of temporary tattoo markers, and a tri-pack of flavoured lip balms at Dollarama. They seemed like a reasonable array of things for a slightly precocious nine-year-old who loves reading and arts and crafts. 

 

 

 

 I actually got Olivia's gift to her before Christmas, and according to her mother, she was very pleased with everything and had to begin balming, tattooing, and weaving at once. 

A Basic Birthday Sweater

 When the time came to plan my grandnephew Bug's 12th birthday present, I began as always by searching Ravelry for a suitable pattern.

 

 

 

 For the first time in Bug's life, I found myself having to search the men's patterns for a suitable sweater for him. While this gave me some of those "how is he this big already" qualms, it did open up my options, and the design I chose was 208-3 Reykjavik from Drops. It's a free pattern. As to the yarn, I went to Romni Wools here in Toronto and bought 400 grams of Drops Karisma yarn in Blue Turquoise, and 150 grams of Off White. 

 

 

 

 As best as I can recall given that I'm writing these words about fifteen months after finishing the sweater, this project knitted up with no problems. This was definitely not my favourite project ever, but it's okay. It's serviceable and wearable enough, and blue is Bug's colour.  

 

 

 

 I did rather enjoy that this design is nearly reversible. 

 

 

 Along with the sweater, Bug got a "Ultimate Planet" dig kit. The idea seems to be he's supposed to dig through the little planet in the box with the tools provided to excavate some gemstones. Bug likes science-related things, and this was the best I could do on my budget. 

 

 

 

 My lack of enthusiasm for this one aside, it wasn't such a bad gift for a twelve-year-old boy. 

Dusting Off a Dusty Rose Sweater

 

In 2018, I knitted myself a cardigan from some dusty rose worsted I had on hand in what was supposed to be a size 40 but was actually much smaller than that. I never wore it because it was just too snug on me to be wearable. The gauge wasn't what it should have been, and the front was smaller than the back, sigh. I toyed with the idea of fixing the cardigan for some years, and ultimately decided to take it apart and knit a completely different sweater, as I've realized that I don't like cardigans that much. I had not only the yarn from the cardigan but also 98 grams of the old rose yarn left in my stash, so I need have no worries about running out of yarn. I searched Ravelry for a suitable pullover pattern.

 

 

 

 

 

The pattern I settled on was Mrs. Grimmet's Pullover, designed by Carol Sunday. It looked to me like a very satisfyingly comfortable and good-looking sweater, the kind of thing one can throw on for either downtime at home or for running errands or a trip to the park. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finished pullover, which I knitted in a size 39 in March 2025. It turned out smaller than I would have liked (I notice that other Ravelry users who have made this sweater complained about it turning out to be smaller than what they were aiming for), but while it's not the relaxed fit I had wanted, it's still a good fit. 

The most memorable thing about this project for me is that it introduced (and converted) me to the sewn bind-off technique. For some years, I'd been using the "yarn over" stretchy bind-off technique, in which one wraps the yarn around the knitting needle before each stitch. The resulting bind off did create a very stretchy edge, but I was never really happy with it because it looked so untidy. For this project I tried out the sewn bind-off technique, and was immediately sold on it. It's just as stretchy as the yarn over method, and it looks so nice and neat. I've used it on nearly every knitting project I've done since. 

This project used all the yarn I was able to salvage when I took apart the cardigan (there were some scraps of yarn that had to go in the garbage), and also 22 grams of my stash old rose worsted, so that's a net stash decrease of 22 grams for this project.