Australia’s Ex-PM Knit Kangaroo for Royal Baby

Julia Gillard has been ousted as the first female prime minister in Australia’s history, but not without making a last bit of knitting-related news. Gillard has long been known to be a knitter, and she particularly enjoys knitting for babies (don’t we all?).

She told the Australian Women’s Weekly that she was knitting a red kangaroo for the British royal baby because “I just thought that it would be a cute project to work on. I thought I would set myself the challenge of knitting a little stuffed toy, and why not a kangaroo?”

Some said the cute story was a last-stitch effort to woo voters, but it clearly didn’t work, as she’s handed power back over to her predecessor.

Still, I’d like to see the finished object, wouldn’t you?

[Photo via the Australian Women’s Weekly.]

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For years now Berroco has been releasing a tiny set of Christmas ornament knitting patterns, often modeled on human-sized clothes, called Minutia. The ones for this year haven’t come out yet, but somehow I missed last year’s so I wanted to share them, as well as a fun little twist they offered.

The general 2025 Minutia patterns include a circular yoke sweater, a two-color stocking and a ribbed earflap hat. They’re super cute and perfect for using little (or should I say minute?) amounts of yarn left over from other projects. Make them in Christmas colors or whatever you have on hand. Even if you don’t have exactly the same yarn weight, you can still make these cute additions to your holiday decor.

But what really caught my eye while I was on the Berocco site was the Team Colors Minutia, which are actually different patterns so I’m not even sure when they were released, but they are definitely worth talking about.

These patterns include a little raglan sweater with stripes and a stocking cap with contrasting pom pom.

They call for sport weight yarn, but again you could use sock or DK if that’s what you have in the right colors. And here the right colors are important because you’re stitching your team colors.

Or anyone else’s team colors.

I immediately thought that this would be an amazing holiday gift for someone who you never know what to get but who also happens to like sports. Or has gone to a university that has colors.

Another option would be to leave off the stripes and add a number in duplicate stitch if you or the person you’re knitting for has a favorite player. Or stitch a letter or a tiny version of the team logo on the front. There are lots of options!

If you make these, I’d love to hear what you did with them!

[Photo: Berroco]

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