Knitting

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Because Everybody Needs More Baby Knitting Books, Right?

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baby knitting books

Kim is getting these cuties!

This week’s giveaway is of two little baby knitting booklets from Leisure Arts:

Cute & Cozy Sweaters and Blankets by Starla Kramer has four sweater patterns and matching blanket patterns — the blankets are all rated easy and the sweaters intermediate because of shaping.

Adorable Baby Sweaters by Judy Lamb has six sweaters — one easy, one easy plus, three intermediate and one intermediate plus.

You can see all the patterns at the links above.  Looking for more Baby Knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

If you’d like a chance to win these, leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, June 4 (though honestly I’ll be on vacation then so go ahead and enter all the giveaways you want for as long as you want until I get back June 11). I’d love to know the last thing you knit for a baby. I recently finished a gigantic baby blanket I started in 2007 (insert eye roll here).

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing, and good luck!

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Comments

  2. The last thing I knitted for a baby was a hat for a couple at church. I would love to win these books for a lady at my knit group. She knits for babies all the time.

  3. I would like to win these as I need to vary my baby patterns. Thank you for the giveaway chance

  4. Since I’m at the stage of life where babies (of the ‘grand’ sort) are making their arrival, these books would be a wonderful addition to my library! As for what I’ve created recently – just finished making some photography prop outfits out of mohair for the baby photo business being run by my son and daughter-in-love.

  6. I am just finishing up my 3rd baby blanket. Just taught myself to knit last summer and I am addicted! Thanks!

  7. I am knitting a baby sweater right now for an upcoming baby shower. I had search online for baby sweater patterns they are hard to find in our area. Even Joann’s only had patterns for hats.

  8. The last gifts I made for a special baby were a ripple blanket, a wee teddy bear, and some lovely shoes. They were loved much. Have a nice vacation.

  9. The last thing I finished for my niece’s baby was a blanket. I am now working on a couple of baby hats.

  10. I made a cardigan for my 2 year old grandson and starting a woven blanket for his brother who is joining the family in September

  12. I’m knitting baby cardigans for a friend to sell on behalf of our local hospice.

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]