Book Review – Summer Knitting for Little Sweethearts

Summer Knitting for Little Sweethearts is a comprehensive guide for knitters looking to create adorable and functional summer garments for children. The book features 40 Nordic-style patterns that are perfect for the warm weather, including onesies, pants, sweaters, shorts, caps, and tights. The patterns are designed for children of all ages, from newborns to age 10 and are a mix of quick-to-knit and more challenging designs, making it suitable for knitters of all skill levels.

The book is organized in a way that makes it easy to find the perfect pattern for your project. Each pattern includes detailed instructions, a convenient difficulty-level rank, and beautiful photographs of the finished garment, making it easy to visualize the final product. The patterns are designed using fine merino wool yarn and cotton blends, which are perfect for warm weather, making the garments comfortable and breathable, without being too warm for the child to wear.

The patterns featured in the book are not only practical but also incredibly cute and stylish, making them perfect for both everyday wear and special occasions. The designs take inspiration from nature, wildlife, and the Nordic landscapes, and are sure to add a touch of Scandinavian magic to any child’s wardrobe. From the Olivia Onesie to the David Sweater-Jacket, the Billie Shorts to the Dinosaur Cap, and the Lace Tights, there is something for everyone in this book.

Summer Knitting for Little Sweethearts is a must-have resource for knitters looking to create adorable, comfortable, and functional summer garments for children. The patterns in this book are sure to become treasured heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation.

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]

Have you read?