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Enter for a Chance to Win a Royal Baby Kit from Toft Alpaca

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royal baby collection toft alpacaBritish knitwear and fiber company Toft Alpaca has an adorable new line of knitting patterns celebrating the upcoming royal baby. The line includes knit and crocheted crowns and a jump suit, jumper and tank all featuring crowns on the front. They’re the perfect thing for any baby you’d like to treat like royalty.

Toft is celebrating the royal baby with us by giving away two of the jumper kits to Craft Gossip readers who subscribe to their newsletter.

You must click on that link and go subscribe to the newsletter to be entered, but I’d love it if you also commented here to let us know that you entered. Maybe you could share your favorite baby name that you never got to use on a person (mine’s Owen, but that doesn’t sound very royal, does it?). Edited to add: This is for UK residents only; sorry for any confusion!

The contest runs through the end of the month, and winners will be chosen July 1. Good luck!

[Photo via Toft Alpaca.]

Specific to knitters, you can join our Knitting Patterns Only group to get, well, knitting patterns, ask questions and gain inspiration for what to knit next.

Looking for more Baby Knitting patterns? Check these out on Etsy.

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Comments

  1. I subscribed. My favorite has always been William with Liam as a nickname but BOTH have been in the top 10 boy names the last couple years. These days I’ve been leaning towards Arthur or Geoffrey.

  2. Hello,

    What lovely knitted baby items. I have subscribed to the newsletter. The name we never got to use was Andrew.

    Happy days.
    Bev.

  4. These are sooooo cute! I signed up for their newsletter. I wanted to name my son Ian, but it wasn’t my DH’s favorite name. We compromised on another name, Jesse, perhaps my second favorite. He did let me use Ian as his middle name, happily. Alas, my son doesn’t like his name. Sigh.

  7. Subscribed-I absolutely love what Toft do. As an alpaca lover, I hope to do what they do one day! Love the names Maisie (my daughter’s name), Penny and Toby

  8. Love all your patterns and wool. Have subscribed. My favourite name is William, maybe I’ll get to use it one day.

Have you read?

Super Fun Colorwork Socks to Knit

When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them. 

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere. 

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started. 

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm). 

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind. 

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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