Knit a Sheep Sweater for Your Little Princess

Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, has a knack for dressing her kiddos in adorable knits. Remember little George in his soldier boy vest?

The royal family recently released a photo of Princess Charlotte in an adorable yellow cardigan bedecked with a yoke full of bunnies.

The original sold out everywhere as soon as the photo was released, but of course knitters can make their own.

There was already a pattern on Ravelry from a bunny-yoked cardigan, the Sheep Yoke Baby Cardigan by Jennifer Little of Looking Glass Knits. Her version — a free download on Ravelry available in English and Dutch and sized for a 9 to 12-month-old — shows a beige sweater with sheep on a field of green and either blue or pink accents. To make it more like the royal cardigan in question, knit the whole body in yellow and stitch blue sheep on a white background. You could even add in your own bands of Fair Isle diamonds to the bottom of the yoke instead of the checkerboard pattern of the original.

If you wanted to make a cardigan like this for a bigger child, choose any yoked cardigan pattern you like and work in the sheep and other designs as you go.

Want to get in on the sheep trend without copying Charlotte’s look? Here are a few more great sheep cardigans for kids:

Welcome to the Flock | Julia Farwell-Clay

Hoggett | Ann Kingstone

Where the Wild Sheep Roam | Pinneguri

Or for adults, check out Farwell-Clay’s Shepherdess, Pinneguri’s Angry Sheep and Sinnasaujakka, the Summer Snow Sweater by Patrick Hassel-Zein, or Tups and Wethers, both by Kingstone. And if you’re one of the thousands who has knit a Baa-ble (or a few), those sheep would be smashing on a sweater as well.

Looking for more knitting patterns for knitted Cardigans? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

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 Yarn online? Check out Lionbrand our preferred source for purchasing yarn online.

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I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve shared any patterns for our circular knitting machine users. I know these devices aren’t for everyone but even though I much prefer knitting by hand, it is kind of fun to crank things out on these machines.

One of the most common early projects for a circular knitting machine is a scarf. Which makes sense, because it’s just one long tube and you can make it as long as you like.

One problem that comes from knitting scarves on the circular knitting machine, though, is that it can be hard to know how to finish the ends of the tube so that it looks like a finished scarf and not a tube of knitting.

If you’re not a knitter or crocheter, the most basic way to finish a circular knitting machine scarf is just by cinching up the ends and maybe adding a pompom to each end to cover up any hole that might still be visible at the end.

But if you have a little knitting or crochet skill or are willing to learn, there are a lot of different options for closing up the ends of a scarf. And this would also be true if you hand knit a tube scarf!

I recently wrote a post over at Our Daily Craft that includes five different ways to close up the ends of a tube scarf:

the simple cinching method mentioned above
sewing the stitches together
three needle bind off
grafting
crochet bind off

Grafting is my favorite because I feel like it gives the cleanest, closest to a seamless look. If you’re a knitter you may already know how to do it but even if you don’t it’s not that hard to learn.

Do you knit tube scarves by hand or machine? I’d love to know how you like to finish them!

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