Knit a Sweet Speckled Cardigan for a Little One

Knitting for babies and toddlers is so satisfying because the projects are generally pretty small (for garments, anyway) and it’s easy to make them look fancy without a lot of extra work on your part.

The Growing Garden Cardigan by Sandi Rosner for Purl Soho is a project like that. It looks really interesting because of the colorwork, but it’s not at all that hard to do.

The cardigan uses slip stitches to break up the stripes, which is an easy technique that only requires working with one color of yarn at a time. The project is shown using one color for the background and four coordinating colors (made with their mini balls of yarn) for the stripes, but you can use a single solid color, a variegated colorway or odd balls left over from other projects.

Since this project is for kids its a great idea to use yarn that’s washable. The pattern calls for a DK weight cotton yarn.

The pattern comes in four sizes, to fit a newborn, 6-12 months, 12-18 months and 18-24 months, and is meant to be worn with an inch or two (2.5-5 cm) of positive ease since it will be worn over other clothes.

The design is a top-down cardigan worked flat in one piece, with the sleeves worked in the round from the top down after the body of the sweater is done. To make it even easier, you don’t have to cut the yarns you aren’t working with as you go; just carry them up the edge for fewer ends to weave in.

This project is a good introduction to sweater knitting if you’ve never done it before, and it would make a great gift for a little one in your life no matter the climate where they live. Of course you could also make this in a washable wool to make it warmer for kiddos who live in colder climates.

Grab the free pattern from Purl Soho.

[Photo: Purl Soho]

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette.

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up).

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley.

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design.

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like.

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going.

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]

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