Some more knitting for children (HSM '25 Pink, and a baby hat)

 I don't really do new year resolutions, but I do happen to have several for this year. To wit:

1) Finish more projects than in previous years.

2) Use more of my already extensive collection of sewing and knitting patterns / books.

3) Post more of my projects on this blog.

I'm happy to report that one of the two makes I want to share in this post now checks all three boxes! Well, not quite the "more projects than in previous years," yet; but I'm coming close to finishing with more projects, so I expect by next week I'll have surpassed 2025, and that's a good start on that one.

But first, the pink singlet / vest for my little niece which was my one lonely HSM entry for 2025:

 

I've decided that from here on out, my niece shall be referred to on this blog as Kitty. Not at all her name, not even close; just a public consumption pseudonym based on the fact we keep joking that she's like a little kitty - always aware of what's going on, always needing to be aware and present at whatever's going on and putting her nose into things. :-)

So. This thing I knit for Kitty was intended to be a singlet, to be worn as underwear. But the colour turned out to be such a perfect match for her that it ended up being used as an outerwear vest. And since I still have quite a bit of the yarn left, I think I might go ahead and knit a sweater for a future Kitty...

I intentionally made the whole thing in ribbed patterns, so that it could grow with her a bit. Originally, I thought I had a suitable pattern in one of my 1930s German magazines, but, alas, it turned out to be a pattern for a knitting machine and thus useless for my handknitting purposes. I didn't really see anything else I liked quite as much online, until I found a picture of a little girl in a singlet, and thought, yep, that's roughly the style I'm after. Unfortunately, no pattern, just a photo.

And then I lost the link, and found out I had very unconscionably failed to Pin the image, so, my apologies, I have no idea where it came from! It was a blog post featuring more 1930s knitted styles, if I remember correctly. The file name says "child in a singlet 1936" but, alas, that has also not helped me find it again. Neither trying to replicate my original search terms nor straight up reverse image search has been any help either... So all I know now is that it falls into the latter half of the 1930s where so many of the styles I'm drawn to now come from. :P

 

As you can see, the original garment actually used some sort of brioche stitch (?) in the body, and had crocheted borders around the armscyes and neckline. I had no idea how to begin with the more complicated stitch, and didn't like the idea of the added bulk crochet would add to the very lightweight single yarn I used in the knitting. So I ditched both. (I still don't fully understand crochet borders on knit using the same thickness of yarn. Must be me.)

The yarn is the same as in the blanket I knit for Kitty previously, just a different colour, and not held triple. (Also I have an update on the blanket that it's now clad in a duvet cover and used for Kitty to sleep under regularly!)

I messed up the armscye / neckline shaping and calculations a bit. Learning by trial and error, here! 

Just the facts, ma'am:

What the item is: A child's singlet

The challenge: 2025 #5 Pink 

How it fits the challenge: It's very pink!

Material: Linsieme Kirman, a cone yarn that's 92% merino 8% cashmere

Pattern: My own.

Year: 1930s (c. 1935-1936, based on my inspirations)

Notions: 2,5 mm knitting needles (circular)

How historically accurate is it? As I already said, it's not based on an actual period pattern. I think the construction and gauge are perfectly plausible; I'm less sure about the material.

Hours to complete: No clue!

First worn: This January.

Total cost: I got the yarn for free as industrial remnants!

 

Further knitting facts:

Yarn weight: Lace, at Nm 14/2 (700 m / 100 g), but I think it fluffs up into more of a light fingering style yarn.

Gauge: 8 stitches per inch. Forgot the row count.

Amount used: 43 g

 

And then I whipped up a quick project to be sent with a bunch of fairly random things we put together for Ukraine - I just hadn't managed to finish the blanket by the time my sister went to Prague with the things. So by the time I realised as much, in the two days I had left I made a quick baby hat, following instructions in a 1950s knitting book by Helena Dutkiewicz. I have a Slovak translation, but the original is Polish - it says Dziewiarstwo ręczne, but one copy of that I found being sold online only has children's clothing while mine has all sorts of things, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. (Also one of many examples of the ways I can kind of switch between all the Western Slavic languages in passive usage. Well, the three state languages, I have no experience with Lusatian. Polish is the hardest, but I can still glean a lot.)

Anyway, this one was labelled as a hat for a 6-12 months old, though I'm not entirely sure whether the sizing still holds up for today's babies. It tells you to use 3 mm needles and cast on 90 stitches for 30 cm, or whatever works for your gauge. I used 2 mm needles and cast on, IIRC, 80 stitches for 29 cm... Sooo. It's extremely yarn and personal knitting style dependent, and the "patterns" in the book all basically work like that. I actually like that about old Central European vintage knitting, although it also often involves a great deal of wild guesswork.

The yarn I used is a soft acryllic I bought years ago in a church charity sale. So this is a charity project through and through. :D

 

The construction is extremely simple. It's just, basically, a large Dutch heel in garter stitch. Then you pick up stitches around the face opening, increase in every third stitch, and knit a border / brim / flounce (it's not very flouncy). It's supposed to be a bit bigger, but I ran out of my ball of yarn at that point, and figured that I liked it as it was and that I did not want to attach new yarn at that point where it would inevitably be visible. Then you string a tie through the bottom - mine's just a crochet chain.

The knitting facts:

Yarn: A German acryllic no-name. Seriously, there's no name on the label, it just says "Garn" (yarn)! (Then a bunch of other languages, including Czech without diacritics...) JES Collection by J.E. Schum Würzburg, colour 130 (white). My guess is it's from the 90s or early 00s, but that's just a guess.

Yarn weight: 130 m / 50 g, i.e. 260 m / 100 g, based on a Ravelry entry for a similar-but-not-the-same yarn from the same manufacturer I'm assuming DK. Recommended needle size 3-4 mm, recommended gauge swatch 22 stitches and 28 rows for 10 cm. I didn't follow this.

Gauge: I forgot to actually measure it, I just winged it based on my mitered squares from this self same yarn, but it comes out at 7 stitches per inch in garter stitch.

Amount used:  38 g.

2025, and future plans

I've been writing down projects I've finished on a paper on a pinboard since... 2021 I think? I think I started doing it during lockdowns to make myself feel better. Well, the list for 2025 is fit to make one feel worse: there are only three items. And one of them is this:

- a tiny knitted Christmas ornament I made as a gift for the work Christmas party. I used two acrylic yarns from the stash (one destash from my mum, one bought in a charity sale) and two metallic / Lurex yarns from my huge yarn haul from my previous job. Did I mention that here? Yeah, I must have in connection to the baby blanket from last Christmas. So, yeah. That happened and now I have SO MUCH YARN and so much knitting to do. So this was also a bit of a proof of concept for me for working with those metallic yarns. I declare it quite successful.

Also, it's a tiny thing, but it still took me about three hours to make, so it's not a quick thing, necessarily.

But that short list of three finished projects is a very misleading review of things, because there was quite a bit more I worked on in 2025 - I just hadn't managed to finish most of the projects by the end of the year.

As a most striking example, there's the singlet I knit for my little niece that is already finished - all that's left to do is to sew it up and give it to the intended recipient. Photos to come then.

This I can / want to show. I'm working on a sontag for my grandma from the same yarn that baby blanket was made in. I currently got fed up with it but on the whole, it's a very exciting project because - you may notice I have that 1860s knitalong badge on the right. It's been sitting there since 2010, a reminder of a failure. It didn't work out for me back then; a big part of the problem were terrible old circular needles. Also, I think the yarn wasn't that great either. I have nice new circular needles now, and a yarn that's almost too luxurious (although it tangles a lot in its current unwashed, doubled up state). I recalculated the pattern a bit to work better with my gauge, and of course it won't be in the original design, with this marled yarn (is that what it is called?). But I WILL finish that sontag! Soon! Soonish!

I got fed up with it right now, though, so today I reached for a ball of mystery yarn from that same haul, and started knitting a Monmouth Cap. Well, a modern version. Here is the pattern. I started a hat from the yarn last year (I think it was), trying to figure out a historically inspired top-down construction. But it wasn't working out the way I thought it would (it was far more flying by the seat of my pants than I realised at the time, life's been A Lot), and it was sitting in the naughty pile. Then, going through my Ravelry library today, I realised this yarn was the perfect gauge for this pattern (well, not row gauge, but that's par for the course for me), meaning this pattern was perfect for this yarn and my intentions for it, and off I go. Unlike the written pattern, I'm doing the whole thing on DPNs, and because I don't think I'd have enough yarn if I made it as written, I intend to make the body of the hat an inch shorter. It should still fit me and work for me as a modern winter hat.

There's also the mitered square blanket (separate squares this time) I'm making out of the acrylic I'm never ever gonna wear. It's intended as a baby blanket to be sent to Ukraine. One of the yarns I used turned out to actually have wool in it, and a number of my finished squares shrunk in the wash, so I need to make more. Again, it even could have been finished in 2025, were it not for that. (Well, and the priority Christmas gifts took.)

So that's some of the things that should be finished soonish in 2026, and if all goes well, this year will be better on the finished projects front than last year was.

Of course, things going well really isn't a given these days...