Knitting for Children

Life doesn’t get much better than when you knit for a child

Vintage Baby Knits

Some of the most rewarding knitting any of us do is for babies.  To just sit and think about the little ones with each stitch - these are truly priceless moments.

Kristen Rengren's beautiful collection of heirloom baby knits just made wonderful knitting even better.  Inside is everything you could want: photos of sweet, healthy children wearing lovely, tasteful clothing that you can knit.  Not to mention beautiful blankets, sweet toys, and more.  The sizes are from 3 months to 2 years, and every one of them is a wholesome, practical and beautiful choice for children.  I think this is just what our children need - and it will make every "baby knitter" happy, too.

Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket

Now you can follow along step-by-step with Meg as she knits (and explains) one of Elizabeth Zimmermann's most unique and ingenius designs. Meg guides you through each phase of the jacket's construction, including:

• long tail cast on
• double decreasing/increasing
• adding colors
• baby buttonholes
• casting off in purl
• sewing a seam/darning in ends.

As a bonus, Meg also shows us some variations on the original design, including jacket the addition of collar, “continuous line” throughout the jacket, a Baby Surprise matching bonnet, knitting small circumferences on 2 circular needles, invisible cast on, and I-cord techniques.

We recommend both Blue Face Leicester DK (1 250g skein), Fleece Artist Organic Wool (1 250g skein), or Fleece Artist Blue Face Leicester 2/8 (1 250g skein replaces the Shetland in the DVD) as being "just right" for the Baby Surprise Jacket.

Elizabeth Zimmermann's A - B - C - SJ

If any one design can be said to embody Elizabeth Zimmermann's creative gifts and twinkling eye, it is this one - the Surprise Jacket in all it's possibilities. Cully's explication of Elizabeth's original pattern is wonderfully clear and the added photos and technique tidbits are both elucidating and inspiring. Joy, sheer joy, awaits those who follow these footsteps.

 Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket has become near legendary since its conception in 1968. The jacket is knitted back and forth in garter stitch, then cleverly folded and completed by weaving the shoulder seams. This updated pattern includes Elizabeth's original Baby Surprise Jacket instructions, original Adult Surprise instructions, and instructions for the new Child's Surprise jacket. Cully has also added row by row instructions for the Baby Surprise Jacket, so that your initial encounter with the SJ is along a well-marked trail. Both the Adult and Child's Surprise are based on the construction of the baby jacket. Cully has included numbers to knit the Baby Surprise Jacket at different gauges and a chart to enable you to knit different sizes at different gauges. The pattern also includes an options section for adding hood, collar and other features such as EZ's Afterthought Pocket and more. Technique instruction is also included.

Nature Babies

Here's a book to love -- it brought back so very many memories of the time when our children were new to the world and I began my exploration of knitting and dollmaking. Tara Manning has presented parents of small children with projects both useful and delightful. Here you will find hats, socks, vests, sweaters, even bathrobes and wash cloths. You'll also discover how to make the sweetest, simplest natural-fiber dolls and toys, and how to recycle old sweaters into new jackets and more for our little ones. Nature Babies is a feast of earthly treasures - sheer joy, and all of it good for children and the rest of us.

The Knitted Farmyard

I have had a copy of this little book for over 20 years - and have regretted more than occasionally that it was no longer in print. When I bought mine (for the same price as this new edition!), our oldest daughter had just started first grade and I was part of a craft circle whose members were also mothers at the same school. Everyone just loved the book and soon we all had copies and were knitting away at chickens and pigs and horses. I know that none of us actually finished a whole farmyard, but that all of us still have the little animals we made together and cherish them as reminders of precious times with each other and with our own children.

Anyway, the little farm world that Hannelore Wernhard has created is filled with rich imagination and love. She gives complete instructions for creating all the animals, people, buildings, streams, ponds and fields that make this knitted farm such a treasure. It is a joy to see it spring to life again for new children and the knitters in their lives.

Knitted Animals

Delight a child while using odds and ends from your stash!

Here is an irresistable collection of animals to knit in soft, natural materials: ducklings, teddy bears, lambs, piglets, hedgehogs, a handsome rooster and clucking hen, mice and more and more. Most of the projects can be quickly and inexpensively knit with odds and ends of yarn, and many can be completed in an hour or two. Not to mention that then you can present them to a beloved child and watch their eyes light up at the sight of their new friend.

Knitted Animals includes:

• Step-by-step, clearly written instructions for making over 20 dear little animals
• Beautiful full-color photographs throughout
• Many projects that are suitable for older children to make themselves

Beginning and experienced knitters alike will love this charming book.

Natural Knits for Babies and Moms

Organic yarns, knitting, babies and moms - hard to imagine a combination more 'made for each other' than that one. And what a beautiful, warm, loving collection of knitwear Louisa Harding has given us - an unabashed celebration of nature, our wee ones and mothering!

Inside you'll find inspiring designs for everything babies and moms need: sweaters, blankets, pillows, hats, booties, mittens, cuddly stuffed animals, a jacket, vest and dress, even nursing sweaters (two of them!) and a lace shawl. All of them are really attractive designs, the kind of thing anyone would want to dress their baby or themselves in, and all of them are made with organic yarns, of which there are a now a pleasing abundance to choose from.

Natural Knits embraces and showcases so much that is good in this world of ours -- it is truly a joy to see and an inspiration for heart-filled knitting.

Mason-Dixon Knitting

Receiving a pre-publication review copy of this sparkling new book is one of the happiest things that's happened to me in good long while. The last time I smiled, laughed and revisited a knitting book this much was when Cat Bordhi sent me her first Treasury of Magical Knitting . While being entirely different in it's content and purpose, Mason-Dixon Knitting is just that sort of book.

The authors have poured onto these pages and into these projects their enthusiasm for knitting, for keeping things simple, for colorful, joyful, functional things, for friends and family. To read Mason-Dixon Knitting is to find yourself surrounded by a world of smiles; it is to remember what's really important in this world (hint: it has to do with loved ones, home and joy); and, to discover some amazingly good, exciting knitting!

Here's some of what's inside that I especially love:

• dishcloths. Really. I never thought anyone would ever catch me knitting a dishcloth, but after seeing these bright, spunky models in MDK, and reading Ann and Kay's write-up on all the wonderful reasons they love knitting them and using them, well, I can hardly wait for the cotton yarn to arrive so I can always have one on the needles, too. There's a great connection to the cotton yarn manufacturer who will put as much cotton yarn as you need into your hands for less money than you ever thought possible, too.
• log-cabin knitting. These designs are every bit as addictive, versatile, and useful in knitted form as they are in quilting. And the things you can do with this technique! My. You can make rugs (step upon the courthouse steps), bedspreads (think Mondrian!), baby blankets (bright-eyed rainbows), bath mats (really, really nice ones), all in variations that range from very traditional to uptown modern. I'm also waiting for more yarn to arrive so I can get going on a bedspread -- I mean, I'm really watching and waiting . What I mean to say is that my fingers are practically tingling with impatience at having to wait to get started. That's how good these designs are.
• the bubbly curtain and linen hand towels. I'm an avoider of knitting with linen. Really I am. Now I have some on order - all because of these two projects.
• the peignoir. You may not think that ladies who extol the delights of dishrag knitting would also offer up a peignoir to die for, but they did. Just goes to show what we know about ladies who knit dishcloths, doesn't it? It's in linen, it's lovely, and it would even look good on a post-40 or -50 mom.
• calamari knitting. Discover a great way to recycle tee shirts into things you'll really like to use.
• the out-of-focus photo of Xenobia Bailey. Irresistible.
• the Moses Basket liner with Godmother's Edging. Also Irresistible.
• the back cover. It bears this inscription:

Remember:
No project is too ambitious if you crave the result enough .