January Kid Sweaters (and some sewing!)

 So this is what happens when I get out my button box to find buttons to put on sweaters. My daughter wants to learn how to sew buttons and my son throws them everywhere!

 After the kids were in bed I managed to get the buttons sewn on.

 Baby Sunnyside Sweater adapted to a pre-school size by using a worsted weight yarn instead of a sport weight yarn. I did a test swatch and some math and figured out if I knit the 6 month size and added length I would have sweater that is big enough.

 Perfect fit!!  I used a Knit Picks Swish yarn and dyed it myself with food colouring.

 My daughter has gotten taller recently.  All of a sudden all her t-shirts looked like crop tops . . . not a look I like for little girls. She mostly wears t-shirts as undershirts right now but she needed some new ones. I bought this pattern, Zee'sTee by the Tie Dye Diva in a pattern bundle.  I love it.  Its got 12 month to 12 years.  It has two t-shirt versions.  This yoke version here and a pocket tee.  It has short or long-sleeves.  The yoke version is great for using up off-cuts from other projects.

For my son's sweater I made the Latte Baby Coat By Lisa Chemery a.k.a Froginnette

I made the 12 month size and made the arms and sleeves longer.  For the buttonbands at the front he pattern calls for a lattice stitch.  This time I used a seed stitch.  I only did one row of buttonholes but I think I might need to  rip it back and add the second row because it is gaping a bit.

Still warm enough to layer under winter jackets.  So far this is my favourite baby knit.  What is your favourite knits for kids?

Rainbow Yarn - an Adventure in dyeing with Food Colouring

Have you seen the yarn from YarnInk.  She's a Canadian hand dyer.  I follow her on Instagram and everyday she puts up yarn that I have to resist buying.  I really hope that I'm getting some sock and shawl yarn from her this Christmas.  I gave my husband my list  . . . and he's pretty good at getting me stuff I like!

I keep looking at the Rainbow yarns she does.  My daughter would love a rainbow sweater, but at $27 a skein for DK weight yarn . . . .that's not happening.  So I decided to dye some myself.

I have 7 balls of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes that I had bought to make myself a white sweater.  After making another sweater for myself in Knit Picks Swish Worsted I decided I wanted to save up for a better quality yarn for something for myself.  For kids knits Knit Picks is great.

I wound 5 of the balls into skeins and followed the directions in this Knitty tutorial for how to dye using food colouring.

I got all my supplies organized before my son's nap and I had it ready to go in the oven just as he woke up.

 I left it in the oven until it reached 82 degrees Celsius.  The water looked all clear. 

I let it cool and rinsed it.  Hardly any colour came out.

Rainbow yarn skein yumminess!!  I'm so thrilled with how they turned out.  If I was to do this again I would use a bit less yellow dye . .  . to make it a bit mellower.  For the purple I used Kool aid, which I've done before but I would like to try purple food colouring and see if I get get a bit more variation in the purple.

For a sweater for a 3 1/2 year old girl!!  Perfect.

And I've already cast on  for her.  A pre-school size Baby Sunnyside Sweater. (It's the same pattern as I knit my last sweater, the Lady Sunnyside)  .  I'll have to call them Thunder and Rainbow sweaters since mine is grey.

The pattern calls for fingering weight yarn so I'm knitting the 3-6 month size using worsted weight yarn and 4.5 mm needles.  So far it looks to be the perfect size.  Happy Knitting.