King Cole Top in Splash DK

 

Little Mudlet loves her new top

In between ticking items off my Holiday List, I have been finishing off a lovely little summer top I’ve been knitting for Little Mudlet. The King Cole pattern has two tops and was bought as part of a kit from Deramores, a kit which contained enough King Cole Splash DK, to complete the largest size of both patterns, in the colours shown on the actual pattern. Little Mudlet and I agreed that we didn’t like the sleeved variant of the top but we both loved the off-the-shoulder top and the corresponding yarn which was shade “3083 Pavlova”.

Stylecraft Sweater in Cabaret Forest Glade – FO

There is nothing subtle about the banding created by the yarn.

Well I’ve finished Middle Mudlets’ sweater and she has declared herself very happy with it. She doesn’t normally go in for sparkly things that much but she really likes the effect of the shiny thread that is wound through the yarn. The three-quarter length sleeves and the roll neck are another new feature for Middle Mudlet but as she gets older, her tastes are changing and, to a very small degree, she is starting to shake off some of her tomboyish ways.

Sweater in Stylecraft Cabaret – Forest Glade

Stylecraft Sweater in Cabaret Double Knit Forest Glade

Around Christmas time an email from Deramores dropped into my inbox with the news that they were offering 10% off all purchases. Having finished my little stockings a couple of weeks earlier, I was looking for a new project – for Middle Mudlet this time – and so logged into the Deramores site and had a browse. Before long I had found a pattern which Middle Mudlet was happy with and had chosen a yarn to go with it. As it happened, the recommended yarn for the pattern, Stylecraft Cabaret double knit, had a range of gorgeous colour ways and Middle Mudlet chose the Forest Glade colour, a beautiful variegated green stripe ranging from dark bottle green to a much lighter pastel, with a shimmering thread running throughout.

Purple jumper dress with rose trellis hem pattern – finished and modelled

She loves the single pink rose on one sleeve.

Well it took me a bit longer than I anticipated to get Little Mudlets’ jumper dress finished off but I finally found the time to settle down with my sewing needle and tackle the job of setting sleeves, sewing hems and tidying all the loose ends away.

Purple jumper dress with rose trellis hem pattern – nearly finished!

I love the border

It seems like forever since I started the little purple jumper dress with rose trellis border pattern for Little Mudlet and to be fair, it has been almost 6 months since I posted about it. The thing is, as often happens, life got in the way of progress and I wasn’t able to pick up my needles and knit comfortably for a while, by which time the act of actually continuing with the dress felt more like a chore. To be honest, I kind of fell out of love with knitting for a while and decided I needed to take a break.

Purple jumper dress with rose trellis hem pattern

I think this Rose Trellis panel looks really effective.

Every now and again I decide I need a bit of a challenge, to push myself and try something new. I’ve been playing it safe recently, making animals using a basic stocking stitch, repeating Middle Mudlets’ snowflake jumper which has been my first foray into using more than one yarn when I originally made the blue variant back in 2015. Looking through my past projects, you could be forgiven for thinking that the lacy or cable based patterns are the hardest to do and that the notion of merely introducing a second yarn into the equation, wouldn’t prove too problematic but that’s not the case for me. I’m happiest working away on ‘complicated’ lace patterns and give me a cable pattern to get my teeth into and I’m happy as a pig in muck, as they say in these parts. 

New version of an old favourite.

Warm colours for a warm jumper

Back in 2015, I made Middle Mudlet a two tone blue snowflake sweater, using “James C Brett Top Value double knit”. The original post can be found here and reading between the lines you will realise that when I started that particular project, I hadn’t had much experience working with two yarns at any given time and so it was with some trepidation that I agreed to Middle Mudlets’ choice of pattern and started work on it.

Jumper dress in Softfun Denim: Finished

Little Mudlet loves her new dress

I finished Little Mudlets’ dress about 10 days ago and I am happy with how it turned out. She’s 9.5ish and so I decided to make the dress up as a size 10-year-old and it is probably a little too big for her at the moment because she is a slight mite but due to the shaping of the body section, and the overall design, it doesn’t look odd and is long enough to be worn either with jeans/leggings as a jumper dress or as a regular dress over tights. She has worn it both ways and the colour and shape of the garment really suit her.

Jumper dress in Softfun Denim: Back finished

I really like the cable pattern on this dress.

I’ve finished the back section of Little Mudlets’ jumper dress and I really do like the way it looks, especially with the shaping which has been carried out subtly throughout the knitting process. If you look at the reverse stitch sections between the ‘diamondesque’ sections of the cable pattern, you can see that as the pattern moves up the piece, these sections narrow untill the pattern finally evolves into a much narrower diamond and then into twists without diamonds. This narrowing is initially achieved by decreasing one stitch at the centre of each reverse stitch section, as well as in the sections before the first cable column and after the last, on every 12th row before reducing to every 8 and then 6 rows.

Jumper dress in Softfun Denim

Little Mudlets choice

With my lace top finished (completely forgot to do a final post for that but will do one shortly) and the first of the tinsel hedgehogs out of the way, I set to and cast on the stitches for the back section of Little Mudlets’ jumper dress. I had chosen Scheepjeswol Softfun Denim for this particular project in a lovely, dark mint green colour (shade 517) which has a subtle fade graduation through it which you can just about make out in these pictures. The pattern is a King Cole (4022) and is written for double knit but I opted for the Scheepjeswol over the recommended King Cole dk because I preferred the colour options the Softfun gave me.