Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Go Forth and Twirl
Go Forth and Twirl
The last time you saw it, it was just a hood.
To knit the rest has taken almost exactly a year and a heap of Cascade 220 Sport–a yarn I love to pieces. Happily, the fit is generous; so the recipient should (in spite of considerable growth) get a goodly amount of use from it.
I might have finished faster; but the cape was knit, ripped back to the hood, and re-knit four times. The file for this piece has eleven swatches, and forty pages of instructions–most of them crossed out. The problem with me as a designer is that Im not very good at it.
Childrens clothing is a tough nut for me to crack, mostly because I fear my taste is not in step with the modern child–not to mention the modern parent. I wouldnt put my son in a Fauntleroy suit or my daughter in petticoats. On the other hand, I look to nineteenth-century childrens clothing and sigh for the neat tailoring and the elegant details. Most of the kids in these parts run about in loud, shapeless rags and usually look as though they were dressed in the dark by a drunken nanny. (In these parts, they probably were.)
Maybe shapeless rags is what twenty-first century childhood requires. If so, I know my work in this genre will have severely limited appeal. So be it.
Anyhow, here are the first photos of the finished hood and cape. With a grateful nod to reader Rams S., who suggest a variation of the name, I will call the piece Manteau Rose.
I hope youll like it, Abigail. It should twirl very, very well indeed. Uncle Franklin road tested it.
Note: After a rather unfortunate string of unsuitably, um, "whimsical" technical editors, Ive finally found one who promises to deliver quality work in a timely fashion–so I hope that this and several other patterns (including the Anna Shawl) will be available for online download sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed.
Available link for download
