My baby is almost grown, so busy with NHS, speech and preparing for grownup life. We will be touring colleges next year! Even though it’s not relevant to my life right now, I still find myself enjoying knitting & crocheting for babies. There is a simple sweetness to knitting a mini pair of socks, a lacy little bonnet, or a cotton dribble bib. I don’t know if it calls to my love of miniature, my love of muted milky soft colors or just my love of squealing babies, grunting, giggling and of course pudgy baby tummies.
It doesn’t hurt that baby knits are quick as a snap and can be a bit more quirky in color combinations, shapes & design. Both of which appeal to me, as I am not a long-term project knitter, I get distracted, I get resentful of how this damn project is holding me up from moving onto something else, I hate the guilt of having loads of unfinished business. I tend to just avoid large knitting commitments…maybe someday when I settle down honey you’ll get your hemp cardigan :)
I can also totally appreciate the lovely in an outrageous outburst of happy stripey polka dots and knitting for baby lets me do that without worry.
I recently knit up this toadstool baby rattle, for me toadstools are straight out of storybooks filled with magical fairies, mossy thickets where everything is illuminated with moon glow and stars. Babies are that sort of whisper soft magic too.
I used the toadstool rattle pattern from the purl bee. It was everything I love about baby knitting…quick…quirky cute and is perfectly useful uselessness! I am sort of wishing I made this out of 100% cotton, the stripes are cotton, but the rest is squishy wool, which will aid in the drying but might also leave baby with a fuzzy mouth! It has a bell kitty toy inside so it’s a jinglier instead of a rattler. A little rice inside of a gumball machine plastic egg would have worked nicely too. I might need to make some of these for myself on a much smaller scale!
When I was a baby my grandma crocheted me a blanket, it’s now safely tucked away in a chest & is one of the few things I have that she ever touched. A few weeks back I stumbled onto a huge stack of vintage crochet books, I didn’t look through them at the shop, I wanted to save that treat until I got home. So with my precious treasures in tow, I piled myself on the couch and started to dig…I about died when I saw this.
The pamphlet came out in 1974. Can you tell?
here’s to all the grandmas & bulky crochet covered children!
and also to those of us keeping the spirit alive with handmade baby knits & crochet!
