Apr 22, 2015

Headband Knitting Patterns

I've started typing 3 knitting patterns for 3 different cabled headband designs, in English and French. I like cables, I think it makes the headbands look thick and warm so once again I guess I'm knitting out of season. I thought I would have these headband patterns done within about a week but it's actually taking more time than I thought as I'm clearly not good at making decisions:

1- What wool should I use? I'm working with Drops Nepal for now; it's a lovely wool/alpaca mix Aran weight yarn (worsted in US terms) but I don't want my pattern buyers to be stuck with that one brand, so I've knit them in acrylic and wool/acrylic mix. I would like to know if they would work in cotton too but I might leave that for another summery, lace design.

Yummy Drops Nepal Yarn
More Drops Nepal

2- Sizes: I would like to have at least 3 sizes, ranging from children age 7 to large size women, but where do I stop? I have a small head for an adult so I find it hard to knit for a large head: between my 2 daughters and me, the 3 heads in my household measure between 20.5 and 21 inches and the heads of my dummies are also 21.5 and 21 inches but when I search for hat/headband head sizes I see that the average head size for a woman is 22 inches, meaning that there must be some women out there with a 23 inches or more head size (I find it hard to believe, with the tiny brain in my child-sized head;). I don't think it really matters that much as all the headband designs are knitted flat, meaning I could just write the pattern for a repeat and indicate to knit as many repeats as your need for your head size, but that for me, is a lazy pattern, making me look like I couldn't be bothered stating how many repeats for a certain head size, and I don't want to give my customers that impression.

The Acrylic Test
3- I want to list the finished items in my shop too, and I think I should just have a medium size headband to use for my photos but with 3 designs and the 4 new beautiful colours of Drops Nepal yarn I picked, but I need to make the largest size too, in order to determine whether 1 ball of yarn is enough for all sizes; I wonder if I should list just 1 design per colour or go crazy and knit the headbands in lots of different colours, knowing that I might get an order for a colour/size combination I didn't make and then need to have all the colours in my stash just in case so I don't have to wait close to a week for yarn on a custom order to be delivered?

Decisions, decisions....I might have a clearer idea once I've had some coffee;)

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Apr 4, 2015

Free Easter Knitting and Crochet Patterns

Today I've decided not to bore you with any new items I have available in my Etsy shop (in order to do that I would have to have new items to show you!), but instead to put all the hours I spent online looking for free Easter patterns to good use by writing a blog post about my finds.

First is Moji Moji Design's Little Chirpy Chicks: I was working on filling an egg box with mine but I won't have time to make 6 before Sunday since I only started earlier in the week and all that online browsing is very time consuming (and with Irish Water installing a water meter outside my house with no warning and leaving the water mains switched off, I've had more than my fair share of distractions, like trying to fix the airlock that caused my heating to be out of action for 2 days:(
Moji Moji Design's Little Chirpy Chicks

Next are the very popular and easy to make Easter Chicks from Linda's Crafty Corner: these can be knit or crocheted and can be stuffed or filled with a Cadbury's Creme Egg (these don't stay full for long in my house;)
Easter Chicks from Linda's Crafty Corner

If you prefer knitted bunnies, Red Heart has these Five Little Bunnies free knitting pattern available for download:
Five Little Bunnies from Red Heart

Julie at Little Cotton Rabbits has some handsome knitted Easter egg decorations with 4 different colour charts for those brave enough to try intarsia knitting:
knitted Easter egg decorations from Little Cotton Rabbits

And finally to display your handmade Easter decorations, I found a free crochet pattern for a pretty Easter basket by Jam Made:
Easter basket by Jam Made

As usual my not very good timing meant that I only got to finish one Easter chick so far, hopefully I'll get to finish the 3 I started to crochet by tomorrow, but the main thing is that the Easter Bunny visits my house, because I haven't eaten chocolate for a few days, and I'm in serious withdrawal, craving for a Lindt Bunny now;)
The Easter Chicks I'm making (work in progress)

Happy Easter!

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