clara

Clara is baby bear's dearest friend from childcare and on the weekend we had the pleasure of celebrating her third birthday.

The vital statistics
Pattern: A child's neckwarmer, designed by me and again inspired by Olga Buraya-Kefelian's Cabled Cowl; I can't remember now where I got the cable from but I added the bobbles. I also made eyelets all along the inside of the double knit slip stitch edging and welt to enable the neckwarmer to be buttoned up tightly or loosely.
Yarn: Just over half a skein of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky in Victoria Pink, purchased at Value Village for 99c (in a bag with another skein of something red and acrylic which I directly donated back).
Needles: 7.5mm - I deliberately went big because I am always knitting things too tightly and creating a fabric that is too dense for my liking.
Start to finish: 26 January 2009 to 10 February 2009 - knitting took less than a day, it was the button inspiration that held me up.

Comments: Ah, the buttons! I shopped around, looking for white ones, clear ones, considered daisy-shaped ones but none of them were right. I first added fabric trim to a knit garment just before baby bear was born. I had knit the Garter Stitch Wrap Top (Ravelry link) by Erika Knight and was just not happy with the edging. So I bought a little bit of Liberty Tana Lawn in a coordinating colour and trimmed the edges. Since then I have experimented a bit with matching up woven fabrics with woollens - Carmine being a case in point. I love the contrast between the smoothness of the weave and the texture of the knit.

Anyway, on this project for the first time I decided to do self-covered buttons because I couldn't find any that I was happy with. I delved into the stash and found some (to be honest rather awful) 1980s decorator fabric that I had a sample of and carefully chose some sections with appropriate colours. I'm going to write separately about the self-covered button process - it deserves it!

Verdict: This was lots of fun and very easy to knit and I'm quite taken with the neckwarmer concept and the opportunities for combining different yarns, textures, gauge, cables.