Little knitted waistcoats....

This is a waistcoat I knit from time to time as it is easy and quick.  It is knitted in one piece and the only sewing is the side seams and buttons.  It calls for dk yarn to be used doubled.  I chose a navy blue yarn and combined it with a pale blue yarn that has little fluffy white bits in it.  The end result is chunky and warm and it should fit a child aged 3-4 years old.

 The pale blue yarn has some wool content and I think it might be in the white fluff.  Normally I am wary of using wool that needs to be handwashed.  But these waistcoats will be going to a charity that distributes items to parts of the world where electric washing machines are not used.  So that won't be a problem.

The pattern is called "Mayflower's Basic Bodywarmer" and is available free to registered members of the Loving Hands website.  This is a free website for people who knit, crochet or sew and is well worth looking at.

Last charity donations for a little while.....

As Royal Mail postage costs went up recently and courier costs have started to rise, I pulled out all the stops and finished filling a box for Operation Orphan which is an organisation that distributes warm clothing to children in Central and Eastern Europe.

Here are the contents: 2 scarves, 12 hats and 2 waistcoats.  Some of these items have been ready for months and now they can actually be useful and keep someone warm. it might seem odd thinking about warm clothing in the summer, but this is the time of year that charities start to prepare for distributing clothing in time for winter.

I have already started knitting a baby jumper for one of my favourite charities.  But it will probably be another year before I have enough items ready to fill a box to capacity.

I wonder what postage costs are like in other countries.  In the UK we definitely have to thing twice before posting something.  In the last week, I have spent nearly £10 on postage.  That is £10 that i can't spend on wool!

More and more people are looking for local charities that they can support by dropping in with their knitted/crocheted donations.  That is good news for the local charities but not such good news for those that rely on  receiving lots of parcels.  I would choose the local option if I could.  But, for now, my favourite charities can still rely on one box per year from me.

Charity knits: thinking globally...

As I look back through this blog, there is a definite pink theme.  That is purely by coincidence and I'm not really sure how it happened!  Just to be different, I dug into my bag of bargain wool and pulled out:

• lime green wool
• grey and brown camouflage wool
• cream wool that was a little too rough to be used on its own

These came in one of my bargain buys and I can understand why someone else would avoid using them.  However, I like the challenge of producing something useful from the unlikeliest of yarns.

I knitted 2 little waistcoats by combining the cream and lime green for one and the cream and camouflage wool for the other.  The cream softened the lime green and gave more of a tweed effect to the camouflage wool.  All the wool was dk weight so the end results are warm and chunky.  

The buttonholes are quite large and the only suitable buttons in my box were a plain beige colour.  So I used grey thread on the camouflage waistcoat and pale green thread on the green waistcoat.  Small details matter and I think the buttons now look perfect.

I used up the remainder of the wool by knitting 2 little baby hats.  The colours are not the obvious choice for baby hats.  But these items are destined for Greenfields Africa which is an organisation that supplies blankets and clothing to children in Kenya and Uganda.  Colours that would look strange in an English nursery will fit in perfectly in another part of the world.  

The waistcoat was very easy and quick to knit.  The pattern is called "Mayflower's Basic Bodywarmer" and it can be found in the pattern section of the Loving Hands website.

For the ribbed hat, I used the Basic Ribbed Baby/Child Hat pattern.

For the plain hat: I used the Basic Baby Hat pattern.

Off they go.....

I've been filling a box with charity knitting for several months now and it was starting to get in the way.  I also reasoned it wasn't doing anyone any good sitting on my bedroom floor so I finally got my act together and posted it off today.  

In the box were 3 children's waistcoats, 1 baby blanket, 6 boobs and 3 birds' nests.  The boobs are used by midwives and health visitors to teach breastfeeding and the nests are used at animal shelters as bedding for small mammals and birds.  Quite a mixture this time!  

I sent this box to Loving Hands http://www.lovinghands.org.uk/ from where they will be distributed to various good causes.  They promise to find a good home for anything and regularly create wishlists for quirky items such as boobs and nests as well as the more mundane baby items.

I kept back a pile of knitted hats and scarves which I will eventually send to Operation Orphan http://www.operation-orphan.org/initiatives.htm for their "Keep a Child Warm" initiative.  I just need to build up a bigger collection to fill a good size box.  That will mean I can use a courier instead of the Post Office.  Today I used the Collect+ service http://www.collectplus.co.uk/send and saved over £2.  That equates to another 2 balls of wool.  That is how I tend to think these days whenever I save money on anything.  Does that make me a knitting addict?  My name is Una and I'm a knitaholic.