My red Phildar hooded jacket doesn’t fit Purple Teddy*, the arms are too long. Just as well it wasn’t intended for Purple Teddy! However, the intended recipient won’t be making an appearance for at least another few weeks (or so we fervently hope) and will take some time after that to grow into this garment so Purple Teddy is the only model we have at the moment.

You will notice there are no buttons. The jacket is now as done as it is going to get until I know the babe’s gender, at which point I will purchase appropriate buttons and contrast yarn to do some edge trim. I had been considering some edge trim on and off since I first chose the red yarn but had decided against it as I was worried about complicating such a simple pattern. That was until I started the Wednesday night knitting class. The three things the teacher had to say about this jacket were “nice shoulder seams” (she may even have gone so far as to call them “lovely”, I can’t remember for sure), “I suppose it’s neat enough” (in reference to the neckline and with a strong inference that it was barely adequate) and “I will need to teach you how to cast on and cast off a contrast colour in one row so that you can fix those edge stitches”.

Apparently garter stitch really needs a slip one knitwise selvage, of this I was unaware and just went ahead with Debbie Stoller/Maggie Righetti’s advice to pull hard on the second stitch to get neat edges. Just as well I was open to the idea of edge trim!

As for the slip one knitwise garter selvage advice, turns out she was right, it does look much nicer:

That’s my latest project you are looking at, I would show you more but it’s a gift for someone who might conceivably be reading this blog so you will have to wait.

Speaking of gifts I went to my local yarn store yesterday because I heard at knitting class that they had a sale starting. I managed to restrain myself and bought only six balls of yarn. I do have to confess that Isabelle preventing me from looking at anything for more than 10 seconds may have assisted this display of restraint. I would show you the yarn I did buy, but it is intended for Chrsitmas gift/s so telling you (or showing you) more would be, well, telling… I can show you the bag, because I am a tease that way.

*Just in case you are wondering about the capitalisation of Purple Teddy - that is in fact his name. Toys get very straight forward names round here, like “Purple Teddy”, “Big Dolly”, “Little Dolly”, “Bunny’ and “Dog”.