The one lone little piece of knitted present that still trailed yarn and needles was a jumper for Kitty, the Immie tee by Quince & Co, knit from Sparkleduck Galaxy in a deep midnight blue with silver sparkles. I'd just about finished the body and started a sleeve when I gave it up in favour of a relaxed Christmas Eve with my family, and sure enough it was there waiting for me to do a few little rounds on Christmas afternoon as we curled up by our tree to watch the last of the daylight dance with shadows across the room.
I packed it to take north after the end of the profiterole marathon, and knit as we trundled painstakingly up the motorway one day, and across on another motorway the next to stay with H's parents for a couple of nights.
I finished it one afternoon, sat in the family room as my parents-in-law enjoyed having all of their chicks and a couple of cuckoos around them, and owing to an incident involving lasagne for supper, cheese, grated cheese and a little more cheese, it was pressed into service straight away to visit Great-Gran to take tea.
Taking tea with Gran is somewhat of a ritual. Regardless of the time of day, or the proximity of any of the major meals you have to sit down at the kitchen table and have a cup of tea and a slice of cake.
For almost 13 years, H has drunk my cup of tea, and I have eaten his Ferraro Roche. That is the way that it is at Gran's. It's even more special now that Kitty's grown enough to have a big girl chair and a little Madeira cake, just as H did many many years ago.
It also helps that Gran's poodle Sasha doesn't mind helping to clear up after little girls!
Kitty played with her auntie
and had cuddles from a great-auntie who popped by
and it wasn't until we'd come back down home that I had the time or the resources to properly wash and block her latest knit.
But at last, a proper unveiling:
Jumper: Immie tee with long sleeves
Trousers: pink and purple stripes from the JoJo Maman Bebe sale
Accessories: Room on the Broom - model's own, Gruffalo socks from Little Sunflowers
It grew a little with blocking but with incredible growing not-so-tiny wee girls that's not necessarily a bad thing and I'm happy that if it's a bit big now, it will be a perfect fit before too long.
Clearly I've made one very obvious change to the pattern, I accidentally used a 3.5mm needle rather than a 3.25 and it grew sleeves! Well, ok, I did use slightly larger needles and didn't notice until I double checked them in preparation for the sleeves but I like the drape of the resultant fabric and I wasn't going to re-knit the whole body. She's wearing it here as a t-shirt layer over a long sleeved vest which works well, although it also works well as a more traditional jumper; in the pictures at Great-Gran's she's got a thick penguin t-shirt and a vest underneath.
The original pattern has cute little cap sleeves but full length sleeves are a rather necessary ingredient for a Christmas jumper in England, even in this unseasonably mild winter, and I had plenty of yarn so I invented them.
This is the largest size, and the pattern would have you cast on 57 stitches and work a few rows of garter before joining it to the body. I cast on two-third of the stitches (38), joined them in the round and worked in garter stitch for the suggested rounds, then increased up to 57 sts in the next row and worked straight until they seemed about long enough (70 rounds).
Immie looks lovely, just the right fit for a growing gal and such a lovely blue on her.
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