March is a popular birthday month in my family.
While I’m under no strict obligation to knit for these events, it just so happens that the birthdays falling this month include three people who come top of my list of people I love to knit for most. So it’s a given that I’ll have busy fingers and sense of looming deadlines.
First cab off the rank this month was Alice but I didn’t knit for her. I made a lot for her over summer and intended to give her the pretty quilt that still isn’t finished. Remember?
So I bought her a dress instead. I’m a realist. I just ran out of time to do anything decent and handmade for her third birthday.
Next is my sister, Adele. Always the happy knitting recipient, I had a last minute burst of inspiration which I just can’t show you until it’s done. Here’s what I gave her last year, Kai-Mei socks. (Psst, Adele: not giving you socks this year).
And finally there’s Willem, Adele’s not so little boy who turns eight this year. Whoosh! Haven’t those years flown by? From this:
to this, taken on his birthday last year when I gave him the Alex Jacket.
My knitting has been around about as long as Willem has been alive and he’s always been so happy to receive whatever I’ve made for him. Which brings me to this year’s birthday knit. His mum loves him in vests and he’s still young enough to happily wear them to places like church or special events. His last one is no longer wearable – I believe it went to a younger cousin – and so this year I’ve chosen ZigVest by Tikki. My first go at one of her boy patterns. I’m making it from a chocolatey brown Rowan Felted Tweed. Isn’t that what all the fashionable eight year old boys are wearing this year? Tweed vests? Sure they are.
But I started it late. So used to the quick knits for toddlers have I become that I figured I could knock Will’s vest over in a few weeks. I could it if was straight forward knitting (and if he hadn’t grown so surprisingly long in the torso!) but it’s fiddly cabling and I keep messing it up.
It’s for the love and knowing that those tweedy cables are going to look so great that I’m pushing on, but it’s been a slog. Sometimes the simplest looking patterns turn out to be slightly trickier than anticipated.
A reprieve came from Adele yesterday though who pointed out that honestly, if the vest isn’t ready by the 26th, the world will not end.
Really? Wow, glad she told me. No one sets an unrealistic deadline quite like I do, I sometimes think.
Knit on!
Bells





























