What does the fox say?

Taking a moment to share some more of my Christmas knitting. Today it's the gifts for my cousin's little girl Penelope.

This is the Child's Foxy Tunic by Heather Lodinsky, a free pattern available via Red Heart.

And doesn't Penelope look adorable! She's a year and a half old, I knit the pattern in the size for 2 year olds, and left the shoulder seam open until she tried it on so we could make sure it fit perfect.

This is the knitting project which I am most proud of to date. Not only did it turn out perfect, but it required a lot more work than usual. Why? because I decided to knit it in Red Heart Super Saver, a worsted weight yarn, rather than the recommended Anne Geddes Baby, a DK weight yarn. Which means that I had to swatch and adjust stitch and row counts throughout. You can see some of my notes in the two images below.

In addition to all that work, I learned a hard lesson about assuming that even two worsted weight sized yarns are the same, when switching to the white for the face I thought I'd use up some stash yarn rather than go buy a new skein. The result? a horrible nose nipple that meant I had to rip up all the colour work and restart the face.

Ooof look at that, the white yarn turned out to be a lot larger than the orange.

At the end of the day, I couldn't be happier with how this project turned out, and I know Krista and Penelope were happy too. 

I plan to eventually knit this pattern a second time, and provide my notes so that anyone who wanted to knit it in the much less expensive Red Heart Super Saver could have a go at it without all the extra work.