Charity Knitting

I belong to an online charity group called All Crafts 4 Charity. In February we sent sweater sets to Bundles of Love, a hospital related charity group in Minnesota, which gives going home outfits to needy newborns.  They especially needed complete sweater sets, meaning a sweater with a hat, mittens, and booties.

I opened my mouth online and put my foot in it by promising to make 8 sets for newborns. Hey, Christmas was over and I had plenty of time for machine knitting these easy outfits, didn't I?

It was a challenge to me (and to others on the list) to promise, and really make and send, these items. We all came through and sent over 100 of these sets, plus many parts of sets, to help these newborns.

I "cheated" a bit by finding sweaters which were almost finished but put in the back of drawers in my house.

Most of my sweaters were from the basic raglan cardigan pattern in Bramwell Baby Book (available for free download from machineknittingetc.com). The socks were from Ricki Mundstock's free pattern (with mock ribbing) or were sort of "created" by me as basic ribbed top socks. The mittens were just socks with only one set of shortrowing. Hats were either ribbing or Ione's hat pattern from Northtipton.

Here are photos of my outfits and a few spares which I sent too.

Whoops, I also see I had knit a double bed white sweater on the Passap, and a Surprise Baby sweater ( pink variegated) and a couple of All in One cardigans (one is yellow and green, and the other is variegated with a blue band),

I was using us a variety of pastel baby yarns, until I got tired of that and switched to bright colors. Not everyone has the same tastes!

I have since knitted two more sets for gifts locally.

I am now trying out more baby sweaters, these with hoods. Some are on the standard brother machine and others are on the bulky. Possibly I will even dig out the midgauge to see if that is the best fit for the yarn I have.