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Knitting for babies and children is a lot of fun, often more fun than anything you can make for yourself to wear. These projects knit up quickly, you can use the brightest, softest yarn you can find. The gift becomes something the child will treasure as he or she grows, remembering the care that went into and how that shows your love for them. The gifts are also special to the parents, especially if this is their first child. Even if it’s not, you can have a lot of fun by making different sized items for each child in the family.
Instead of clothing for kids, though, you can make them adorable stuffed animals and other toys. These toys are soft, washable, and great for snuggling with. There’s also a wide variety to choose from, so you don’t have to worry about being afraid of the difficulty level. If you’re just starting out, you can try the simpler patterns, but eventually you’ll find that making little animal friends like bunnies and teddy bears is not as hard as you might think.
So what should you make? As always, when you knit for someone else, you have to think about what they might like. If you know your niece has a turtle obsession, then you know just what to make her. Or maybe your neighbor’s son loves reptiles, then you can make him a cute iguana that won’t gross out his mom. If you have an animal in mind, you can trust that someone, somewhere, has made a knit version that you can copy. If you’re extra brave, you can even attempt to design it yourself.
But knitting toys for little ones doesn’t only mean animals. There are great shapes for babies, soft and squishy squares, balls, pyramid and other shapes that are great for brand new minds. All you need for these is some foam. In more cases, you’ll shape the foam first, either by sewing it into a basic shape and then you simply knit a case to slip around it. This is also a great chance to introduce colors to a baby. It’s true that newborns see in black and white, so for a baby’s first few weeks, you can make black and white shapes, with alternating colors for each side. Then you can move onto colored blocked and other shapes. It’s a lot of fun to see which shapes and colors a new baby gravitates too. You and the parents might be surprised to see that your cousin’s new daughter seems to be madly in love with yellow. These projects are definitely some of the most fun, both for the little one and for the knitter.
by Sarah Carbone
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