Charm City Kids: Virginia Clemm

Happy Charm City Kids day! The Charm City Kids collection and ebook is now available for purchase via Ravelry. The complete ebook is priced at $11.99 and includes 6 patterns for kids ages 12m – 10y, as well as some fun ideas for things to see and do around Baltimore with kids—if you’re coming to town for Maryland Sheep and Wool in a few months, you might find them especially helpful.

Beginning today, I’ll be featuring a new pattern from the collection on the blog each day. So let’s kick things off with Virginia Clemm.

Virginia Clemm is the kids version of Annabel Lee, the most popular pattern from the original Charm City Knits. The original sweater is worked bottom-up, with short set-in sleeves.

But for kids I opted for a faster, simpler construction—nothing is worse than having your child outgrow a sweater before you’ve finished knitting it! Virginia Clemm is worked from the top down, with raglan sleeves. Working top down makes it easy to knit the sweater body and sleeves as long as you need, or even pull out the bind off and knit them longer as your child grows. It also means minimal seaming—just a few stitches under each arm—so your project will be done that much faster.

The yarn used is The Fiber Seed Sprout DK, which is dyed by Lindsay and her family in Tampa, FL. According to the company website, Lindsay’s 3-year-old son is the boss, and that sounds about right to me! I also saw on her website that she’s just released a whole bunch of new SPECKLED yarns, so you’d better go snap those up ASAP.

I had a wonderful sample knitter, Aishah, complete this sweater, so I didn’t get to work with the yarn much myself, but I did swatch with it and found it soft but sturdy, durable for a kids sweater. The color is rich and vibrant, so cheery in the face of these gray winter days (and no bleeding when washed!). I’m already planning on snagging some more of this yarn for a future project—that I’ll get to knit myself!

When I knit Annabel Lee, I got the most adorable and perfectly-Maryland crab buttons from Katrinkles, so I checked out her shop for buttons again and found these sweet snowflakes. You stitch the snowflake patterns yourself, so it’s a fun craft project all on its own, and each button is unique.

Of course, as a mom of two boys, I didn’t have any readily available models for this sweater, so I had to borrow. Danielle is my friend Catherine’s daughter (and JJ’s future bride, if we have anything to say about it) and was so cooperative for pictures, I didn’t even have to bribe her with candy, which is more than I can say for my own children. Plus, when we did the pictures, I got to see and talk to another adult, which I don’t get to do nearly enough! Many thanks to Catherine and Danielle for their help with this project.

The Virginia Clemm cardigan is sized from 12months – 10 years, and the pattern includes both charts and written directions. Buy it for $6.50, or get the whole collection for $11.99.