In the pink
The demographic round here is a little odd. Not so long ago I was told that there were more under-1s here than over-55s; I don't know if that's still true, but we do have an awful lot of toddlers in this area, and our church reflects that. In fact, we have a lot of children in the church in general, and it's the sort of church where (especially if you're a boy) you're quite liable to be given an obscure name out of the Old Testament. We have a Moses, a Caleb, a Micah, and even an Eliab (someone there knows their Hebrew, because if you didn't know the meaning of the name I'm fairly sure you wouldn't want to name your child after one of King David's elder brothers); we also had a Boaz until the family moved away. Well, each to their own, and all that. I did try to knit for all of them, or at least all the youngest children (the reasoning being that older children get new clothes all the time, but younger ones often get hand-me-downs, so it's nice for them to have something knitted specially for them), but the church has grown so big now that I'm afraid I can't keep pace.
The little girl who is shortly to become the owner of this joyfully loud creation does, in fact, also have a name out of the Old Testament, but it's not an obscure one. She's about eighteen months. And I had knitted her something already, but her parents are particular friends of mine, and back in May her mother very kindly gave me a lift into the nearest large town to get my ears pierced. While we were there, we went into John Lewis, and our gaze was arrested by a display of yarn in a selection of day-glo colours. I said immediately, "I have to have that pink!" (I don't usually do pink at all, but I definitely do this sort of pink.) And I gestured at the rest of the display and asked if [little girl] might like a jumper in one of these colours, and her mother said the pink would do very nicely, so pink it was.
Nobody wants a cosy acrylic jumper in the middle of summer, no matter how gleefully bright it is; so I said I wouldn't be knitting it till the autumn, and then I'd double-check the size and so on. So that was what I did; and while I was at it, I asked if [little girl] might like a bit of sparkle. It turned out that she very well might. I offered a choice of gold, silver, or black, and the silver got the thumbs-up, so silver it was.
The secret is right here. I first came across Yarn On Cone in the context of their cotton DK, which is nice yarn and good value, but unfortunately the thickness is a bit variable; some of it is standard DK, but other colours are verging towards aran weight, and you don't know which you're going to get. So I don't buy that any more, but these metallics are amazing. They're filed under "1-ply laceweight" on the website, but that's probably only because they don't have a category for something that is about as fine as regular sewing thread... which means you can add it to any yarn without changing the weight. (They do warn you not to knit with it on its own, but I don't know what you'd use if you were to try. Possibly pins.) It isn't as strong as sewing thread, so it can break if you haven't unwound enough of it and you drop the cone, but it is at any rate stronger than it looks. I've knitted with this a number of times and had it break on me only twice, both times from dropping the cone; so as long as you take reasonable care, you should be fine.
There are two sorts of metallic thread listed: the regular Lurex and what they call "pearlescent", the latter being more expensive. I have some of the pearlescent thread in green. It is a little bit stronger than the Lurex, since the metallic element is carried on a soft nylon or polyester thread made up of several extremely fine strands, but I find it is inclined to twist quite a lot. So I'm quite happy to use it for baby projects, but I don't think I would want to use it on anything very large. The Lurex is a great deal better behaved.
The pattern, incidentally, is Sirdar 4878. It's meant to be a cricket sweater, but I've made this several times and I've never yet been bothered to work the narrow stripes in the welts. While it's quite an easy knit, it's still very satisfying; if you look very closely, you can see that those narrow ribs in between the cables go over two rows. Yes, it's a slip-stitch design, and it's surprising how much interest that gives it.
Anyway, right now I'm knitting a Christmas present for another toddler in the church, who's a year older, and that one's a light apple green, so the pair of them are going to clash like a pair of cymbals and they're not going to mind in the least... 😁
