Little Red (and pink, and orange) Riding Poncho

Well, the poncho for my daughter is done - the poncho with no end, as I called it.

I seriously never thought it would end - I got so used to knitting hats that I was spoiled with my expectations of how long it took to get a "finished object" (FO). I was in denial about how much square footage of knitting it takes to turn out a poncho. Even for a little kid as skinny as my string-bean daughter.

In retrospect, the poncho should have been a project for the knitting machine - but since I haven't unpacked the machine yet, or checked & oiled it, and the clock was ticking (this is a project for Spring) I needed to knit this project by hand ASAP.

Besides the machine still scares me, a little.

The hood turned out lovely (ignore the ends-they're not woven in yet)

The view from the back with the hood down.

So here is Little Red (and pink, and orange) Riding... Poncho... in all her glory. (There's more photos in Ravelry).

My daughter LOVES it, it knit up nice and soft and with a lovely feel. She adores the colors (Pattons "Astra" light (3) weight yarn in the colour "High Energy").

I still haven't woven in the ends, but I wanted to take some photos of the poncho while my daughter was awake.

I created this pattern myself, inspired by a crochet pattern from Bernat (requires membership to view), but knit instead of crochet (see below for instructions). I used 4 balls of yarn with maybe 5 meters of yarn left over - which was kind of tight, so I recommend using 5 balls just in case. The extra can be used for fringe, a tassel on the hood, a matching doll poncho or matching knit bag...

IMHO it's always better to have too much yarn than too little.

Next project: a camouflage pattern sweater for my son, using this Bernat "Camo Kids" pattern. It's the last pattern on the list-the "Hooded Pullover". I'll be making it with "Renegade" colour "Camo" medium weight yarn (that name made me giggle-I haven't met many renegades wearing a sweater their mom knit-but my son picked out that colour, so that's what we'll go with).

On to the good stuff... here's the pattern in PDF format Enjoy!