As promised, some knitting! This is a hooded sweater I’ve just finished for my youngest – the cheeky monkey in question.

I knew exactly what I wanted to knit but after exhaustive searching online and through all my pattern books I couldn’t find it. Now, I’ve knit hundreds of sweaters over the years and I’ve often tweaked or adapted patterns so – why couldn’t I design something myself?

I found some bright DK yarn (Sirdar Salsa in orange and yellow) in my stash, worked up a few tension squares to decide on needle size and work out how many stitches I needed then I cast on….. basically I just started knitting and made up the parts I wanted as I went.

I’m pretty happy with the results – as is my cheeky monkey. The neck shaping probably needs a little tweaking, and I think I picked up a few too many stitches around the hood but as my first design I’m quite proud.

If you want it the pattern can be found under my free pattern pages and it’s called Cheeky Monkey (link over there in the side bar). If you do decide to knit it I would appreciate feedback as I’ve never written a pattern for someone else to follow so I don’t know if it makes sense.

Just to reassure any readers who may not be aware why I’ve been absent for so long. Everything in the Beckett household is fine, we’ve just been a little busy. Our little family has expanded from 2 to 5 as we are in the process of adopting 3 little children aged between 3 and 7.
As you can imagine this means I have less time for knitting, blogging or anything other than being a full time mum! I have done some knitting – all little things!! – and hope to be back to blogging on a fairly regular basis very soon. I’m beginning to get used to the idea of being a full time, stay at home mum and the job is getting a little easier every day so I find more time to spend on myself.
I’ve just completed a hooded jumper for my youngest which I designed myself (I knew exactly what I wanted but couldn’t find it) and I’ll get the pattern up here as soon as I can.