Help me find a suitable knitting pattern please?

[MaggieW]

I'm returning to knitting having not picked up needles since teenage years (so a long time ago!) and am looking for a pattern to get me back into it - perhaps a child's vest/sleeveless top that is like a cricket style vest but that can be knitted in wool - maybe with stripes or some sort of cable on it. I'd like one to fit a 11 yo boy and 9 yo girl please? Can anyone point me in the right direction please? TIA.

I've found a local knitting group and emailed them, so hopefully they'll tolerate a newbie. It would be great to have someone to help when I get stuck - just frustrating having to wait to continue a project until the next meeting.

I am ordering the yarn for a baby blanket which has no seaming or making up or anything complex so will get on with that when I am stuck in between meetings on other projects. For future baby garments I'll buy yarn at the shop and ask if I can go back for help when I'm stuck. All bases covered! Thanks for your advice tribpot, it's been really helpful.

funchum, if you'd like a small project in a good cause, we very sadly have two blanket squares projects going on right now. Don't feel obliged to join in of course, but I thought you might like something small but also useful.

A baby blanket with no seaming is great - I've just finished the leaf one of these and the sewing up nearly finished me off. But a single piece one will involve quite a few stitches, so you might find a circular needle is more comfortable to knit on (not going round and round, just to knit back and forth) because you can let the stitches hang between the two needles, you haven't got to 'carry' them all all the time.

The hat is finished and sewn up. Its a bit lumpy at the top, and I made it with cotton rather than wool as I find wool a bit scratchy. But it looks like a hat - albeit a bit like a flapper hat from the 1920s. Mr Rosie is stunned as I've never made anything ...

Onwards and upwards!

Well done RedRosie! Are you on Ravelry so we can admire your work there?

I've joined Ravelry, but am not yet fully up to speed with the "my projects" area.

A hat! Made by me - old butterfingers. Amazing.

I'm going to look at the blanket squares project, and see if its something a complete beginner can contribute to.

It definitely is, RedRosie. Even a plain garter stitch square will be great, or I was thinking about going for something like this for an interesting texture, and some other simple ideas here.

There are also some lovely (and some terrifyingly difficult) patterns in the Refuge ebook but there is a minimum donation to a very worth charity.

I will look at the blanket squares project! Thanks for the tip. I started a one-piece baby cardigan yesterday but had to undo all 160 stitches per row worth about 3 rows in as I made a weird mistake when slipping a stitch, knitting two together, then passing the slipped stitch over. I used YouTube to show me how to do it and did it several times but then somehow messed one up and couldn't for the life of me work out how to fix it. So I need a simple project for evenings when I'm tired and blanket squares sound perfect.

Undoing knit two together and slip over stitches is quite hard, funchum, so don't be disheartened. There's a few things with over a hundred stitches I've had to start multiple times and god it's annoying. I'm doing this blanket at the moment - you only start with 8 stitches but it's a right git to get started right and I must have done the first part of the pattern more than 10 times before I could get going properly. Now it's an absolute piece of piss and a dead easy evening project, but the first bit was awful.

Blanket squares should be good though because you can never go too far wrong.

(If anyone likes that blanket, there's a mistake in the pattern, the correction is here).