Petite Purls Issue 14: A Review

Let's have a look at the latest issue of Petite Purls, issue no. 14. As always with Petite Purls, which designs exclusively for children, you'll need to brace yourself for some seriously adorable child models.

This cardigan isn't the most accomplished design, but it's cute and wearable, and a relatively easy knit for a beginner with a few projects under his or her belt. The rainbow-like yoke above the tree or lollipop-style flower is just the kind of thing a small girl will like. And I like the two options as it gives a knitter a way to differentiate two sweaters if knitting them for two little sisters. I'm not a proponent of dressing siblings alike, cute as it might look to adults. Kids are individuals and shouldn't be treated or dressed like a pair of bookends, and the younger sibling may not at all like having to effectively wear the same sweater for years (first his or her own, and then as a hand-me-down). If you want to make a pair of coordinated sweaters for siblings, I'd really recommend making them at least somewhat different, as in this case.

This baby cardigan really doesn't have anything to recommend it. The colours are unpleasant in a... fecal... kind of way (and babies already keep fecal matters very much at the forefront of our dealings with them), and the design looks rough and slapped together, as though the designer just couldn't be bothered even trying. I mean, couldn't the designer have made the effort to make the neck and collar look somewhat finished? Or to make the single button less random?

I quite like this pullover. It's bright and eye-catching, and I always love to see Noro in action. I would make just one tweak: I'd knit in a bar of colour on the upper right side of the sweater to balance the colour bar on the lower left side. I might also not make the sleeves raglan so that the stripe can go all the way to the shoulder.

Nice baby pullover. I do think the collar looks a little awkward (babies don't have long necks and it doesn't make much sense to make them funnel-like collars), but otherwise this is adorable. And if you make this for a baby of your acquaintance, his father might just put in an order for one in his size.

Sock monkeys have never really appealed to me, and find the hood of this sweater to be just too unwieldy but must admit that if you like sock monkeys, and more importantly if the child in question does, this is a cute sock monkey cardigan. I love that the designer went the extra mile and used sock monkey buttons.

I quite like this hat. It's bright and colourful and the design feels both balanced and fluid. Perhaps this isn't surprising given that the hat is based on the South American chullo hat, and there's nothing like a design that's been around for a few centuries: the bugs have all been worked out, and the design has reached such a stage of perfection that even the imitations of it look good.

Love this argyle vest. Doing just a few argyle squares and placing them off-centre gives this sweater look fresh and updated and not as all as though it's meant to be worn with a pocket protector.

Eye-catching cardigan design that reminds me obscurely of some sort of Elizabethan court dress, as it often had that kind of lattice embroidery and purple and gold are a very royal colour combination. I don't care for the colourway and would make this in more subtle analogous colours like blue and green, but I'm sure that's much more due to my anti-yellow bias than because of any objective reason — this is a perfectly good complementary colour scheme.

This jumper is one of those patterns that really make me sit up and take notice because it is so original and striking. I love the yoke, the corresponding hem edging, the little pocket with the birds, the pretty touch lent by the ribbon at the yoke. And this is a very practical design in that it could originally be made dress length and morph into a sweater as the child's arms and legs grow (as every parent knows, a child's limbs generally grow faster than anything else).

Not a fan of these bibs, which are rough and amateurish looking. However, they're cute and easy to whip up and I'm sure no one really asks more than that of something that's going to be spit up and slobbered upon.

And we end on a high note with this wonderful butterfly tam. I love that the designer managed to marry butterflies and fair isle design, I love the bright, striking colourway, I love the technically accomplished design. Kudos to this designer for this piece.