Matching outfit keeps baby cozy

Tag: Acrylic Cotton Sweater Who could resist knitting these booties, pullover, hat and matching blanket, all for baby, toddler or young one? This outfit has comfort and joy written all over it. Sirdar's knitting pattern has easy instructions for ages from birth to age 7. The blanket and sweater is knit in an easy, mock-basket weave stitch.Knit in Tiny Tots DK, a 90 per cent acrylic, 10 per cent cotton blend, it requires three 50-gram balls for the blanket, one ball for the hat, one ball for the booties, and two to six balls for the sweater depending on size. Tiny Tots has 22 boys and girls colours and is machine washable and dryable.For a free copy of this pattern, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: Needlepoint Pattern No. 1756, c/o Neighbours, Calgary Herald, P.O. Box 2699, Stn. M, Calgary, AB, T2P 5A7.

Exports mark 22pc growth in Feb

The continued strong growth in demand for Bangladeshi garments helped boost the country's exports in February to US$1.199 billion, up 22 percent on the same month a year earlier.However despite February's export boom, the country missed the overall export target of July-February period by 4.21 percent, earning $8.02 billion during these first eight months of FY 2007-08.Knitwear, the largest export earner followed by woven garments, earned $3.47 billion during the time, marking a 16.43 percent growth over the same period of previous fiscal.It, however, missed the target of $ 3.51 billion for the period.Woven garments earned $3.29 billion, a 5.63 percent growth over the same period of the previous fiscal, but 5.28 per cent below the export target.Frozen food, the country's second largest export earner, showed 5.73 percent growth over the same period of previous fiscal. During the period the sector earned $ 371.93 million.Agricultural products, vegetables, tobacco, ceramic products and footwear also marked considerable growth.On the other hand, handicrafts, computer services and engineering products such as bicycle and iron chain missed the export target.Despite positive growth during the last three months since December 2007, export is still bearing the burnt of the negative growth in the fiscal year's first five months.The government has set the export target for FY 2007-08 at $14.5 billion against the backdrop of over $ 12 billion earning in previous fiscal.“If the garment sector fails to show high growth, it will be hard to meet the target,” said Fazlul Haque, president of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

Who says the cricket sweater is dead?

We had an opening batsman that was never out. Well, this was what he thought. He was, of course. He was so out most weeks that we thought his bat might be a portal in the space-time continuum, something Doctor Who might slip through, plus the odd cricket ball.He did not appreciate such theories. To his mind, umpires were myopic sociopaths intent on his ruination and in cahoots with every fast bowler in the county. His name, like the many injustices he believed to have been committed against his sporting person, has long been lost in the memory, but his style remains familiar to all. He would play forward, groping at one that was cutting away, or failing to detect the line of one that had cut back, and there would be the inevitable diversionary click, or dull thud of ball against pad, and the fielding players would rise in confident appeal and the umpire's right index finger would join them and the slow troop to the pavilion would begin.There would then be the clatter of the bat thrown to the corner of the spartan dressing room and the bitter ruminations on the ocular capability and motives of the decision-maker. It had been, without doubt, going down leg side or, if caught by the wicketkeeper, he had not got a touch.During one game in which the unmistakable sound of ball against willow could have been identified by a deaf school camping four fields away during a flypast by the Red Arrows and the Prodigy's set at Glastonbury, the catch was taken at second slip, the ball having set off at a right angle with the velocity of a Gran guided mortar bomb. “Came off my boot,” said our hero, as he sat, quietly fuming in the clubhouse. This may not be cricket as recognised by the likes of Michael Vaughan, the England captain, but it will be instantly known to the many well-intentioned amateurs whose club season is beginning at the weekend, and will continue this summer through rain, shine and days when the two alternate at 15-minute intervals and just waste everybody's time. And there are more of us than there are cricketers like Vaughan.So the idea that the death knell has been sounded for the old-fashioned baggy, woollen jumper is as ridiculous as, well, an English Ashes victory on Australian soil.“Close of play for a fashion icon” was how The Times reported the arrival of the Clima-Cool cable-knit pullover, made from a man-made fibre and designed to push sweat away from the athlete's skin. Don't believe a word of it. Like grumpy openers, overweight spinners and the rain stopping at six o'clock and the sun coming out during the drive home, the old-fashioned cricket jumper will always be with us.“The cricket sweater has been my bugbear for many a year,” said Vaughan, which is a surprise considering his recent leadership calls have included what to do with a drunken vice-captain who has nearly drowned on a pedalo after a nightclub bender in the middle of a World Cup tournament. “I am delighted to see its end.”England's new kit is similar to every item of sports equipment these days, in that its key function is to redistribute perspiration. It is a surprising there is ever a water shortage, really, with the amount of sweat that is being redirected during modern competition. You could siphon off the undershirt of the average all-rounder and irrigate a small village in Ghana, given the technology, although, to the untrained observer, any sport that requires its participants to take two meal breaks - lunch and tea - not to mention several drinks intervals, would appear to require some form of kit with the ability to redistribute Bolognese stains rather than moisture. perhaps adidas, England's supplier, could produce Clima-Cool bibs.For those that have followed an England cricket tour to Australia, the sub-continent or Caribbean, there is a serious side to this. During Ashes Tests in places like Adelaide and Brisbane, temperatures pitch-side have been known to exceed 110F; in Sri Lanka, the humidity can reach 95 per cent, although in either of these situations why anyone would still be wearing a jumper of any description, Clima-Cool or not, is perhaps a bigger question. Those that are still concerned with layers in Karachi are probably already suffering heat-stroke.As for the rest of us, keeping cool is not the problem. Not much in the way of sun block required last Saturday when standing at square leg for the school cricket trials. One of the coaches remembered an April game at Fenners, the home of Cambridge University, when it grew so cold that Ray East, the Essex spin bowler, had borrowed the overcoat of a spectator and took to wearing it while fielding in the deep. The umpire took the hint and called the players in. One would imagine that very few were bemoaning the absence of light, efficient man-made fabrics that day. Soak a woollen sweater in brandy and somebody might have sucked it.The threat to the good old cricket jumper is painted as a serious one, considering that these days the replica shirt is king, and manufacturers of sports apparel believe everybody wishes to parade in the manner of the leanest, fittest, twentysomething footballer, all six packs and perfect BMI. Before flooding the market with figure hugging Clima-Cool cricket jumpers, however, it might be an idea to study the body shape of the average third XI second-change bowler. Not too many Cristiano Ronaldo lookalikes there. Not too many athletes that will be happy about specifically defining the contours of the upper body.I remember walking down the street at a recent World Cup tournament with a senior executive of the footballwear manufacturer Umbro. His company had just supplied the England team with its most state-of-the-art kit yet. It not only took sweat away, it reinvented it as mineral water, then some of it got together and cleaned your car while you were out. And it was tight. John Richmond tight. Saturday night at Turnmills tight. Coming towards us was an England supporter. He was not a thin man. In his newly purchased shirt he looked rather like a busted sofa. My friend, crestfallen, glanced in his direction and fell silent for several seconds. “Yes,” he said, finally, “we definitely had him in mind when we designed that.”So hold fire on the last rites for the baggy cricket jumper. I have a hunch it will be with us for many years yet.

The Birthday Cake as a Milepost

SAMUEL, my 10-year-old, told me recently that one of his earliest memories was the birthday cake I made when he was 3. It was a snowman cake, for his snow-theme party. Three single layers cut into proportionate circles and frosted in stiff, white fondant icing; black gumdrop eyes and mouth; a striped scarf made by twisting together red and black shoestring licorice and a traditional carrot nose. It was quite a cake — especially for me, an advanced-beginner baker at best. So when Samuel told me he remembered it, I was proud — for the three seconds before he explained, "I remember it was scary."Well, at least he remembers it. Clearly, so do I. And I’ve found that most of the women I know, whether infrequent bakers or those who bake at the drop of a hat, mix-users or only-from-scratch types, remember the cakes they’ve baked, vividly. You know the way clothing can function in memory, outfitting important events? Well, I think cakes we’ve baked make for equally rich, if not richer, recollection. Tastes, decorations, adventures or ordeals come flooding back, coalescing around the cakes’ reasons for being — the people they were baked for and their landmark celebrations. Especially children.Not that we don’t bake cakes for adults, too. And isn’t it a lovely thing to see your father beaming like a child as his lighted cake is borne to him? But it’s a different experience setting out not merely to please but to delight a child with a cake that only you can make, one that can find you rolling up your sleeves and becoming a cake wrangler, determined to make that firehouse, caterpillar or Pokémon concoction. Why? Or, as I’ve asked myself when half the cake sticks to the pan, What could I have been thinking?There is an irresistible charm to these flight-of-fancy cakes, and fueling children’s imaginative rides in the early years is part of a parent’s job. But I think the real reason we bake far-fetched cakes is because we hear in our children’s birthday-cake requests, whether spoken or not, this: "You can do it. You’re Mom."So we bake and risk the burning, the falling and the crumbling, trying to meet our kids’ cake expectations. I’ve seen a mother struggling over caterpillar cake segments baked in bundt pans. And another fretting terribly as the gel lettering melted off the cake, making it look like one of Dalí’s surreal desert clocks.Then there’s the weird tale my friend Stina told me about a cake that is apparently a contemporary rite of passage for mothers of pre-tween girls. It’s a Barbie cake, more specifically, a Barbie-upright-in-her-bouffant-skirt cake. Using a trademarked pan, you bake the skirt, frost it (prom-pink is good) and then decorate it with edible beading, sequins or tulle. Then you’ve got to get the damsel in the dress, lowering her into the waist of the skirt-cake. But Barbie is liable to slide down past her waist, to where the cake hits her just below the bust — Maternity Barbie! Or, she might slide further, descending into the crumbling pastel volcano that is your cake, until finally, horribly, Barbie is entombed.At least now, thanks to the blogosphere, mothers have a place to commiserate and virtually share their cake triumphs and disasters. One of my favorite online sightings is a photo of a pirate treasure chest cake, spilling over with jewels, taken seconds before the birthday boy pilfered it, sending it, plundered, to the floor. The baker couldn’t bear to post the “after” shot, but she did have one of herself, cringing.I see how this royal cake-baking treatment might be perceived as another symptom of our superindulgent, competitive parenting. It shows how the ante has been upped for birthday cakes — just as for toys, camps, tutors, clothes and college. But cake baking as event or proving ground is nothing new. It’s been going on in this country since the second half of the 19th century, at least, when superior baking powders became more widely available. Cake baking reached its lofty heights with the popularization of the cake mix after World War II. Cake mixes were, and continue to be, a godsend for anyone who doesn’t want to sift flour, measure cocoa and fold in egg whites. And boxed-cake memories for birthday boys and girls are, in the end, just as sweet. Just ask my friend Alice.Alice’s mother wasn’t much of a cook, let alone a baker. She had given up her career as a chemist in the 1950s to have a family. So for Alice’s birthday, she would take her on a ceremonious trip to the supermarket where Alice would get to pick the Duncan Hines mix of her choice. Back home, they’d prepare it together. The best part was when Alice’s mother would pour some of the batter into a doll-sized pan.Those cake-baking times are at the heart of why Alice is the passionate, expert and generous baker she is today and why she bakes with Annie, her 12-year-old, every chance she gets.Ideas of mothering are an essential part of birthday cake ingredients. (More dads are baking cakes these days, but for now, birthday-cake culture still mostly revolves around mothers.) My own mother made a lot of spice cakes when I was growing up, simple rectangles with brown cinnamon frosting and raisins spelling “Happy Birthday” and our names. These were the first kind of cakes I baked for my own children. Then I set the bar higher. Maybe it was leaving New York City, moving to the suburbs and searching for the Martha within. But when my boys started toddling, their cakes also reached developmental milestones. Henry’s Pokémon cake was one of these.As with Sam’s snowman cake, here, too, I thought I’d achieved something nifty. Henry, my oldest, turning 6, was a Pokémon fanatic having a July swim party. So I came up with a swimming pool cake surrounded by Pokémon characters. I scavenged for the hard-to-find miniature critters, even soliciting other mothers for some of their kids’ stash. I made chlorine-water-colored Jell-O and a cookie diving board, then frosted and arranged the scene. Henry was appreciative. But he let me know at the time — and has ever since — that I’d put the "earth" Pokémon in the pool and the "water" Pokémon on dry land.Nowadays, my boys don’t ask a lot from me in the birthday cake department. Pretty much anything chocolate and frosted will do. Which is a little bittersweet for me, but just a little. Because the cakes I have baked live on, preserved in family lore, and in the lingering, ever-delicious memories of my children, round-faced, candlelit and filled with wishing.