Adjusting the size of a knitting pattern?

[red_eft]

So despite the fact I'm a knitting n00b, I've decided to be ambitious and knit a toy for a friend. It's actually coming along well except that it's turning out much too large for my purposes- I'm not sure my friend wants a stuffed animal that is the size of her dog, and also I have to mail it to her. I was wondering if there was an easy(ish) way to reliably reduce the size of a pattern? My brief glance online showed mostly advice for adjusting clothes, and I'm not sure that will help for a toy. The last time I tried to adjust size, I eyeballed it, and it turned out a little... funny. And that was a *much* simpler pattern (this super cute hedgehog, just in case anyone else wants to make one! I recommend it; they're fun to do.)
I'm already knitting on needles smaller than the label recommends so that the stitches will hold stuffing.
If it makes a difference, this (Leo the Lion) is the pattern I'm using.
Thanks in advance!

Comments

[seryn]

The knitting needles specified say "pins" which indicates a UK size. According to wikipedia, you actually need needles in size US ~2.5 if you're using the fingering weight yarn. That's pretty standard "sock" gauge, where you'll want it tight not airy.

Pretty much if you want to adjust a pattern, you want to divide all the numbers. So if you want 50%, you halve the cast on, make your increases or decreases half as often (or half as many), so you end up with half the cast off number as well.

Usually row gauge (number of rows per inch) is about 1.5 times the stitches per inch (regular gauge), so you can use graph paper or drawing software to see what kind of shape you should get from the given pattern, then try adjusting the frequency of your shaping increases or decreases with the different gauge so you end up with a similar shape.

But the easiest thing to do would be to start over with smaller yarn and smaller needles.

Nostalgia strikes back!

[aunty_marion]

Yup, that's a VERY old UK pattern! (Note the price on the cover - 3d, i.e. three-pence, and that's three OLD pence before we went decimal!) It says 'No.11 knitting pins' or needles, which is 3mm (I use these all the time for toys, it's one conversion I don't need to look up). That's about a 2 or 3 US size, so yes, 2.5 US would be fine.

4-ply fingering is also correctly, as you say, about sock yarn weight. (Note that Tim the Tiger calls for 3-ply fingering, which is fine sock yarn to firmer lace-weight as an equivalent.) It's a shame the pattern doesn't give an approximate finished size, but that wasn't common in the 1940s.

(I grew up and learned to knit in the 1950s, but often used my mum's older patterns, so this looks alarmingly familiar to me!)

[rhivolution]

Well, with that, I think you could go down even smaller in terms of needles. But adjusting it otherwise--if you do it in proportion, that should be okay. For example, if the pattern says 36 stitches, you could take it down to 24, but then every other part would need to be 1/3 smaller as well (12 st instead of 18, etc.).

In theory.