I “finished” my big-brother sweater last week, and I’m on to the little brother.
I did the first in the 4-6 year size, and this one in the 6-12 month size, and the difference is wild.
Like, I know that obviously the big one will take longer, but when compared to the big sweater this one is just FLYING off my needles.
I’ve been working on it for essentially one day, and I’ve made it almost to the armpit split. And I don’t have a ton of knitting time these days (obviously).
I just love this caramel-golden-yellow color, too. It’s so warm and cozy, and puts me in mind of something delicious and full of toffee.
Speaking of toffee, there’s really something just so tempting about knitting for babies. Even with the same pattern, a sweater for a grownup might be a whole meal, but a baby sweater is dessert. Or coffee and a slice of cake. Or a caramel apple from the state fair.
Or maybe I’m just hungry.
Have you ever knit the same pattern in different sizes? What’s your favorite size of sweater to make?
I DID IT! I finished a sweater! It’s the first sweater I’ve finished in… a while.
Yes, it’s a kid’s sweater, but still. It’s so cute and so soft and it’s going to be so appreciated by the recipient (or at least I’ll pretend it will be… the recipient is 3, and probably couldn’t care less about clothes, but still.)
I’ve roped our sleepy dog Ollie into modeling for me:
He’s a good sport.
I haven’t blocked it yet, and I’m going to wait until the little brother sweater is done, too, before adding the duplicate-stitch letters on the front and back. (They’re going to be a set of matching Weasley-inspired sweaters, so cute!)
Now that I’m in a good mood, and on a roll (and, shockingly, both kids are asleep at the same time), I’m going to go wind up the yarn for the baby version and get knitting! I’m so excited!
I’ve somehow made it out of the black hole/vortex of doom that was keeping me from finishing the body of my sweater. It’s plenty long enough (and will probably end up being way too long once it’s blocked), and I’ve even cruised my way through the first sleeve. It’s looking great!
(I marked a couple stitches at the bottom to help center the duplicate stitch I’m planning on adding after it’s done… that’s why there’s a couple little markers down by the waist.)
But speaking of being cursed, I can’t get a decent picture of this sweater to save my life. It’s so cute, but it’s proving impossible to get a picture of the whole sweater, in focus, and with an accurate color. The above picture shows my progress pretty well, but the colors are all washed out and beige-y.
This picture is closer to the real color. It’s a lovely, warm two-toned moss-green with little tweedy bits in goldenrod and violet. Frankly, It’s colors I wouldn’t have put together, but it makes for a lovely little sweater, perfect for tromping around in the woods.
(And, yes, I know I could take a photography class or learn photoshop… but what’s the fun in that?)
I’m really having trouble getting inspired about knitting these days. Or at least I’m not feeling inspired about my knitting.
Like I said last week, I’ve run through most of the fun yarn in my stash, or at least the easy-to-repurpose yarn. Just about all the sweater-quantities have been used up, and I’m even running low on groups of the same yarn base in different colors. Sure, I could cobble together little bits and bobs of different yarns into a sweater… but that’s a lot of effort. And who knows how that’d turn out.
It’s been waaaay too long since I set foot in a yarn store. All I want to do is go to my LYS to pick out a new, fancy sweater pattern and go a little wild picking yarn, spending way too much time agonizing about color and texture, only to go home with the same oatmeal-colored wool that I always gravitate toward.
Sigh.
(Also, as I write this, I’m 2 weeks out from having a newborn in the house, so starting a new fancy sweater is an utterly stupid idea. Which isn’t to say that it will stop me.)
Anyway, I figured that instead of starting a new pattern, I might just write about the patterns I wish I were knitting.
First up: A sweater I find utterly beautiful, and one (if I’m being honest) I would never actually work up (baby and pandemic notwithstanding). It’s utterly gorgeous- those colors! I would be so tempted to pick different colors, which would take about 30 hours of me second-guessing myself the whole time. I mean, it uses 14 (FOURTEEN!) different colors. It’s so freaking gorgeous. It would drive me up the wall to knit. Maybe I can find someone to knit it for me? Ha!
As beautiful as that sweater is, if I’m being honest, what I’m really itching for is a big ol’ cabled/textured sweater. I really want to get my needles deep into a sweater like this. 5 (or so) different cables? Yes please. Lots of seed stitch? Yep. All-over texture? Definitely. Cool saddle-shoulder detail? Sign me up.
(Plus, it would look pretty great in my “signature” oatmeal/gray.)
Or maybe I could combine the two. Why not have color and texture? Why not jump on the Shifty bandwagon? Heck, I might even be able to actually find enough scrap yarn in my stash to cobble together a workable version of this bad boy. Though, I shudder to think about all the ends I’d need to weave in…
I’ll get to go to a yarn store again some day, and I’ll get to knit a sweater again, too. It’s just going to be a minute. In the meantime, the daydreams will have to satisfy.
I enjoyed making my kid’s striped sweater so much, that I’ve decided to keep going.
(Or, if you’re feeling less charitable, I’m having some real designer’s block, and can’t think of what else to make.)
But either way, I’ve decided to keep going, and make a newborn-sized version of the same striped sweater. I’ve still got a good chunk of Hawthorne, and I know how I made the big one, so I can crank out a bitty one pretty easily.
So I’m cruising through, I’m about halfway through the belly, and already thinking about the arms. It’s crazy how small this one feels after the 3-year-old-sized one. It’s going so fast!
Anyway, that’s how I ended up being that mom, who makes matching clothes for her kids. Sorry, kids.
Do you ever make favorite patterns in different sizes?
I’m cruising through my kid’s Leftovers Sweater, and I gotta say, I love it!
It’s the perfect amount of mindless knitting- just switching between main and contrast colors every two rows, then breaking the contrast color after every fifth stripe. Couldn’t be simpler, or more striking. I think it might just be the perfect pattern for a little kid sweater!
And, I’m really digging the blue in-between each contrast stripe. I think it will make the whole color scheme more cohesive. (Which is a feat, when pulling together 6 (I think) random colors leftover from several years’ worth of projects.)
Plus, my favorite thing about 2×2 stripes in the round- it looks like you’re going to have a million and a half ends to weave in, but you don’t! I just carry the unused yarn up the inside of the sweater, and you only have to weave in ends when you break to change color. Easy! (I’d probably use this trick to carry over 3 or 4 rows, but maybe not more than that- the floats start to get a little long and start pulling funny if you do wider stripes.)
Now, am I still going to complain about having to weave in the (few) ends left when I’m done? Of course. I’m still me. But for now, I’m going to pat myself on the back and tell myself that I’m doing a great job.
Are there any little details on your knitting that have really been pleasing you lately?
It’s the beginning of the school year again (sort of), so that must mean that it’s time for me to make my kid another sweater. (Although, when is it not time to make him another sweater?) So far, every fall I’ve dipped into my stash and made him a sweater. And, they’ve all been from the same leftover yarn.
Honestly, at this point, I don’t even remember what the yarn is leftover from.
But, I do know it’s Knit Picks Hawthorne in a whole bunch of colors (mostly light blue, which thankfully looks really good on my kid, in my totally unbiased opinion). It’s a fingering-weight superwash wool that’s right in that sweet spot of soft and strong that makes it perfect for kid’s clothes. Plus, it’s Knit Picks, so it’s fairly cheap.
When he was a baby baby, I made him a “Christmas in July” Sweater. It might be my favorite sweater I’ve made for him (or in general, really). It’s super cute, I love the colors, and it was a super fun, quick knit (maybe because of the size). Unfortunately, because he was a big baby with a gigantic head, he grew out of it in about fifteen minutes.
Last year, when he was 1 and a half, I designed a sweater for him, based on the book Sheep in a Jeep (his hands-down favorite at the time, and still a winner, if I’m being honest). I loved the little radish design. (Also! Look at all that hair! So cute!)
And this year, I’ve broken out my stash of Hawthorne again, but this time, I’m keeping it simple. No color-work, just stripes. My current plan is to do a bottom-up raglan V-neck (just like the Sheep in a Jeep design, and perfect for active little kids with big noggins), with blue cuffs, collar and hem. But, I’ll be covering the whole body and arms with 2-row stripes, alternating between blue and the other colors I have in my stash. They’re kind of a disparate lot of colors- not necessarily something I’d put together normally, but I think using all the colors and alternating them with the light blue will make them come together.
And, heck, if it doesn’t, who cares?! He’ll be cozy either way.
Do you have a seemingly unending stash of a favorite yarn? What’s your favorite thing to do with it?
OK. So, I finally finished my “Quarantine Sweater,” and the best thing I can say about it is that… it’s done.
It might be the least-flattering sweater I’ve ever made. I might even go as far as to say it’s ugly.
I mean, the shape ended up super weird (it’s way too wide, the sleeves are droopy, and the armpits start around my belly button). It’s not even worth taking a flattering picture of myself wearing it… sorry…
The colors are… fine, but I really dislike how some of the sections ended up super-marled (but I suppose that’s what happens when you knit exclusively to use up the random half-skeins of yarn in your stash without a lot of planning), and why did I include that puke-yellow color?
And the fabric itself is… odd (it’s nice and soft and warm, but also the stitches are very open and loose. I much prefer a wooly, structured sweater; this one is altogether too drapey and shapeless).
But, it’s done, so there’s that. Maybe I’ll grow to love it? Or maybe I’ll find a very wide, short friend with very long arms that grow out of their rib cage I can give it to? Or, I wonder what would happen if I tried to felt it? Does alpaca even felt?
Oh well. At least it used up a bunch of yarn.
Have you ever finished a big project, only to hear a great big sad trombone?
,” and the best thing I can say about it is that… it’s finished.
It might be the least-flattering sweater I’ve ever made. I might even go as far as to say it’s ugly.
I mean, the shape ended up weird (it’s way too wide, the sleeves are droopy, and the armpits start around my belly button). It’s not even worth taking a flattering picture of myself wearing it… sorry…
The colors are… fine, but I really dislike how some of the sections ended up super-marled (but I suppose that’s what happens when you knit exclusively to use up the random half-skeins of yarn in your stash without a lot of planning), and why did I include that puke-yellow color?
And the fabric itself is… odd (it’s nice and soft and warm, but also the stitches are very open and loose. I much prefer a wooly, structured sweater; this one is altogether too drapey and shapeless).
But, it’s done, so there’s that. Maybe I’ll grow to love it? Or maybe I’ll find a very wide, short friend with very long arms that grow out of their rib cage I can give it to? Or, I wonder what would happen if I tried to felt it? Does alpaca even felt?
Oh well. At least it used up a bunch of yarn.
Have you ever finished a big project, only to hear a great big sad trombone?
I had planned to write today’s post about my Lovenote Sweater that I finished more than a month ago, and that I really love. Honestly, I’m not sure why I haven’t posted about it yet, other than that I forgot because of *gestures vaguely* all this. I had really high hopes. I was going to get dressed in something other than pajama pants, brush my hair, maybe even put on a bit of makeup to hide the stress zits, and have my husband take a couple pictures of me in my (not so) new sweater.
That was earlier this week. Now, I’m just kinda tired, and don’t feel like it. It just seems like a lot of work to change my outfit. You get it.
So, instead, I want to share my progress on my Quarantine Sweater. I’m cruising along, a good 10 inches or so into the body. I had been thinking about making this sweater cropped, like my Lovenote, but honestly I forgot I was supposed to stop after a couple inches. So I just kept going. Now we’re a stripe or two away from a nice long sweater.
I love how the gradient is turning out, though a part of me wishes that I’d gone through the effort to plan it out a little more carefully so that I just did one pass-through for the entire sweater. And I think it’ll be a good spring-y sweater when it’s done (still, hopefully, in spring).
I’m currently thinking of making it hip length, or longer, but maybe with T-shirt sleeves. Is that crazy?
(Though, if the sleeves go the way the body’s gone, I’ll probably space out and make them a good 6 inches too long…)
So, I’m putting my socks (er… sock) in time out for a little bit. I can’t face ripping out an entire sock, and I can’t face knitting up a second sock that I know for a fact isn’t going to fit.
I also can’t really muster up the energy to dig through my stash and match up a specific pattern to the yarn that I’ve got on hand. That just seems like way too much effort for right now.
I do, however, have just a ton of Knit Pick’s Alpaca Cloud lace-weight yarn. Why? I have no idea. I think the last time I knit with lace-weight yarn was somewhere in the middle of the Obama administration. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice yarn, just not what I usually reach for these days.)
But, I finished my Lovenote (which I just realized I haven’t shared with you yet!), which was knit with finer yarn held double on large needles, which gave me an idea. I set out my stashed Alpaca Cloud in a rainbow(ish) and started swatching on US10 1/2s. (See, I learn from my mistakes. Sometimes.)
I decided that holding the yarn double made fabric that was still a little too skimpy, so I tripled-up, and came up with something that was light but fluffy, cozy but drape-y.
I busted out my favorite Knitter’s Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters by Ann Budd, and started on a raglan sweater. It’s not fancy in the design; no crazy textures or lace, no weird construction, just big blocks of color. I’m holding the yarn triple, so every block, I switch out one color, which has left me with a rather pleasant color gradient so far.
I’d originally thought about measuring out how long the sweater was going to be and making the stripes even all the way down, but… meh. Instead, I’m kind of just knitting until I get bored, then switching.
What will the rest of the sweater look like? Who knows! Will it be long or cropped or somewhere in the middle? I dunno! Will it have waist shaping or tapered sleeves? Maybe?
It’s kinda fun to go into a sweater with literally no idea of what it’s going to end up looking like. I always go from a pattern, or at least a sketch of what I want the finished project to be, so it’s a nice change of pace and a nice project to have on my needles in this weird, weird time.
On the Needles 