living in the woods and making stuff

This is a sweater that I made up from scratch. I haven’t tried it on anyone yet, so I am not exactly how it will fit, but I think that it should be ok. I am meaning to write a pattern up for it but haven’t yet. Baby sweaters seem to be the way to go for first time designing. For one thing, they are small, so easy and quick to knit, rip out, and reknit. The second plus is that the baby is what most people look at anyway, so the sweater can be a little funny and get away with it!

When I was envisioning this sweater I wanted to see mostly blue, with a little white. The only trick on the sweater was with making the stripes in the right proportions, which ended up being 3 rows blue, 1 row white. I used a circular needle (from my Denise kit) and on the color change rows I simply went back to the beginning of the row after the new color, either knitting or purling two rows in a row. The only place that this caused any problems was in the shaping for the top. Somehow I ended up slipping a few rows back and forth from one needle to the other in order to knit with the right color.

The shaping was really simple. I decreased a good portion of the front and back stitches for the inset sleeves, which was what I wanted. A particularly stated cut into the horizontal stripes. I tried ending the sleeve with white, then blue, and finally decided on the particular composition above. A little white, then a little blue.

There are two buttonholes at the top of the sweater, which I have been debating wether or not to keep. As per usual I still have not attached any buttons, which might be more of a hassle to button up anyway.
I knit the sweater with Limbo yarn on size 5 needles. Knitting with Limbo yarn is always fun! It is 100% machine washable wool, and really really soft. And it wears very well. I had a pair of fingerless gloves made out of Limbo that lasted for years (until I dropped one in the wood stove last winter).

It was definitely tricky to sew up the seams on the sleeves, balancing the increases and keeping the stripes exactly in line. The above photos are of the seam on the side of the sweater (left) and the seam on the underarm (right). I think that if I were to do it again I would have the increases further in from the edge on the arm (they are positioned at one or two sitches in). This would make it easier to sew together. I had to sew up the sleeves several (or more) times in order to get them as I wanted them. The side seams were fine, but sewing the sleeves into the front was a little difficult. I tried to keep a good ratio of stitches to rows (4 rows to every 3 stitches) as I sewed the seam. but it kept on getting mixed up.