My Favorite Thing I’ve Made

Yesterday, fellow blogger Karen of Nothing But Knit, put out a challenge. “Write a post about the favorite thing you have made. “

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/32787/posts/2676816067

This post is my response.

Tailored Sweater

Those of you who follow me may be a bit surprised at my choice. It looks nothing like the color-filled fiber objects I usually post on my site. This color is a subdued neutral and the style rather conservative. What makes me happy about this sweater is that I chose every aspect of the design. I worked out the pattern details on graph paper and knitted it up.

It turned out exactly as I imagined and fits like a glove.

Schematic and specifications of my design

I can’t say enough about the quality of the Patons DK Superwash yarn. It is soft, but not a merino. Therefore the sweater has not pilled. The yarn has a heathery tone and a beautiful hand when knit. I used a twisted stockinette for the main body which makes a tighter fabric and plays up the variations in tone.

Back view showing pleat and waist shaping

The hem, cuffs and collar feature a cable-style stitch called Repeated Circles from 750 Knitting Stitches – The Ultimate Knit Stitch Bible. The vintage buttons, which I found on Etsy, mirror the oval centers of the cable. Love it!

Another detail that worked out well is the skinny cable at the shoulder edges. The few stitches worked on the outside edge of the cable made a perfect road map for setting in the sleeves.

Well, that’s about all I have to say about this project. Every time I see it in my closet I long for cooler weather, so that I can wear it again.

Sweater Weather?

Well, not really. The morning started as sunny, breezy and temps in the 70s. But I am encouraged to think about cooler times with the arrival of the last day of September.

I’m also encouraged by the fact that I’ve moved to the blocking stage a cardigan that has been on my needles all summer long. Here she is, drying under a ceiling fan.

The pattern is called Passages and is from Knit Picks. I purchased it for my daughter over a year ago. She was unable to make a lot of progress on it with the new baby and all. So I thought I would try it.

The stitch pattern, called Gull and Garter, is an easy stockinette variable over five stitches and four rows. Row 1: Bring yarn to front, slip five stitches. Row 2: Purl. Row 3: Knit two stitches. Insert right needle under loose strand and into next stitch. Knit normally then bring the new stitch out from under the strand. The loose strand is caught up behind the third stitch. Row 4: Purl. This Gull pattern is interspersed with three garter stitches. Here is a link to the sweater pattern on KnitPicks.

https://www.knitpicks.com/passage-cardigan/g/52475220

The only adjustments I made to were to gauge for a thinner yarn and add some waist shaping. After sewing up the shoulder seams I will knit on a 2 inch button band-collar and sew on the sleeves. This WIP will be DONE.

From the Design Idea folder

Dear Fellow Makers,

Over the past few days I have been engaged in work on fiber objects that take a lot of time to complete, such as painting the hydrangea leaves for a wall hanging and knitting a sweater. So I don’t have anything new to share on the blog today.

In perusing my design book, I was reminded of a project that I made in 2013. It has an interesting story which involves knitting sweaters for a little boy.

Have you ever worked hard on a hand-made gift, only to have it rejected on the spot by the recipient? I have! As a new grandmother, I was joyfully knitting sweaters annually for my grandson. One year it was an Elizabeth Zimmerman design (the modular Tomten Jacket described in The Opinionated Knitter.) After unwrapping it, said grandson simply cast it aside. (sigh.) I resolved never to let that happen again. For his birthday sweater the following year, I chose soft, brightly colored acrylic yarn and came up with a design that no little boy could resist.

Like all boys, my grandson loved trucks – BIG trucks and BIG earth-moving equipment. I decided to make a rugby style sweater with the image of a John Deere digging machine on the back. This project required a custom chart and my husband gleefully helped me to create it.

The picture was downloaded from the JD website, but the grid required a little adjustment. In knitting, the number of stitches per inch almost never matches up with the number of rows per inch. To avoid compressing the image, the squares of the grid need to be fatter than they are tall. I gave husband my gauge (stitches per inch and rows per inch.) He calculated the ratio and used spreadsheet software to adjust the grid to match. From this chart it was relatively simple to knit using a combination of stranded and intarsia techniques.

Upon receiving his gift the following birthday, my grandson jumped for joy.

“It’s an excavator, it’s an excavator!!”

This sweater was happily worn for several years in all kinds of weather.

One final note: If you try this technique, you may find it helpful to outline the details of the image in black yarn. This will help the image come together.