Sunday, January 27, 2008

I Knit, I Promise, I Still Knit (just not as much as I would like)

So I finally finished Little Man's sweater. I started it back in September! It should NOT have taken me so long, but between the pregnancy tiredness, the pregnancy nausea and general life crap, it took me FOREVER to knit. Part of the problem was that I have been barely knitting at all these days. Part of the problem was that I was kind of making up the pattern. I wanted to make John (yes, that's his name. I'm tired of calling him Little Man all the time) a Placket-Neck Pullover from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, but none of the affordable yarns I liked fit the gauge. So I decided to make a Wonderful Wallaby with a placket neck and no pocket. So I winged the pattern using info from both the Wonderful Wallaby and the Placket-Neck Pullover. Because I was not feeling fearless, the merging of two quickknits turned into one not-very-quick knit. Oh well. The finished sweater is made from Caron's Simply Soft Tweed. It only took a little over 2 skeins. The overall size turned out perfectly. I measured one of John's shirts to help decide length up to armpit and length of sleeves. This worked great. The problem I have with the "finished" sweater is the neck. It's just too wide. I think I needed to do more decreases in the sleeve stitches. The front and back of the neck is a fine width, but the sleeve portions (the sides) of the neck are much too wide. The sweater looks OK over a collared shirt, but is still a bit funky in the neck fit. I think I might do a little froggin and try to add some extra decreases on the sleeve stitches near the neck and see if that helps. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Anyway, despite my not 100% satisfaction, I am excited to maybe be finished with this project. I've since started on a new baby bonnet to give as a gift. I needed to 1)follow a simple pattern, 2)try something new and 3)do a short project that used stash yarn. Anyway, more on that when it is finished. Without further ado, here is John in his finished (maybe) Placket-Neck, Pocketless Wallaby.

Caught in midspeech.
In this picture, you can see how the too wide neck makes the sweater dip in the back.
I got these cute buttons at JoAnn's.
Can you tell how wide the sides of the neck are?
Not a good pic of the sweater, but doesn't John look adorable.
Bonus shot of Zoe and Pauli watching us go out to play in the snow.
My little guy in the snow. Even though I've knit him a ton of hats, he insists on wearing this one that I bought myself before I started knitting. Oh well.


6 comments:

sophanne said...

As someone who was a kid once, I can appreciate a plenty wide neck on a sweater. Don't you remember HATING how tight those necks pulled on your head. I think it's adorable. I thought of you on Friday.

Lydee said...

I really like John's sweater. I think it looks nice on him, snuggly and warm. You did a good job.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I am impressed!

Debra said...

You cracked me up with the unveiling of "little mans" name. So funny. Thanks for that.

Love the sweater. I know how hard it feels to keep working on something you are sort of 'winging' but it looks great!!

Nice job.

nova said...

This little guy is so handsome in his new mama-made sweater!

Anonymous said...

Oh, that last photo made me smile. What a cutie!!