A coworker gave birth in July and I only recently realized I never knit her anything fabulous for her new little bundle. I immediately began searching for something to cast on and finish, preferably before said precious bundle was off to high school.
After much perusing of the free baby cardigan sweaters available on ravelry.com I elected to knit “Baby Sophisticate” (ravel it) by Linden Heflin. Still trying to use up my stash of woolease and having a coworker who was not partial to any particular color I selected a nice light grey. Upon further knitting I realized that my partial ball would not be enough. Thusly, I ripped back several inches and added darker grey stripes to help carry the light grey through the end of the pattern.
Shiny buttons to complement the grey.
The collar gave me a bit of trouble because I did not slip the first stitch of each row because of the added darker grey so when picking up the stitches it wasn’t easy to discern what stitch to pick up. I would have liked the pattern to indicate how many stitches to pick up but since the pattern has you knit so many inches rather than rows I can understand why the designer would not want to indicate how many stitches to pick up. I did not pick up an even number of stitches on each side of the collar and while it doesn’t affect the pattern I was frustrated by it. I also had some trouble hiding the wrap and twists, but I’m sure it’s my own fault as I did not look up how to wrap and twist and am pretty sure I didn’t do it right.
Finished! Imagine how sophisticated he will look in this, especially if we sew leather patches on the elbows, maybe give him a little bubble pipe and some reading glasses.
In the end the sweater is quite nice. I’ve been re-reading Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitters Almanac. I really enjoy her style of writing and I think it’s influenced the tone of my writing today for the better. Up next time, my trip to Stitches West and some complaining about not being allowed to take pictures there.
autumnblossomknits 