Friday, October 10, 2008

My first sweater

I've been drooling over sweater patterns for years, but it has taken me a long time to screw up the courage to actually attempt one. When I finally did, I was cautious and decided that a baby sweater would probably be a smart and manageable first project. This was especially daunting as it would be the first big project I would start without my knitting coach, Lana. Eventually (with some online help from Lana) I settled on this simple pattern that is knit in one piece from the top down. As a bonus, it also served as my intro to lacework. As with every new project, it started with the best of intentions and lots of excitement, but because of a pattern error I ended up doing and undoing the sleeve 6 times (yes....SIX). To say that was frustrating does not give the statement enough color. It also slowed me down considerably and made me very unenthused about the project for a good three months.
Last night I finally blocked it and sewed on the little red buttons. It's done! I'm glad I stuck with it, because it's quite lovely. I used a cotton/merino wool blend on a large needle so it's super soft and drapey. Hopefully the recipient and her parents think it's nice, too.
Now that I look at it, the arms look a little long, but then, what do I know about baby clothes?

NB: I was asked where the pattern came from. The good news: it was free from Knitwits Heaven. There were several errors discovered earlier and they had published corrections in blue but - the bad news - the last correction was dated September 2007. Beware, the sleeve error still exists on row 32, when you start the sleeve.

4 comments:

Lana said...

Congratulations, MooCow! It looks beautiful! Kudos to you for sticking it out. When are you giving it to the lucky baby?

MooCow said...

mailed it off yesterday!

Anonymous said...

Just myself working on a baby sweater that's tummy short with 3/4 sleeves. Seems to be the fashion lately. Your's looks lovely, care to share where to get the pattern?

MooCow said...

Oh yes, I did forget to link to the pattern...I'll put it up. There is an error in the first sleeve - the stitch count does not make sense, but I ended up reading forward and making up my own solution. Let me know if you decide to do the sweater and need sleeve help!