Sweater Drama

I've got a real problem with sizing lately. Between the debacle with the tunic for me and the sweater I'm going to tell you about today, you might start passing some judgement on my skills.

I recently finished one (of the two) holiday sweaters for my boys. Wait...what? The holidays were almost half a year ago. Yeah, well those cables took me longer than expected. Plus, I've been distracted by a lot of drawing in the past year. I'm sort of on a drawing bender (please refer to title of blog for explanation). I'm shooting for new sweaters for next holiday season :)

It looks like nothing is wrong from this angle. Just wait.

The pattern I chose to knit is Mariah by Janet Szabo. Ms. Szabo has a lot of designs in her collection (one more beautiful than the next btw) and so I'm assuming whatever went wrong was me, not her.

Anyway, one is finished, and it's not perfect. I realize now that I chose the wrong size for my boy (or maybe my gauge was off, but I actually don't think so). Even though I took the proper measurements, the whole thing is way too wide. If I knitted it longer in the arms and torso it probably would fit me!

Woo, this is one wide sweater.

The actual knitting part of the project was great. I loved the cables and as always, it was a thrill every time I saw them emerge from nothing. Knitting cables is magic. If you've never done it, you should. They are actually not as hard as you'd think, but you do need to keep your wits about you.

There were two things I did to make the cable knitting process as foolproof as possible on this project. First, I sliced apart the pdf cable instructions and created my own all-inclusive cable chart to work from. I couldn't handle remembering if I was supposed to be looking at chart A, B, C, etc. Also, I always kept a lifeline in my knitting...because unknitting cable stitches is one of Dante's circles of hell. (For those who don't know what a lifeline is, see this video. I actually use dental floss for this because it's easy to slip in and out without disturbing the texture of the yarn.)

Anyone with a pet bird will know who frayed these pages.

In my defense on the neckline, I did extend the saddles a couple inches on each side to try to minimize the neck a little, and it still turned out rather huge. This sweater is borderline Flashdance.

Want to know the craziest thing of all? My little one loves it. He wears it all the time, even to school. So, that is sort of a win because I've knit sweaters that fit him beautifully that he never requests to wear. I think part of his attraction might be the color. It is golden-yellow dreamy! The yarn is Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Tumeric. I never got tired of that color when I was knitting. Never!

Now, here's my dilemma. Do I charge ahead and make sweater #2 from the same pattern? Or do I try something else? I better make my mind up soon. The holidays are only 7 months away...

Cassandra

Art Smock

When my eyes met the words "art smock" on this year's school supply list for my little kindergartener,  I'm pretty sure I let out an audible squeal. You see, I've been itching to make the art smock pattern from Little Things to Sew by Liesl Gibson of Oliver & S for quite some time now.

Little boys don't take my photo shoots seriously.

This pattern is so darn cute and also super-practical. It does what it should, protects the clothes underneath. Some of my favorite features of this garment are: the elastic at the neck and the wrists keep your child's shirt tucked safely away from paint spatters and chalk smears, little front pockets to hold a crayon or two, and the length is great for catching spills that might fall on a little lap.

Another "action" shot!

I opted to do a velcro closure (a snap is also mentioned) so that my little guy can put the smock on himself and the teacher can easily help him fasten it closed without too much fuss.

The pattern was well written and logical. They have an advanced beginner rating on it and I think that is appropriate. One of the more interesting features of this pattern is that it employs french seaming. A french seam is a way of sewing your seam and finishing the raw edge on the wrong side at the same time. This project was a perfect application for that technique. I often forget about this method when sewing so it was a nice reminder.

All the fabric was purchased at Jo-Ann's on sale dirt cheap. This smock is going to be stained in no time so why spend a fortune right? I am so excited that my boy picked out the mushroom fabric all by himself from my stash. It gives me a warm fuzzy because it reminds me of my childhood in the 70's and now that aesthetic will be one of his memories too. I keep going back to the store and buying a yard here and there...inventing reasons why I need more. Alex thinks I should just give it up and buy a bolt!

Blurry images of a boy who can't stand still!

This was a great pattern, I highly recommend it. And there are some other really fun/practical patterns included in this book such as a bear puppet bath mitt, messenger bag and a cozy winter hood. If you have little ones in your life to sew for...check it out.

–Cassandra

Dragon-palooza!

Yeah.

The Morehouse Farm dragon scarf is really, really popular. It's so popular, in fact, that I'm making another one. This one is for a little girl and her dad asked me to make her one in pink. I said, "Barbie pink? Pepto-Bismol pink? Baby pink?"  I don't think he realized that there were options.

After looking around his office and finding an appropriate pink on a poster, the deal was struck. I would make a dragon scarf for his daughter but would make is shorter to better fit an almost-5-year-old's neck.

I stopped at my local yarn shop a couple of days later and found this amazing pink heather. It's not exactly what he'd asked for - the pink is a little darker - but the heather pattern in the yarn just makes me smile. I
couldn't imagine a little girl not liking it. Thanks to technology a decision was made on the spot. I snapped a photo of the yarn choices with my phone and emailed them directly to my friend so he could decide. He picked the heather (yea!) Two skeins later and I was on my way.

The pattern went really quickly since it's my third run through it in the last 9 months. This time, however, I needed to truncate the pattern so that the body of the dragon would be short enough for a little kid. I accomplished this by cutting short each sequence of spikes by one. So, for example, if the spike sequence was supposed to be repeated three times, I repeated it twice. If it was twice, I'd just do one. I was worried that it would distort the progression of the body (the scarf gets wider with every spike sequence) but it didn't. The finished product looks as perfect as the earlier versions, just about 7 inches shorter!

Because I shortened the pattern, I ended up with a ton of leftover yarn - probably an 1/8 of a skein. Plus I still had the second just-in-case skein. In a moment of shear madness, I decided to try to make a dragon hat to go with the scarf. I didn't have a pattern - just an idea of how it might work. So, I knit up the dragon tail as if I were going to make a scarf. At the end of spike #6, I took some double pointed needles and picked up a bunch of stitches down both sides of the tail. Then I started knitting in the round.

At first, I just knit. But after a few inches I decided that I didn't like the way the garter stitch looked so I ran a "lifeline" through the original picked-up stitches and ripped back. I also started checking patterns to see if I even had enough stitches to make a hat for a 5 year old. I'd kind of forgotten that the hat actually had to fit. I chose 77 stitches since that seemed to be pretty common for a small child's hat. This meant that I had to increase by 20 stitches - which I did as I started doing the body of the hat in moss stitch.

Moss stitch is awesome. It has a great texture and it's crazy easy to do. I like that the body of the hat kind of looks like dragon scales now. At Cassandra's suggestion, I did moss stitch for a little more than half the hat and then moved to rib stitch to finish the "rim" of the hat. My only concern now is that the hat may not be big enough. I've had multiple people tell me that it looks too small.... argh.  We'll see.

There's still a lot of yarn left. I'm thinking she may need some mittens to go with the set now. ;)  I'll keep y'all posted.

- Alex