Spring Toddler Sweater

Since it is not quite spring here and is in fact snowing outside right row I thought I'd better post something bright and flowery. I was requested to make a sweater for a 2-year-old. It needed to be lime green with pink and yellow flowers. I found a basic bottom-up pullover pattern called Cheeky. Then I found a flower motif in one of my knitting books to go around the bottom and a large flower to go in the middle of the front. I used Cascade 220 superwash yarn so that washing and drying would be super easy- just throw it in the washing machine and dryer. The sweater is knit entirely in the round without any seeming. Once the bottom of the sweater and the two sleeves are made, all of the stitches are brought together to make a large loop and then the top is decreased until you get to the neck.

I did not want to carry the strands of pink and yellow yarn around the body of the sweater which meant that there were about 50 million yarn ends to weave in when I was done.

 

But I think it was worth it since I really like how the flowers turned out.

 

After a nice wash and dry it came together pretty well, I think. Hopefully the new owner will agree. :)

It's D-O-N-E Done!

You saw the beginning of the sweater last post, but guess what? It's done! :) When I left off last time I had the back done and part of the front. Once the front was done, I used some scrap yarn to temporarily attach them so that I could try it on.

Seemed ok at this point, so I kept going with the sleeves.

Once all the pieces were done, it was time to start putting it together. The pattern has you use a 3 needle cast off to bind of the live stitches across both shoulders. Then you pick up all the stitches around the neck and start knitting the cowl. At this point everything was fine and I was ready to add the sleeves.

I used a stitch called the mattress stitch to attach the sleeves and also to seem from the wrist down to the waist. At this point everything still seemed fine. The pieces had all been blocked individually which meant that they were stretched out. Since this is a superwash yarn, the solution to the stretching is to put it through a cycle in the washer and dryer.

It came out of the dryer looking awesome except for one thing. The neck didn't stand up anymore. I took it on a ski trip over the weekend but the neck drove me crazy, and was entirely flat by the end of the trip. The neck was then taken apart and instead of trying to re-do it I decided to make a different neck.

I must have knit a new neck and ripped it out again at least 4 times. Finally I was happy with it, but when I tried it on

It didn't fit over my head.

I took out the last row and bound off again keeping the stitches as loose as I could.

Voila! It is so soft and cozy and I see many more sweaters in my knitting future.