Saturday, February 04, 2006

Plan B


Hello! How are you? Did you have a nice week? Whew, has it been nutty around here. I've been meaning to get on and blog, and by the time I click on the page, I can't seem to think about what I was going to write about. Ole thinker's just been plumb tired.

I have been knitting a bit this week, at night. Got this little green sweater done in a few nights, as a shower gift for a friend at school. She's having a little boy in April. The color is actually a bit lighter (TLC Essentials in Light Sage) but I needed to shut the flash off in order to get the stitch definition. It's shown next to the pattern booklet. The original pattern has a slip stitched design up at the yoke, but the lovely thing about this pattern, is it's adaptability. I just did a garter stitch design instead, and wallah. Much more masculine. This sweater pattern was the first non-scarf thing I ever created, and I've re-knit it so many more times since then. The great thing is you can go down a few needle sizes, use lighter weight yarn, and get a newborn size, or go up with bigger yarn, and get a larger size. (The pattern creates a size 6mo.) You can knit the yolk one color, and the body a different, and I even have a modification to add a hood. Just lovely. If I was smarter, I would've started with this pattern to begin with.



But no, I found a cute little patten on the net, for a nice boy sweater using DK yarn which I happened to have in a lovely butter yellow color and had at it. I knit and knit and knit, on tiny size 5 needles, and then I got to this point where you seam it up and add the neck and button band. And it has issues. The arms are too short (I did the 9 mo size). The body won't meet in the front, even with the button band. And it's just so.. boxy. I was so not impressed. It sat in my knitting basket for 3 days while I worked on my MIL's prayer shawl (I have 20 inches.. so, about 40 more to go, and she's back in the hospital so I feel a pressing need to get this finished, although as of today she is on the upswing) and I just made myself crazy about what to do. Do I finish it, and give it anyhow? Would I want a sweater that ugly for my baby? And I decided that I'll unravel it and use the yarn for something else, and proceed to start the Little Lamb (name of the pattern in the Leisure Arts booklet). And all I could think of as I knit that little gem up (it's such a quick and lovely knit).. was that I should've just stuck with a good thing when I had it. But every once in a while one of the free net patterns I find works up lovely as well, and you don't know until you try it. This one will head to the recycle bin.

4 comments:

Katherine said...

I love the green sweater! Congrats on your first garment! Wooohoo!

I'm about to step into baby-sweater knitting too... it's a little scary, but you've inspired me.

onescrappychick said...

Oh, this wasn't my first garment..the first one I ever did was using that same little pattern. I was scared to death, but it's so stinking easy..and they are small. So it's almost like instant gratification.

Anonymous said...

The green sweater is gorgeous. Great job Beth.

@wesome@bby said...

I SO laughed out loud about the "would i want my kid to have somethign as ugly as this sweater". It's not ugly at all, and anyone would love to have a handmade gift from you. you are entirely too hard on yourself, ms. perfection!