Time Out!

A knit night friend is adopting a little girl who is 18 months old.  Such exciting times!  The baby shower was Saturday and I thought I'd not be able to attend as I had a sweater class to teach.   I sent in my RSVP as a maybe, hoping I'd be able to go anyway. 

When the class hadn't formed as of Thursday, it was time to start knitting for that baby shower! 

I bought the yarn, Anzula For Better or Worsted with a kid's sweater in mind as there are several in the chute, so to speak.  (Kids and sweaters as a matter of fact.)  It's a superwash merino blended with a little cashmere and nylon, all pulled together in a tight twist.  It's lovely stuff. (Sorry, non-Ravelers.  All the links are Ravelry today.  Just sose ya know.)

This sweater, A Pod of Cetaceans, has been on my favorite list for awhile.  You know when things work?

As of Saturday morning, I had gotten this far.  I'd have finished the darned thing if I hadn't had to rip back the body and reknit from the ribbing to the armpits due to fussiness over mixing the two balls of yarn.  Darned kettle dyed stuff -- even within dyelots, mix your balls of yarn.  How many times have I told customers this?  Every time I sell them kettle dyed yarn .. probably hundreds of times.  At least.  Did I do it myself?  No.  Did I pay for it?  Yes. 

Anyhoo... I took the sweater to the shower like this and then brought it home again.  Classy.

Come Sunday morning?  Time to cut this bad boy.

I used Eunny Jang's crocheted steek method, where you crochet a stabilizing chain up the sweater on either side of the stitch you plan to cut.  By the way, I learned, at Vogue Knitting Live, that Alice Starmore coined the word 'steek', which is Gaelic for 'gate', in an article she wrote about Fair Isle knitting in the '80's.  Like the 1980's.  I always thought it was some old Norwegian name for the process.  The stitches were always called 'cutting up stitches' before.  Now we've kind of verbed the noun, but the way to refer to the process is apparently to talk about cutting a steek or gate, rather than steeking (or gating).  A little aside there.

I turned the sweater inside out, so the bars I want to cut would be more prominent and I snipped away.  This is a pretty good view of the steek stitches, which were a knit, a purl, 8 knits, a purl and a knit.  Plenty to fold over for the placket.

All done.

This steek was a little dicier than usual for two reasons:  not so much colorwork where you kind of end up weaving the yarn together on the back of the sweater so it really holds together;  and superwash wool is slippery and doesn't want to hold together anyway.  All that stockinette in the body tends to want to unravel at the steek.  It's all fine now that the placket is tacked down good and tight.

All that was left to do was pick up and knit button bands and weave in the ends.  When the light's better later this morning, I'll snap a few finished product pictures.  

This is a sweater I'd knit again.  Quick and fun and very cute.

Which is a good thing, because there are three more little ones who need sweaters before the end of October.  

Gisela is practically done.  All but side seams and front plackets.  I'm afraid to try her on...  You knew that was going to happen.  I'm sure if she sits in a bag while I knit sweaters for these little ones, she'll be ready to behave when I take her out to work on her again.  

Next up, a BSJ out of handspun for another newly-adopted 18 month old.  Rachel inspired me.

Comments

[Mindy]

I think I held my breath watching the steaking. I love love love the sweater.. and it will work for my daughter and subsequent boy/girl someday. Thank you so much!