My First Sweater

The first sweater that I ever knit actually wasn't for me. It was for my baby girl (who is more toddler now than baby) because I wanted to start small. So, went off into the Internet to find the perfect pattern for my needs. 

My pattern requirements were simple:

• no seaming required - I was not an adept sewer when I started
• no working flat in fair isle - of the demonstrations and tutorials I've seen, it looks like a pain

After sifting through mounds of adorable toddler sweaters, I finally found this Icelandic set pattern on Istex's website under free patterns. It was perfect! So I set off to start knitting. 

Part I - The Body

The construction of the sweater is bottom up, so I started with the ribbing and worked upwards. This project was actually the first time I tried the German Twisted / Old Norwegian Cast On, and I must say that I like it a lot better than the standard cast on. It looks prettier and stretches more. Down side it takes just a tad bit more work than the standard, but not too much.

Moving onto the fun colorwork, since I had a circular needle approximately the same circumference as the body, there weren't any tension issues with long floats. Also, I've read / seen a few people suggesting to catch long floats every 5-7 stitches, but considering I was going to dress a wiggle baby with pointy fingers, I opted to catch my floats at most every 3 stitches for a smoother fabric on the inside.

Part II - The Sleeves

The first sleeve I knit was tricky. After knitting monster pants using magic loop, I figured that I would do the same with the sleeve. Once I had finished a few rounds of colorwork though, I realized this wasn't the method for me, fair isle or otherwise. To keep the right tension on my stitches (especially the ones held on the needle cord) was tricky and mostly consisted of guess work. Since I was incorporating stranded colorwork, I not only had to consider if the stitches on the cord were pulled too tight (making them difficult to slide back onto the needle), but on top of that if my floats were too short / long. Once I realized how bothersome magic loop and fair isle knitting were together, I switched immediately to DPNs. 

When starting the first sleeve, I knit it right side out. To prevent floats from getting short and puckering my work, I kept the previously used needle parallel to my working (spare) needle, and this worked pretty well. The sleeve was quickly finished. 

Sometime close to finishing the first sleeve, I came across some people knitting inside out. The needles are still held the same way, but with the cord (if knitting circular) or inactive needles (if using DPNs) kept between the hands and body instead of further away from the body. The reasoning behind this method is that when working in fair isle, the floats are forced to travel the longest way around the work, leaving longer, roomier floats, which are imperative to small circumference pieces like socks and sleeves. Another reason that I saw was that when working larger pieces like shawls and adult sweaters, the work naturally falls away from you so there is less adjusting needed as your work grows.

Looking to get better tension on my small sleeve, I decided to give it a try. I admit, this was very difficult to get my head around when I first started. I was still getting the hang of knitting fair isle and the new needle orientation kept snagging my working yarn. Finally, I got it and never again will I knit small fair isle pieces right side out. Inside out is definitely the way to go for me.

Notice the lack of puckering in the right sleeve?

Part III - The Yoke

Not sure about all the other knitters out there, but sometimes I get so excited about starting / moving on with a project that I don't fully read the pattern instructions. Such was the case with this sweater. My first mistake was mixing up the color chart; I missed one color repeat and the flea pattern is supposed to be staggered  in each round, but I knit one flea on top of the other. Not really huge mistakes when considering construction, and if nobody else ever saw the corresponding color chart they would be none the wiser, so oh well. Moving On.

Second mistake, which proved to be more grave and time consuming, I skipped over the instructions that said to bind off 6 stitches on each sleeve and on each side of the body to make the armholes. I realized that I had not bound off the sleeve stitches when knitting to join body and sleeves (I had too many stitches). So I ripped back and bound off the sleeves as instructed. Then proceeded to knit the yolk of the sweater only to find out on my next round of decreases that I still had way too many stitches. At this point I was unsure if I could finish the sweater. All I wanted to do was rustle it up and toss it into a burning pit. But in the end, reason prevailed. Ripped back. Bound off required stitches. Continued knitting the yoke. Finished the last bit of ribbing and bound off with standard, stretchy yarn over bind off.

Always read your pattern instructions. Had I continued like this, there would have been no armholes.

Part IV - The Finishing Touches

What takes me longest when working on projects? Probably the finishing. I'm not a huge fan of weaving in ends so I really dragged my feet on this one. I put it aside for at least a month before I seriously started to finish up. To seam the armholes together, I used mattress stitch. This little bit of seaming has actually given me new confidence in being able to seam larger pieces. Mattress stitch is just so easy! As for the loose ends wrapping around me like demon octopus tentacles, I hid a few of them in the armhole seam, and decided to run the rest along the inside of the sleeves and body where the sweater would get more wear (just like reinforcing socks). After a night of weaving and clipping, the sweater was finished! 

Finally finished product.

Excuse the sweater rolls. Baby girl just wanted to wiggle out of her stroller.