Gina Rae Mitchell

I am making baby sweater progress.

However, the start has been a struggle. I haven’t knit much in quite a while, but a new baby is joining the family soon, so suddenly I am quite inspired.

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I decided on a pattern. Although I love knitting Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Baby Surprise Jacket, it just wasn’t calling to me like the Baby Sophisticate.

Baby and Child Sophisticate by Linden Down

 

There is a free version available, but since I plan to make a matching sweater for the new one’s toddler brother, I opted for the paid version. I am also a believer in paying the designer for their hard work. I have done some knitwear designing. It takes hours and hours of work to design, edit, photograph, and publish a simple pattern. Why should the designer then give you the pattern for free? Without designer permission, pattern sharing is theft. 

Ok, I’m stepping off my soapbox now.

Back to my baby sweater progress story.

I dug through my stash and pulled out the perfect yarn. It needed to be soft, squishy, and washable. I found that in Sprightly Yarns acrylic worsted. I purchased several skeins of this particular yarn from a Craftsy sale a while back. Ok, a really long while ago. But, that’s what stash is for…having yarn on hand when inspiration strikes. When you live as far from town as I do, a healthy stash is a necessity.

Next, I needed to find needles. Now, I own so many needle sets it’s ridiculous that I could not locate any size eight circulars. I dug around until I found a pair, not my favorite brand, but they worked.

I always preached to my students, take the time to knit a gauge swatch. Did I follow my own advice? Nope, I gambled and jumped right in. I don’t do this blindly. Whenever possible, I use a section of the actual project to measure the gauge. If you guess correctly, you are ahead of the game. If not, you know what comes next right? You have to frog it, but you don’t get to complain because you chose to gamble.

Frog it = Rip it, Rip it. Gotta love knitter humor!

I found that my gauge was indeed off. I needed to go down a needle size. At one time, I knew my gauge tended to run that way, but I didn’t trust myself after my long break from knitting.

Off I went to find a size seven needle and naturally it was in the drawer in my favorite needle set. It should have been a sign when I was searching for the size eight to think about my gauge a bit more. I ripped the first work out and happily started over.

After knitting a few rows, I realized something just felt off. This feeling is a sure sign my brain is trying to tell me to stop and look at my work carefully. Sigh, I was doing my increase wrong which created a yarn-over hole where I didn’t want one. I ripped it out again, but luckily I wasn’t too far along before I caught it.

There is a saying amongst my knitter friends that you should use this rule to decide whether to rip out and correct a mistake:

If you can’t see it while riding by on a galloping horse…leave it!

Most of the time that is easier said than done for me. Once I know I made a mistake, it bothers me until I fix it.

So now I am cruising along, and there is actual baby sweater progress. It’s starting to take shape. I have the yoke done and am getting ready to split for the body. The body should progress quickly as the pattern calls for several inches of stockinette stitch. Then it’s time for itty bitty baby sweater sleeves.

I haven’t picked out buttons yet. Button shopping is always a fun part of making a baby sweater. There are lots of cute button options available for baby sweaters today.

That’s it for the baby sweater progress report. Look for another update soon. You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook for quick snippets of sweater progress.

I’m off now to race that baby to the finish line.

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 You can find more of my fiber art and craft related posts here.

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