everything in its right place

I love this new sweater.

I’m calling it done even though it’s not quite. I have one underarm to graft and a few ends to weave in and then blocking.  I made it lickety-split. I swatched then cast on on Sunday afternoon.

Kid sweaters usually come together lickety-split; that’s probably why I knit so many of them.

This sweater doesn’t belong to me. I made it for a class I’m teaching at my LYS (“Custom-sized Pullover for your Kid” is the name of the class). The striped raglan will live at Gate City Yarns for a while, but maybe if I make them another sample, they’ll give this one back to me after a while.

The yarn is O-Wool Balance (organic, how fancy) and it was really, really nice to work with. I am in spazzy love with it. The blend is 50 Merino/ 50 Cotton and it has all this lovely tweediness that I think gives the sweater such charachter.

Can you guess the pattern? Of course, it’s EZ, but I used a Spun-Out design called A Family of Raglans (SO45/WG69 on Rav). I have Zimmermann raglan patterns in the books, but this – a single page leaflet available for $1 from Schoolhouse Press – is a pattern chock full of new-to-me information. Worth $1? Damn straight.

baby got back

There are short rows hidden in there to make the back longer than the front. I’m terrible at knitting short rows, and if I showed you a better picture you might see how unsightly they are on the yoke.  This bothers me only slightly, thank goodness, because what’s really important here is that it’s a highly serviceable sweater.

Cute, no?

Some basic notes on the design:

• I used a smaller needle on 100% of the stitches for the edges.  It really doesn’t get any easier than that.
• The decreases at the raglan lines were suggested in the pattern: Dec rnd: K2tog, p1, ssk. Plain rnd: knit. I’d never used it before and I like it a lot.
• Um, that’s it. It was a really easy sweater.

Now all that’s left is that other underarm, and blocking!  And then I say goodbye to this sweet striped raglan for a long, long time…