This post was written on September 9, 2020 as I’d finished the project by then but couldn’t gift it because.. I had to wait for the baby. It’s since been gifted and therefore this post can go live.
Friends of mine are having a baby in December (turns out it was January), so I wanted to make some things. This is the first in what might just become a series. Baby things need very little yarn and fabric because they are so small, so that is quite handy.
I decided that I wanted to knit some sort of sweater, so off to Ravelry I went. The pattern that I went with is called Teddy Bear Sweater by Marta Porcel. The yarn was Zeeman Sophia in the Antra colourway. I used 62 grams of it to finish this little sweater. It was quite a quick knit too, started at 9:30 and finished all the knitting at 4:00. Then I assembled it the next day and embroidered the face onto the front. I’m debating whether it will actually fit because I have 0 sense of how big babies are and the sleeves look quite tight. If it doesn’t fit, that would be a little sad. However, I still enjoyed myself creating it which I think is an important aspect.
Baby stuff part 1 (wrong, seems it’s part 4), completed!
So I told you a little about Nelly in a previous post (here), but never showed you what I used the original Nelly for. Nelly is reason that I discovered Pattydoo patterns. I found the assymmetry in the sweater so much fun, that I wanted to have it. I apparently bought it in December 2019, printed it, stuck it together and then forgot about it. When rummaging around the sewing room the other week, I found the box of leftover bits of sweater fabric that I still had. This included a small bit of Flamingo and a bit of grey from this sweater. These two fabrics together were precisely enough to make the body and sleeves of the sweater. The neck was about half as tall as it was supposed to be, due to the fact that I didn’t have more fabric.
Now, you might notice that there are a few differences between my sweater and the original. For one, I use only two fabric while there are three in the pattern – I didn’t have a third coordinating fabric, so problem solved by taping two pattern pieces together. Its also a mirror image of the original, that’s because I put the pieces (single layer) on the back of my grey fabric. I was EXTREMELY lucky that I figured out that I had them on the front of the flamingoes before cutting the fabric, and could turn them around. This project would have been a disaster otherwise. The cuffs are also a little shorter, made from some grey jersey in the hoard, mainly because it was already a little large so I didn’t need more length. And lastly, it’s more fitted through the armholes, since I took in the armhole and a bit of the side and sleeve by 3 cm at the widest point. It just looked too baggy. I think it should’ve cut a size smaller.
However, I am happy with it. Fabrics from my stash, nearly using it all up so it’s effectively a nearly free second project, especially as I’m planning on using the pattern more than once. It has the option to make a sweater with a kangaroo pocket or a hood too. I have found that the one pocket is not deep enough for my phone if I bend over, so that might be something to fix in another version.
Dressing head to toe in red with white dots is going to be a staple around here.
So I was on the market two weeks ago, and saw a sign saying 2€/m on a bolt of fabric. The fabric had a white fluffy back and the front was red with white-ish dots. The market lady explained that some of the dots had red dye running in, so that’s why it was so cheap. I decided that I didn’t care too much and got myself two yards. Two laundry cycles and several bright red colour catchers later and I got to work. I’d decided that I wanted to make a sweater, so I layed out my Frankensteined pattern and found I had a lot left. Then I decided that I would try to see if I could also get some pants out of the fabric and create the ultimate stay-at-home-outfit.
Head to Toad
Three hours later I had figured out a way to get all my pattern pieces bar one neatly onto the fabric. The patterns included pattern 44 from Simplicity Naaimode 24, aka Simplicity 1165, which I cannot figure out if I ever made before but I had it drawn out in my pattern stash. I excluded the waistband for that one. For the sweater, the shortened version of Lekala 4742 (flamingo-style here) and the hood from the Nelly sweater by Pattydoo. Only the hood-front needed to be pieced. I approached it in a similar manner as when I pieced the hood for the dinosaur coat. After finishing the pants, I learned that there was excess at the bottom and I might have been able to fit all the pieces on normally if I’d shortened the legs by 4 cm, ah well, live and learn.
Anyway, the first time I made Lekala 4742, here, the hood could fit at least two of my head in it. I didn’t feel like repatterning the entire thing so I stole the hood from a sweater I had been working on before; Nelly. I put the Nelly neckline on the Lekala pattern and adjusted it that way. This worked out wonderfully. Originally, the Nelly hood is supposed to have a lining, but I liked the fluffy white of mine so I just made a facing. I took the sweater in along the sides. And to combat hemming, I added a cuff to the arms and the bottom.
Just pants
Then onto the pants, just sewed them up as I would normally. Then put them on and could fit a second human in the back. So I resewed the crotch seam, see the red line in my wonderful paint image for some potential clarification (?). In total, I took out 8 cm on either side of the center back. Then I added a waistband of the same cuff material as the sweater, threaded some elastic through it, hemmed the legs and called it a day.
I titled this post Head to Toad, that’s because I had planned to have this thing done for halloween and just be a mushroom for the day. That clearly failed as I finished it exactly a week later. However, when I was telling my colleagues about the plan, and showed them the mostly finished sweater, one told me I looked like Toad – now, this is not completely correct. The other one said I would be Head to Toe(d) in this mushroom suit. I thought the pun was too brilliant to pass up, so Head to Toad it is! I’ve been wearing the finished thing for the past 2 hours now, and I love it. I shall be a mushroom for many weekend days to come!
After two years, there will finally be more plaid clashing in my wardrobe!
My Ravelry notes say that I started this project on July 16, 2018 *gulp*. Whoops, that was quite a while ago. There were lots of delays along the way. Some had to do with my arm injury that was preventing me from knitting as much as I liked. Others were because of pure laziness, to be honest. On to the story..
Front
Back
So I used another free pattern from Ravelry: Seattle by Leah Swindon. From reading my Ravelry notes, I didn’t completely follow the pattern. I don’t remember much because the knitting was completed a good long while ago. I do remember that I made a significant colour change and that was too also add the yellow horizontal stripe along the body and not just the sleeves. I apparently stopped knitting some time between 2018 and May 2019 when I noted something about restarting the sleeves. Then the project remained in a bin for about another year. You see, with adding in those yellow stripes, it meant that I had so many ends to bind off. I don’t like binding off ends, so I procrastinated for a very long while.
When my mom came to visit, I showed her this knitting project and a few others that are also still languishing in bags, boxes or bins. She said that she would be willing to bind off the ends if I put the sweater together. So I took that challenge and sewed the thing together, since all the pieces had been completed ages ago already. She then set to binding it all off and I got my finished sweater on August 29, 2020, over two years since starting the project. Not going to lie, I’m very happy that it now gets to take up space in my closet and no longer in my unfinished projects pile.
Inside out
Inside out
I don’t own that many plaid that can fill the sweater role. So I’m very happy to add this to my wardrobe and see if I can plaid clash some more in my life. I like the spiral on the front and that was fun to knit. Trying to figure out how to get the yellow across the spiral wasn’t the easiest, but I think it worked out. This sweater is also remarkably warm, so it’s probably going to be in use this fall/winter. I’m looking forward to it!
Making a cropped snow white sweater to go with my new replacement red pants or suspenders.
After finishing the replacement pants, I needed something to wear with it. Since it’s not generally summer anymore, I figured that if I wanted to continue to wear it, I’d need some sort of sweater. So I hatched an abbreviated plan…
The plan involved making a sweater that was shorter than all my other sweaters. One that wouldn’t bunch under my dungarees. A secondary purpose would be that I could also wear this sweater with suspenders, hopefully. While suspenders are awesome, sometimes wearing them over clothes is difficult because the item is too long. Then you get a lot of bunching and other less flattering situations. So I bought some nice and thick white yarn, and located an interesting pattern on Ravelry.
I settled on the 157-29 Virginia by DROPS design, and then heavily modified it. My gauge was off and I knew that I have no love for the enormously long armholes that DROPS seems to have, so I recalculated everything from the neckline down. I did keep the A.1 pattern intact as the raglan because that was the defining feature of this sweater and why I chose it in the first place. Once I reached the point where I needed to split for the arms, I decided that I wanted to continue some form of the A.1 pattern in the sleeves as well as the body. In the end I made sure to have two instead of three columns in the body and one in the sleeves.
The sleeves were the first to be completed as I wanted to make sure I had enough yarn to finish them. Then I continues with the body, in contrast to the pattern I only decreased a little but not increased. Then it came time to start the hem and I remembered a frogged project that had a split hem. So I put on a pair of my favourite suspender-requiring pants and determined where the splits were supposed to be. Two in the front and one in center back. By some miracle I managed to have numbers of stitches for all three of the sections that allowed me to do 2×2 rib with 3 stitches of knit at both ends.
I’m very happy with the way this turned out. I’ve worn it with both the red pants and suspender pants and it does the job I want it to do. It’s so nice and cozy and warm. Even if it is white and I did manage to pull a thread by getting stuck on something in my house at one point (luckily that was easily fixed). I haven’t yet managed to get spaghetti sauce or something else horribly staining on it yet, so that’s an achievement!
After finishing the Snow Season sweater, I immediately cast on the same sweater (Mud Season by Elizabeth Smith) in grey. The plan was to create a sweater with holes in a wrap around pattern and fix the fit issue of the Snow Season.
I started out by plotting my holes in an excel sheet to figure out where I wanted them to be and how far apart they needed to go. Then I got on with the knitting. I got stuck just below the bottom holes on the front because I wasn’t sure how long the sweater needed to be and was too lazy to put it on and see how long it already was. It took me a few weeks to get myself back into action and determine that it was already long enough and just needed ribbing. I chose 1×1 twisted knits rib for the bottom and finished my skein with that.
The neckline is improvised, it’s a collar with 1×1 twisted knits rib with short rows to fill out the neckline. When I started on the sleeves, I decided they needed a spiral holes pattern too. It gave knitting the sleeves a little more interest and kept me motivated. I did have to rip out a quarter of a sleeve when I figured out that I’d miscounted at some point. However, that didn’t dampen my spirits since I was in the train (with the cactus facemask) and felt it was a good use of my time.
I enjoy wearing this sweater. Even if the holes are not very obvious from any form of distance, I know that they are there and that is the most important part. What I didn’t take into account when making all the holes, was that there would be one on each sleeve that would fall DIRECTLY on my elbow. When I first put my elbow down on the table and it was, cold, I was very shocked. Still, it doesn’t bother me really and I think it’s quite funny even. I look forward to wearing this one more often.
While Spring has officially started a few days ago, I got the itch to do something with snow at the beginning of March. This paved the way for the Snow Season sweater.
It started a while ago when I’d purchased the yarn for the Pocket Coatigan. I got some more in different colourways; 3 balls of blue and 2 of white. I’d thought about making some sort of dual coloured sweater. The exact plan was not decided. So I went off to scour Ravelry some more. I stumbled across a sweater called Scatter by Þórunn Vilmarsdóttir. While I liked the idea of a gradation in my sweater, I didn’t exactly like the execution. So I continued to search for a raglan base in the correct gauge, which I found in Mud Season by Elizabeth Smith.
The cast on was on March 2 (this is the project description), and this was a very quick knit with size 5.5 mm needles and quite thick yarn. Just below the division for the arms, I started incorporating some white yarn. There was some vague rhyme and reason to the design but the plan was to make it look random. At some point I decided to reverse back to blue and did the whole snow storm again. For the arms, I wanted to end those with the white too, so I snowed the bottom. Once it was finished, I wore it for a day and the sleeves shrunk by at least 5 cm. So I took out the ribbing, added more white and then redid the ribbing. I’d already taken pictures, so just imagine more white at the bottom of the sleeves and it’ll be fine. Funnily enough, the length as I wear it is now exactly the same as in the pictures. It’s just that it doesn’t migrate to above my wrist when worn for some time.
So far it’s nice to wear. I like the little holes and it just makes me happy. Once I finished the original, I cast on the same pattern again. Now in grey. I hope to incorporate some of the changes that came out of the first version and then we’ll see if I can get this one finished in less than two weeks. With the travel time to work reduced to zero, there may be some options..
Recently, I discovered that some of my all time favourite yarns was brought back into production. The Tweed yarn by Zeeman had returned! I’ve used it in the past for classics such as the leaves sweater, the striped sweater, the eighties revival sweater and the eyelet sweater. Once I brought back a bunch of yarn in three different colours, I discovered that the yardage per 100 grams was less than the original. I also determined that the red yarn I bought was exactly the same the eyelet sweater…
Once I’d discovered this, I still set out knitting a red top. The first try was using a pattern called Gardner by Amanda Keep Williams. While I did like the idea of this sweater, I got about halfway when I decided that I didn’t like it nearly enough. I don’t tend to wear cropped anything, so it was a bad choice to start with. So I frogged the whole thing and set out on search for another pattern. I ended up with the pocket coatigan by Originally Lovely, a free pattern available on their site.
According to my Ravelry notes, I set out knitting the coatigan on the 25th of January. That means it’s taken me a little over a month to finish. Quite decent if I say so myself. The knitting is straightforward. I made a few small changes along the way. There were a few extra decreases in the sides to attempt some shaping (not sure if that helped at all), and somehow my stitch count at the neck edge was off. I’m unsure how it’s possible to knit the size S with the stitch counts they give, because they don’t add up according to my math, but perhaps I’m wrong. So I winged the neckline a little.
I haven’t worn it out yet, nor have I done any blocking (not that I’m planning on doing that anyway), so I’m unsure how this will hold up. The sleeves are a little long, but that’s because this yarn tends to shrink on me lengthwise, which means that practically none of my Tweed sweaters have arms that are over bracelet length. It does have pockets, which admittedly were the main attraction for me. Now I just need to see if I will voluntary pick a sweater from my cupboard that doesn’t closes, if not, I may still add some form of closure to make it more wearable. But yay! I finished a thing!
I’ve developed this strange interest in flamingos recently. While I abhor pink, I have a weird fascination with the feathered creatures. What doesn’t help is that they look so funny in cartoon form and that their legs bend the wrong way. So when I saw a fabric at the market that was light blue with grey flamingos on it, I could not resist.
The fabric was a sweatshirt type fabric with a weirdly brushed inside. I decided to make a top. The end result is a pattern hack of Lekala 4742 (made before here Ochre Obsession) and Papavero pattern 0712. I did want the pockets from the Lekala, but the hood was overly large and I liked the big funnel type collar on the Papavero one. The Lekala pattern was shortened between the bust and the pocket opening by 9 cm or so since I also wanted to add a contrast band. I also increased the sleeve width and side width as I had to insert a sleeve gusset in the previous version. This fabric turned out to be a lot stretchier so all those increases were taken out during sewing again. The new collar fit without changing anything, although I did decide to use a single layer and just double fold the edge instead of doing a double layer collar.
Sewing went pretty quickly and I like the look of this thing. I will have to see if the pockets hold up and whether stitching with a straight stitch turns out to be smart in the end. If I get a lot of thread breakage, I know it wasn’t. For now, the weather turned quite warm, but perhaps it will cool down and I can wear it soon.
So I discovered that I apparently never posted by sweater with leather that I had mentioned during some MMM post this year. It’s a sweater with an asymmetric zipper that is based on sweaters like in these pins (one and two). I’d wanted something like it for a while, but I think I was scared to cut into it. I believe I based it on the garden party dress top, but it was February when I finished it, so I cannot remember much.
I do know that I got the zipper from my stash where it had been for years. I think I improvised the hood from looking at other pins, but I’m not sure again. I did add some leather bits to give it some more almost nautical look? There’s a bit on the hem, there are triangles at the zipper openings, there’s a bit on the zipper pull and I wrapped some around the hood-cord-ends. I’ve worn it a lot, it’s very comfortable and since its grey, it’ll go with anything. Here’s some action shots from where I wore it at a roller derby game.
That’s all there is too say about it really, since I don’t remember much. However, this way I can link to it if I need to, or when I want to rediscover the pins etc. So I guess you guys are the victims of my memory yet again.
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