Lots and lots of stockinette stitch on itty bitty needles. Zephyr with US #0 (2mm).
Category: Knit Page 4 of 88
This sweater was finished back in early July but sat around waiting for me to sew on the buttons. Yeah. It’s been that crazy around here.
I adapted the Little Hearts baby sweater with my own chart of little red hippo faces *. Why? This is for the baby of my teammate who named our work project RedHyppo (internal acryonym variant) so I thought it would be appropriate to have a red hippo theme baby item. (Partial red hippo is also in progress — still needs stuffing.)
Project finally “launched” last week, hence the frenzy of blog posts and FOs around here. But we are knee deep in the mop up so things here might slow again.
* Hippo face chart is available on my Ravelry project page for this sweater.
Don’t you just love those stripes???? The stripes were in the dyed into the fiber. All I did was split it in half lengthwise and spun the yarn as a 2 ply. You can see the yarn in progress in my previous post, Miracle Fabric. Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn about one color repeat short. I had to finish it off with some Cascade 220 Superwash. It’s slightly denser than my handspun but it worked. Now, I just need to add buttons.
This was such a quick and fun knit. Much more fun than the first time around. Why? Minimal ends to weave in. Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes the first time around either. I zipped along on the sweater before I realized that I forgot to increase for the cuff fullness. Riiiiip.
To ensure I don’t make this mistake again, I decided to write out line by line instructions for myself. After a bit, I wanted stitch counts. So, I stopped once again and built a spreadsheet that calculated my line by line and my ending stitch count by row. Yes, I’m a geek. Anyway, I think it took me longer to build the spreadsheet than it did for me to knit the darn thing. It helped that I took the train into the city to have a tea and chat session with Penny.
Stats:
- Yarn: Handspun and Cascade 220
- Needles: US #4 (3.5 mm) 32″ or 40″ circulars; these were perfect length to work all the way around with enough room to leave the side stitches on the needle while working the center back panel
A few knitting notes on this BSJ (so I don’t lose my notes and have to start all over again next time!):
- I used double decrease around a center knit stitch so the decreases match the increases.
- I used a 2 stitch I-Cord all around.
- I made 3 - 2 stitch buttonhole in the I-Cord edge. (3-2-8-2-8-2)
- At the bottom corners, I added a single (unattached) I-Cord stitch before and after the centered/corner stitch to make it a clean turn.
- At the neck corners, I added 2 (unattached) I-Cord stitch to ease the corner.
- I grafted the end of the I-Cord to the 2 cast on stitches at the beginning.