Ellen's Sweater

I just finished Ellen's Christmas sweater.  I am happy to be finished with it because it is wool and it has become quite hot to knit it at this time of the year.  I got to experience new things with this sweater.  I was enlarging it from a child's sweater, so that was my first challenge.  After I had the whole sweater finished, I realized the hood would not be long enough to fit without stretching tight over her shoulders.  Ellen said she would prefer to have a hood that was very large and baggy, so I took on another challenge.  Since the pattern works from top to bottom all in one piece, that meant that the hood is completed first, and then stitches are picked up from the edge of the hood to begin knitting the yoke of the sweater.  I was a little worried that I would cut the wrong piece of yarn when I was taking the hood off.  I was lucky that the stripes on the hood showed the brown yarn that I was using to pick up the stitches with.  I was able to see where to cut, and from there, I was able to pick up the stitches and put them onto my needle as I took each stitch out.  I managed to get them all picked up except for one dropped stitch right next to the edge (probably from where I made my cut). I caught myself before the stitch unraveled all the way down the yoke of the sweater. I added four more rows along the top edge of the yoke before I bound off those stitches. After I successfully dis-attached the hood, I then knitted a strip about five inches wide to match the rest of the hood.  Then, I sewed it onto the hood and to neck edge of the sweater.  Now, the hood is plenty big and baggy as was requested, but I did not like the look of the seam where the strip was sewn onto the hood.  Originally, Ellen wanted the hood and sleeves to be lined, anyway, so I found some nice purple lining material that matched the purple stripes in the sweater, and made a liner for the hood.  I am quite pleased with the look, and the hood is so soft now with the lining.  I do not have to line the sleeves because Ellen was able to find a nice light jacket of material similar to the lining I used.  She will be able to use the jacket as a liner, so the wool will not be touching her bare skin when she wears the sweater.

The spot near the end of the sleeve is not a mistake; it is the thumb hole that was requested for the sweater. I accomplished this challenge by making a large button hole and then stitching around the edge to secure it better.

This shot shows the lining on the hood, and unfortunately, a little bit where I attached the strip to the rest of the hood.

 My next project will be to start Mindy's sweater.  She wants the same pattern, including the thumb hole.  I want to get it finished while the process for enlarging the sweater and doing the thumb hole are fresh on my mind.  I will make her hood longer to begin with, so I will not have to go through what I did with this sweater to get it right.  Mindy has chosen a soft acrylic/rayon yarn that is oatmeal in color.  It should not be as hot to work with.  However, since it is solid in color it will seem to take a little longer to do.  It won't, of course, but it will feel like it to me.  The stripes in Ellen's were a little difficult to work with because you have to have so many balls of yarn and the tie in of the ends after the knitting is finished can be a little annoying, but it helps to break up the repetition of the same old thing.  I like to work in short goals, and stripes did that for me.  I could get to a new color, or complete the twenty-four rows of the stripe pattern.  It also allowed me to not have to measure so much because I knew that each stripe pattern was four inches. I will not have these smaller goals to reach with Mindy's.  Instead, it will be to finish the hood, or the yoke, or the sleeves, and last of all, the body of the sweater.