Thursday, August 10, 2006
Rapid Progress on Joe
I thought I ought to post some photos of my progress before I was actually finished with this sweater. It has taken me 13 days to go from swatching to sewing up the seams. I have all the pieces knit and the right sleeve sewn to the body of the sweater. I will likely get the second sleeve sewn in tonight, and maybe get the sleeve and side seams done tomorrow. Then, all I have to do is pick up sts for the neck and knit that. I could have this finished on Saturday! That would be a record of 15 days from start to finish on a sweater. Or a tie, I think I may have knit my top down short sleeve sweater for myself in about that much time, but it was knit at three sts to the inch, and was short sleeved and cropped.
In order to make this actually fit my son and not have him swimming in it, I knit a size smaller than it said for his age, and I knit it to 4 3/4 sts to the inch rather than the 4 1/4 sts to the inch of the pattern. Partly to make it smaller, partly because I preferred the fabric made at that gauge. It was a simple thing to just knit longer on the sleeves and the body so the lengths would work for him. Like I said before, I just reversed the shaping on the left sleeve, rather than make it with a zipper on a sleeve seam. I'm just sewing it all up. Also, I did the increases and decreases one st in, rather than on the end as indicated in the pattern, except on the final two rows of the front (where it wasn't possible), because it makes finishing easier, and I also didn't bind off the sleeves or the back, so I could just use live sts when knitting the neck from those spots.
Anyway, here is the front and back with the right sleeve sewn in:
And here is the sweater with the left sleeve hanging out next to it.
I am leaning toward making this a birthday sweater, and making a hat to go with it for Christmas, even though that adds one more Christmas gift to knit. It would be a quick knit, and would allow Alexander to wear this for school pictures.
One more thing, please be in prayer for Dominic. I may not be the only member of our family to deal with surgery this year. His tonsils are so large that they are larger than the scale the doctors use to grade them. He has a hard time breathing, and because of them blocking the back of his throat so much, he is having hearing problems because he cannot equalize the pressure in his ears. Fortunately, the hearing issue is a symptom, and not a case of actual hearing loss, but the effect will be the same until something can be done. The ENT we saw is not knife happy, so we trust his judgment, and he thinks Dominic is a good candidate for surgery to get his tonsils and adenoids out. This is something we've been discussing with his pediatrician for a good year now, so it's a matter of deciding how and when to take care of it.
In order to make this actually fit my son and not have him swimming in it, I knit a size smaller than it said for his age, and I knit it to 4 3/4 sts to the inch rather than the 4 1/4 sts to the inch of the pattern. Partly to make it smaller, partly because I preferred the fabric made at that gauge. It was a simple thing to just knit longer on the sleeves and the body so the lengths would work for him. Like I said before, I just reversed the shaping on the left sleeve, rather than make it with a zipper on a sleeve seam. I'm just sewing it all up. Also, I did the increases and decreases one st in, rather than on the end as indicated in the pattern, except on the final two rows of the front (where it wasn't possible), because it makes finishing easier, and I also didn't bind off the sleeves or the back, so I could just use live sts when knitting the neck from those spots.
Anyway, here is the front and back with the right sleeve sewn in:
And here is the sweater with the left sleeve hanging out next to it.
I am leaning toward making this a birthday sweater, and making a hat to go with it for Christmas, even though that adds one more Christmas gift to knit. It would be a quick knit, and would allow Alexander to wear this for school pictures.
One more thing, please be in prayer for Dominic. I may not be the only member of our family to deal with surgery this year. His tonsils are so large that they are larger than the scale the doctors use to grade them. He has a hard time breathing, and because of them blocking the back of his throat so much, he is having hearing problems because he cannot equalize the pressure in his ears. Fortunately, the hearing issue is a symptom, and not a case of actual hearing loss, but the effect will be the same until something can be done. The ENT we saw is not knife happy, so we trust his judgment, and he thinks Dominic is a good candidate for surgery to get his tonsils and adenoids out. This is something we've been discussing with his pediatrician for a good year now, so it's a matter of deciding how and when to take care of it.
