My Daughter's Sweater
My daughter is grown now -turning 18 in a couple of weeks. And she's out on her own, doing a dental tech program in California. The Pilot and I have decided to rename her Tooth Pick, and My Pilot somehow thinks he'll not only get away with that, but also with calling her TP for short...I just don't think he'll be able to make this new moniker stick.
Anyway, it was my daughter who brought me back to knitting. I learned when I was small, but never learned any of the basics that make knitting really work - how to form an untwisted stitch, what the order of operations is, how to read a pattern. I mostly grabbed needles from my mother's basket and yarn from a stale smelling bag of acrylic that a sweet friend had brought over for us to play with. Then I poked and twisted and "invented" my own stitches and made some swatches. Then I put it all away for many years. Until, grown up, I bought my own needles and some slightly stale smelling acrylic and decided I would teach myself to knit. I found a Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to Needlework, which had a chapter (a whole chapter - imagine!) on knitting, and determined that I would need to make large swatches of every stitch pattern in the book before I could embark upon following a pattern for an actual garment. So swatch I did, in all manner of very lovely textured stitch patterns, which were rendered ever so much more textured by my habit of always knitting into the back loop. I made it through a few torturous 8x8 and 12x12 inch squares in my sticky, grabby faux wool, retired the whole mess to a free canvas tote bag acquired at some convention somewhere, and stuffed the bag into a box, where it stayed for several different moves about the country.
Fast forward to last summer, when my daughter left home to begin her very own life. She was fine, doing well, happy. I was lonely, empty, sad. I decided to knit her a sweater. I'm not sure how, or why, this seemed like the thing to do, other than knitting for another gives the knitter a perfect opportunity to meditate and pray and weave love into every single stitch, twisted or not.
I chose a Crystal Palace pattern- the Waikiki Halter, really more of a racerback mockneck tank with a great shoulder-baring front. I picked a beautiful blue variegated thick and thin yarn, swatched it, and started knitting. My still-twisted stitches caused the body front and back to bias a bit, but I did learn to decrease (crudely), make buttonholes (one nice, one crude as I didn't knit to the end of the row and follow the buttonhole instructions from the beginning, but rather tried to reverse the buttonhole directions and insert the second buttonhole in the same row as the first), and stitch the thing together. Using backstitch or whipstitch, as I had no one to ask the proper method of. I mentioned to my daughter that I was making her a sweater, and she in turn mentioned said sweater to my mother, who apparently sort of snorted and said, "Bridget's making a sweater? What kind? When does she think it will ever be done?" I suppose, given my aborted attempts at knitting, sewing, and all manner of needle arts at which my mathematically precise mother excels, her response was not unexpected, and not unkind so much as just honest.
I did in fact finish that first, imperfect sweater, and my generous of spirit daughter called to tell me that she really liked it, it fit, and she even wore it in public. She could have simply been being kind, or she could have been genuine. At any rate, she asked (asked!!) me to make her another one.
Which leads us to this current sweater - from Vogue Knitting Summer 2005, Sweater Number 11, the cropped wrap front hoodie with a two-sided frost flowers lace band along the front edge.
Naturally, the specified yarn has been discontinued. And also naturally, I never use the specified yarn anyway. I chose a beautiful, glacial blue shade of Nashua Creative Focus Alpaca and Merino single ply. The yarn is so soft and lofty and lightweight, I think it will make a lovely beachy-type sweater for my girl. I knit up the simple stockinette back in no time at all, and began the front, which is actually a single long, shaped strip of fabric that gets folded in the middle to make both the left and right sides of the front. The Two Sided Frost Flowers lace pattern is a 34-stitch, 32 row pattern, with no free rows of plain old knit or purl. I learned, after getting as far as row 19 and frogging back three times that I am not much of a lace knitter. I like the sort of patterns that are actually patterns, with regular repeats and that allow for relatively simple reading of the knitting on the needles to determine what to do next. Frost Flowers offers none of those delicious aspects. So I gave up on that pattern. Instead, I'll substitute the most basic lattice mesh pattern on the 5 1/2" band and call it good. This simple pattern has a vague Chinoiserie feel to it, reminding me of some bamboo work on Deco-era Asian inspired textiles and furniture designs. It is visually airy, as the original Frost Flowers pattern is, doesn't curl, and best of all, goes quickly and will require only 20 stitches or so to achieve the necessary width. Quite speedy, indeed!
The pattern itself is thus:
Row 1 YO, k2tog, rep to end
Row 2 & 4 Purl
Row 3, SKP, yo, rep to end
So problem solved, and her sweater is likely to be finished in time for her birthday.
Hurray for me, and my problem solving abilities!
Anyway, it was my daughter who brought me back to knitting. I learned when I was small, but never learned any of the basics that make knitting really work - how to form an untwisted stitch, what the order of operations is, how to read a pattern. I mostly grabbed needles from my mother's basket and yarn from a stale smelling bag of acrylic that a sweet friend had brought over for us to play with. Then I poked and twisted and "invented" my own stitches and made some swatches. Then I put it all away for many years. Until, grown up, I bought my own needles and some slightly stale smelling acrylic and decided I would teach myself to knit. I found a Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to Needlework, which had a chapter (a whole chapter - imagine!) on knitting, and determined that I would need to make large swatches of every stitch pattern in the book before I could embark upon following a pattern for an actual garment. So swatch I did, in all manner of very lovely textured stitch patterns, which were rendered ever so much more textured by my habit of always knitting into the back loop. I made it through a few torturous 8x8 and 12x12 inch squares in my sticky, grabby faux wool, retired the whole mess to a free canvas tote bag acquired at some convention somewhere, and stuffed the bag into a box, where it stayed for several different moves about the country.
Fast forward to last summer, when my daughter left home to begin her very own life. She was fine, doing well, happy. I was lonely, empty, sad. I decided to knit her a sweater. I'm not sure how, or why, this seemed like the thing to do, other than knitting for another gives the knitter a perfect opportunity to meditate and pray and weave love into every single stitch, twisted or not.
I chose a Crystal Palace pattern- the Waikiki Halter, really more of a racerback mockneck tank with a great shoulder-baring front. I picked a beautiful blue variegated thick and thin yarn, swatched it, and started knitting. My still-twisted stitches caused the body front and back to bias a bit, but I did learn to decrease (crudely), make buttonholes (one nice, one crude as I didn't knit to the end of the row and follow the buttonhole instructions from the beginning, but rather tried to reverse the buttonhole directions and insert the second buttonhole in the same row as the first), and stitch the thing together. Using backstitch or whipstitch, as I had no one to ask the proper method of. I mentioned to my daughter that I was making her a sweater, and she in turn mentioned said sweater to my mother, who apparently sort of snorted and said, "Bridget's making a sweater? What kind? When does she think it will ever be done?" I suppose, given my aborted attempts at knitting, sewing, and all manner of needle arts at which my mathematically precise mother excels, her response was not unexpected, and not unkind so much as just honest.
I did in fact finish that first, imperfect sweater, and my generous of spirit daughter called to tell me that she really liked it, it fit, and she even wore it in public. She could have simply been being kind, or she could have been genuine. At any rate, she asked (asked!!) me to make her another one.
Which leads us to this current sweater - from Vogue Knitting Summer 2005, Sweater Number 11, the cropped wrap front hoodie with a two-sided frost flowers lace band along the front edge.
Naturally, the specified yarn has been discontinued. And also naturally, I never use the specified yarn anyway. I chose a beautiful, glacial blue shade of Nashua Creative Focus Alpaca and Merino single ply. The yarn is so soft and lofty and lightweight, I think it will make a lovely beachy-type sweater for my girl. I knit up the simple stockinette back in no time at all, and began the front, which is actually a single long, shaped strip of fabric that gets folded in the middle to make both the left and right sides of the front. The Two Sided Frost Flowers lace pattern is a 34-stitch, 32 row pattern, with no free rows of plain old knit or purl. I learned, after getting as far as row 19 and frogging back three times that I am not much of a lace knitter. I like the sort of patterns that are actually patterns, with regular repeats and that allow for relatively simple reading of the knitting on the needles to determine what to do next. Frost Flowers offers none of those delicious aspects. So I gave up on that pattern. Instead, I'll substitute the most basic lattice mesh pattern on the 5 1/2" band and call it good. This simple pattern has a vague Chinoiserie feel to it, reminding me of some bamboo work on Deco-era Asian inspired textiles and furniture designs. It is visually airy, as the original Frost Flowers pattern is, doesn't curl, and best of all, goes quickly and will require only 20 stitches or so to achieve the necessary width. Quite speedy, indeed!
The pattern itself is thus:
Row 1 YO, k2tog, rep to end
Row 2 & 4 Purl
Row 3, SKP, yo, rep to end
So problem solved, and her sweater is likely to be finished in time for her birthday.
Hurray for me, and my problem solving abilities!
posted by Your Style Muse at 9:15 AM
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