One day last month at a pet sit, while I had access to a comfy leather recliner and unlimited television programming, including two back-to-back episodes of ChiPs every weekday that my poor friend Tina had to listen to me drone on about how the actors who played Jon and Ponch really rode motorcycles and did their own stunts, and how everyone in California in the 70s drove at least two car-lengths behind each other on the freeway,
See?
I began working on a kid’s version of my Ironheart Pullover.
This would be so cute for kids, right?
Alls I had to do was calculate a little subtraction maths, knit up a smaller version, and find a kid to model it for photos. I’d knock that out in a couple of weeks, then work on one of several languishing designs that I began, oh, six years ago.
My two-week plan would have worked, but here’s the thing about kid sweaters that I didn’t consider because I don’t have kids. (I have nieces and nephews, but I’m a bad aunt if you ask my sisters, but it’s not because I don’t knit for their kids.) The thing is that their yoke areas are short, which means that decreases have to start almost right away after you join the sleeves to the body. The Ironheart chart is 22 rows, which is most of the yoke, so there’s only an inch or two left for decreasing before you get to the neckline. For my non-knitting friends, that means I’m screwed.
Six weeks and three prototypes later—the count of which does not reflect how many times I ripped and reknit (which is what I should rename my blog because that’s all I freakin’ do)— I’m finally close enough to something to write about how far away I am.
The long and the short of it is that I have to start the yoke decreases after about five rows, which means I have to decrease in pattern, which means I had to set aside my knitting hubris and start swatching.
Just look at that shaping!
That little swatch took four episodes of CHiPs to figure out, but holy Poncherello, it works perfectly.
I don’t have time to write about the second gotcha about kid sweaters, being how much yarn they require, because I have to drive to Joann for a third time to buy one more skein of yarn.
Of course it’s pink. It’s for little girls.
To Ponder: All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. |-Albert Camus-|
A Texas Girl Knits 