Finished: Munchkin's 1st Birthday Pirate Sweater

Finally!! The sweater is done!!

I was literally finishing up the odds and ends the night before the Munchkin's birthday! I'm just glad that the knitting part was done and I wasn't still knitting my butt off seconds before the guests arrived! I had actually finished the knitting mid-September and was procrastinating on having to seam it all together and weave in all the ends...and trust me, was there ever a lot of ends to weave in! I kept putting it off and putting it off, until a few days ago I realized that we were only days away before The Day.

Anyhoo, there are a few mistakes at the beginning of the color work, where I didn’t pull the yarn I was carrying over in the back tight enough. I didn't want a million butterflies all over the back, which would then mean a million ends to have to weave in. So you can see the carried over black yarn through the gaps of the knitted white from the front. I thought about starting over, but then nixed it, this sweater isn’t going to be perfect and who knows how many times my son will get to wear the sweater before he outgrows it.

I don't know if this was suppose to happen or if it was just my knitting (probably the latter!) but somehow the front turned out longer than the back! I don’t know how this happened, but I wasn't happy about it. I had serious thoughts of re-doing the front (the OCD-perfectionist in me coming out) but decided against it once I thought about having to do the skull and crossbones intarsia again. I ended up just fudging the side seams a bit when I was sewing the sweater together. Sewing up the shoulder seams was quite the challenge, mainly because I couldn't see what I was doing...now I know why not many people like to knit with black yarn! And rather than attempting to do the side seams using the mattress stitch, I decided that the good ol' back stitch would have to do. Weaving in the ends wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I have to admit that in some areas I did cheat a little...by doing the simple tie and knot ends that were a stitch apart. I know, I should be shunned!

But overall I'm very happy with how the sweater turned out. Not bad for my first major intarsia color work, AND my very first sweater. Ever! Well, make that a finished sweater...I thought my Tilted Duster would be the very first sweater, but I have yet to finish that. Soon though, soon.

I have to say that the yarn I used, I wasn't very impressed with. Mind you, I had bought the yarn ages ago, back when I was first starting to get serious about knitting and before I knew any better. And since I had bought the yarn with this project in mind, I thought I might as well use it. The yarn is acrylic and felt really plastic-y and kinda gross. I was using bamboo needles, which the yarn did not like at all. This is definitely the last time I'll be using this yarn! There's a lot left over, so maybe I'll use it for scrap or to wrap up presents or something. I really don't see myself knitting with it ever again. I wasn't sure if you can block acrylic, but even if you can I didn't have the time to block the finished sweater. Instead I did a half assed blocking job, as in it was completely dry and I pinned it to the floor to the dimensions I needed, in hopes to stretch out the hems a little.

As for the pattern itself, I thought it was easy to read. With that said, if I hadn't started knitting up the Duster first I probably would've had some issues with the directions. But that's just me being an inexperienced knitter.

I'm just glad that it's done, it's over, and it served it's purpose. Sorry that the first photo is crap. the weather was gross and so the lighting in the kitchen was pure crap. But you get the idea.

So here are the deets:
Pattern: Pirate's Cutie Sweater from Knit.1 magazine, Winter 2006/07
Yarns: Lion Brand Baby Soft Solid
Colors: Black, cream
Size: 1 year