THE Cardigan

Some of my readers will know that I love to knit.

The thing is, I love to knit squares.

No adding, no decreasing, no slip stitch under or over, or counting stitches, or trying to work out what you did wrong.  No unpicking.  Never.

You can therefore imagine my absolute delight in being able to show you the results of a full year's worth of effort!

THIS is Munchkin's cardigan.

Knitted BY ME!

All of it.

Okay, so there were a few patches that required my mother-in-law's intervention, dedication, and unpicking skills!  I did, after all, get the pattern from her.

And she did sew it all together for me, and put the buttons on.  And post it back to us!

Don't you just LOVE the buttons?!  The wool colours were chosen simply from what was available when I bought - a lovely green and blue multi teamed with straight blue.

But the rest is mine!  I figured if I didn't get her to put it together, he might not get to wear it this winter.  And as he's a regular bean-pole, I was feeling a little worried that it might not fit for long.

Never fear, there's plenty of room still for growth.  I made the wrist cuffs double sized.  So at the moment they get doubled over, but later on they can be turned half down, or even worn without turning.  I am a genius!  Or at least sometimes I have moments of brilliance.  The other factor is that it's a raglan sleeve, which somehow means the body length ends up quite long (don't ask me for the specifics of how this works, I just know it worked really well in my favour this time round, as it's added even more length to the extra rows I'd included and comes right down over his pants like a good cardigan should!).

One proud knitter.

I am back to squares.  And very happy to stay there for some time.  Don't get me wrong, when I see my boy wearing his cardigan and people ask who knitted it, it gives me such satisfaction to be able to answer (for once!) that I DID (rather than having to say it was an op-shop find, or knitted by a grandparent).  BUT, the pearl knitting totally killed my left wrist.  And I really don't like reading patterns. I just don't think that's ever going to come naturally to me. I have a few other, smaller, projects in mind for the next year or two, but next winters woolys are going to be op-shopped.  Somehow I don't think my preschooler will mind!

Amy