Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Lessons learned


I finally, finally finished the Trellis baby sweater for my friend Lauryn's baby girl. I love how the sweater came out, and am now inspired to knit an adult sweater for myself. Lauryn is a knitter herself, so I wanted to make something she would really appreciate. It is knit on size 7 needles in Rowan All Seasons Cotton. I love the way the cables "pop" with this yarn and will use it again in future cabling projects.


Here are the lessons I learned in my first sweater:
1. Cabling. I am now officially a cabling addict. I love them and would much rather cable than color-knit any day!

2. Seaming. I tested out seaming on a smaller side project I did while learning lesson number
3. If I had know easy it was, I am not sure I would have dreaded it so much in the 2 years I have been knitting. I am convinced that I took so long to make the sweater because I wasn't sure how I would sew it together when I was finished.

3. Always buy extra yarn. Repeat: always buy extra yarn. I ran out when I was half done with the collar. Fortunately, I was able to pick up an extra skein with the same dye-lot on E-bay, but had to wait a few days when I was so close to finishing.
Update: Several weeks later I realized I had had an extra skein all along, it was just buried my very disorganized closet!

4. Knit on Cast on method: stretchy, easy.....I have now tried several other methods of casting on that produce much nicer edges for garments.