The Almost a Teenager Gets a Sweater

I have a stack of things I’ve made that are waiting to get their picture taken. I have a bunch of pictures that are waiting for me to edit them (the ones with me in them). And finally, I have a bunch of edited pictures of stuff I made waiting to be shared. So I figured I’d get one of these done today instead of dragging myself around trying to find the energy and inspiration for some picture taking.

This sweater came after the yarn. My wonderful, wonderful local yarn store (String Thing Studio and I will never be able to express how much I love that place) was having a trunk show and I went. This was in the before times but I don’t remember exactly when. I bought three colors of fingering weight yarn from Hu Made. Beautiful Spring colors. I was actually going to make last year’s Rhinebeck shawl out of this yarn but changed my mind. The colors were wrong for October. When I came home with the yarn, E just fell in love with them. And to be perfectly honest, the colors were better for her than me.

So I set about to find a sweater she would like that would use three colors. She’s tiny and most women’s patterns don’t go small enough for her. And the kids patterns don’t always go big enough (and there’s less variety). I finally found the Spector Pullover by Joji Locatelli. The smallest size was perfect, E approved of the pattern, and it’s by Joji Locatelli. I’d knit one of her sweater patterns before and had enjoyed it. The only problem was that it required 4 colors and I had 3. I’m pretty sure I could have modified it to use only 3 colors but I didn’t want to mess around with it. So I found a grey yarn in my stash that worked as a final color.

The colors aren’t quite in value order and the grey’s value is pretty much exactly the same as the green’s value (and I think the purple is the darker color) but E was happy about the order. And I like having the grey where it is. E had a peach sweater that she wore a lot and the cuffs ended up roughly that color after some time. Hopefully, she won’t do the same to this sweater but if she does, it’ll be less awful than on that peach sweater…

In the end, I also couldn’t get stitch gauge without having a much looser knit than what I wanted. I compensated by going up a size and the fit ended up perfect. I love the details at the yoke.

E’s been wearing it on a regular basis since I made it. It’s a little long so she has some room to grow. And she can pull the sleeves over her hands without distorting it. She has even worn it in public! Well as much in public as it gets these days. Still, it’s been a huge success and I think I want one of my own too.