Dova's sweater

This was my very first knit sweater!! Dova refused to pose properly for the picture as it was still warm out when I completed it in over the summer. Adam is showing off his first lost tooth as opposed to the sweater, but it did fit him perfectly. The pattern is Haiku by Kristy, who is Dova's 2nd cousin(?) - she is Doug's first cousin Bea's (who Dova Bea is named after) son's wife. That's Dova's cousin Ella in knitty.com (Ella is actually one generation later, but the same age as Adam, such a complicated family tree). So those buttons don't exactly line up (the left side is a good inch longer than the right), but still a great learning experience. It took about a year and 4 months to complete, as I started it at the end of my last job, when I had nothing to do but knit and watch DVDs on the laptop at work.

So here are some things I learned while making my first sweater:

• Cast on loosely!
• Cast off loosely!
• Follow the pattern! I tried to pick up stitches for the arms and knit in the round but found that I didn't quite calculate making the length backwards correctly so I ended up ripping the whole thing out.
• Cotton is not very forgiving, really hard to knit with DPNs and not have gaps. I ended up knitting 2 extra stitches on the first needle and transferring them onto the new one.
• Still need to learn how to do buttonholes correctly

Footnote on the post. This was done at Adam's skating rink during his skating lesson! Wireless internet is a wonderful thing.

technorati tags: knitting