Little Green Jumper

Another post-baby knit, but Imogen has almost grown out of it already...



The pattern is Placket Neck Pullover by Joelle Hoverson published in Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I knitted this in Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton on 4mm needles. It took just under 4 balls.



I hate this yarn with a passion - I originally bought it to make a summer cardigan for myself, but the yarn has on average 2 knots per ball and starts to look a bit rough as you handle it so I ripped the cardi. Although I couldn't bear the idea of putting in the work to make something for myself out of such a poor quality yarn because I did't think it would wear well, the effort / outcome balance is different for a baby garment because they wear their clothes for so little time before outgrowing them.



It worked out really well and was perfect for Imogen. She doesn't like cardigans much so a jumper suited her better over the winter. I didn't put the buttons on as things tend to ride up on her and I though that they would end up wedged under her chin!

The garment is well constructed with minimal seaming (which I always prefer) and the pattern is beautifully written.

Simple socks and not-so-simple socks...

It would seem that the reason I'm not blogging as regularly as I would like to is not that I'm not knitting, but that I'm not taking photos as regularly any more (and apparently I can't blog without photos).
At the weekend I managed to get the camera out and get up to date with my projects, so here we have the first project I knitted after picking up the needles again, and something considerably more tricky.

Socks for the Resident Radiologist:


My standard top-down pattern with heel-flap heel. The yarn is Fortissima Colori Socka Color in an Autumnal colourway that the RR chose many moons ago. Knitted on 2.25mm DPNs.

Socks for the Knitter:
These are Skew by Lana Holden, published in Knitty. The yarn is some lovely Trekking XXL. They were knitted on 2.5mm DPNs.

Thanks to some spectacular denial on my part while I was knitting not just the first, but also the second sock in this pair, they were considerably too long for my feet... but too narrow for the RR's heel...
What to do? I couldn't bring myself to rip them and alter the length as they're knitted toe-up so I would have to pretty much start again.

After much musing, I decided to cut a section out of the foot part of each sock and graft the two parts back together. Using a 2mm needle, I picked up the row of stitches either side of the section I wanted to lose...

snipped a stitch and unravelled the yarn to separate the two parts...

then ripped to get rid of the extra rows.

After that, it was just a matter of grafting... and grafting... and grafting...

They now fit beautifully.I ended up taking almost two inches out of each sock (that's how bad the denial was). Despite spending a huge amount of time knitting these socks (and then performing knitty surgery on them), I still can't get over how strange and beautiful the heels are.

I don't think I'll knit these again. I'm glad I've done them and the (final) fit is really good, but they're not relaxing knitting, they're in no way intuitive (even for my maths-oriented brain) and I still can't get my head around how the heels actually work!