Adventures in sweater knitting.

Tagged with knitting

One of the items on my 35 in 35 list? Knit my first real sweater! I've tried sweater knitting for years but they've never turned out quite right. I attempted my first sweater way back in 2003, using a few balls of dark green yarn. It looked terrible and I never wore it. I don't even know what I did with it, honestly. I tried knitting another sweater at some point, maybe in 2008 or 2009, but that one didn't fit well either. Frustrated, I gave up trying to knit a sweater that'd actually fit me... until this year.

The back of the Mama Vertebrae sweater.

I cast on Mama Vertebrae back in March. I'd been talking about knitting a sweater for the past couple years, and I finally swallowed my fears and cast on this year. I'm using yarn that I bought at Webs back in 2009 or so - yeah, that's how long I've wanted to knit a real sweater! Sadly, I have two other sweater quantities of yarn I bought around that time frame, hoping that that would motivate me to knit a sweater. Nope.

The bind off edging of the Mama Vertebrae sweater.

It took me forever to finish the back of the sweater. It's knit from the top down, casting on a certain amount of stitches and increasing until separating the sleeves by putting the stitches on two holders, continuing to knit the back. I finished most of the back in about a week, but it took me a month to work up the nerve to try the tubular bind off, a new to me bind off. I finally bit the bullet and bound it off the other night, and while it doesn't look perfect, I still like it. I like the rounded edge it gives the piece!

One of the sleeves of the Mama Vertebrae sweater.

After finishing the back, I picked up the stitches for one of the sleeves! I picked up some stitches around the underarm and after a few rounds, I started cruising along. I'm decreasing two stitches every 8 rounds or so, adding some semblance of shaping to the arms. I'm planning on knitting this as a full length sweater, because I prefer long sleeved sweaters over 3/4 or short sleeved ones.

I'm pretty happy with my progress so far. I'm hoping to get this done before it gets any hotter here - it's supposed to be in the 80s and 90s here the next week or so, and I don't have AC, so I'd rather not be slogging away on a sweater in this weather! We'll see how I do.