Brown Hoodie

[firstfrost]

Making the first version of this sweater was something of an epic adventure, and the second version (for greyautumnrain's little boy D) had all its own epicness.

I got this yarn on my San Francisco yarn crawl (from the place with "yarn tastings"!). It's wool with a bit of silk, and has an interesting construction (it's more like an icorn than plied), so I thought it would be sturdy and shiny (which it is, though it also seems to be a little prone to snags, oops). I got about 20% of the way into the sweater using the normal garter stitch construction when I finally decided that it was a little *too* sturdy, and garter stitch just felt too hard and crunchy. So I decided to make a stockinette variation, which proved to be a new challenge for an already somewhat challenging pattern. (Garter stitch has magic properties of an approximately integral 2:1 relation between width and height, which makes right angles very simple). Additional snags: somehow I made the sleeves too short, which is a little understandable given that the pattern only says "make the sleeves until they're long enough" but is not actually so understandable given that when I complained about that before, the designer sent me numbers. :) Or, more likely, D has a different aspect ratio than a one-year-old. The second goof was forgetting to leave holes for the toggle loops, so the sweater ended up with cloak clasps instead. I think they look reasonable. In the "nobody notices but me" category, the colorwork pattern for the braid is not quite symmetric - I didn't notice until I was nearly through with it or I might have changed it. But it's still a little puzzling. (I think I swiped it from a free pattern somewhere else, so I can't complain too much). Anyway, D liked it, and there was some argument as to whether he looked more like a Jawa or a Jedi in it. With lightsaber, Jedi wins.

In other news, I am not very impressed with the iPad camera.