| I don't want to give too much away, because I'm not sure how often my sister or her husband check my blog... Classic Elite has come out with a new 100% organic cotton yarn—Sprout. I absolutely LOVE this yarn. It's fun to work with, knits up really fast, and it's earth friendly. Some of the colors in the line are absolutely fantastic too!
The minute I found out my sister was going to have a little bundle of joy, I thought of this yarn, and a sweater design to go with it. Unfortunately, said design did not work out, but because of my love for this yarn, I really wanted to make SOMETHING with it.
I was having trouble finding a stitch pattern that showed up beautifully. My original thought was to use a basketweave pattern, but because of the beautiful texture of this yarn, there wasn't much difference between the knit and purl sections... I tried big squares, and little squares, and a few other knit and purl stitch patterns before giving up on using a knit and purl texture.
Next I considered lace. I knit one swatch. It looked beautiful, but this was going to be for a baby... a boy or a girl... we don't know. The lace looked very feminine, and the pattern repeat was 6 stitches, so sizing the pattern would have been a pain for such a small size, in such a large yarn... I moved on.
That was all a few weekends ago... during my "knitters block". I resisted, but eventually accepted that I couldn't design this sweater. Of course, then something came to me... go figure.
Colorwork isn't really ever something I consider. I'm not a fan of knitting fair isle, so I avoid it. Slipped stitches, on the other hand, are simple and can create pretty interesting colored textures.
Before leaving work on Friday, I picked up one hank each of three colors. Then yesterday, I sat down with my favorite of the Barbra Walker stitch dictionaries and tried out a few slip stitch patterns. Before I knew it, I had a yoke knit, then the body... and the sleeves have been started.
One thing I didn't realize until I began knitting, was the button placement. For boys, buttons are on the right front, for girls they're on the left front. So, to temporarily solve this problem, I knit buttonholes on both button bands. When we find out if it's a girl or boy, I can sew the buttons over the unnecessary holes to hide them.
I haven't decided yet if this sweater is really suitable for both a boy or a girl. What do you guys think?
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