Folks, we have a winner.
I’ve been knitting most of the past ten hours trying to make the sweater I’ve both envisioned and avoided this past month finally come to be. It would help if there were a set pattern for the whole thing, rather than me flipping between pages trying to kluge one together, but I do at least have a chart for the design. Which was big, which had to be worked around.
As I told Sandi, I just have to start and then it will all be easy.
Which was true.
When I admitted to Richard that I just didn’t feel that acrylic holds up well to extensive intarsia knitting, that I didn’t like the floppiness of it in that context and how it didn’t hold together but that I just didn’t have the good machine washable wool in that many colors in that weight on hand–he told me to go to Purlescence and just go buy them: Parker had to have a sweater like that. It would be just too perfect.
And hopefully Hudson, too, but, I’m out of practice on sweaters and I’ve never done much baby knitting, much less toddler sizes, and so the amount of yarn needed was a pure guess.
And I guessed wrong and the shop is closed till after Christmas and Richard-the-younger’s family is coming the day after. Which is why the background of the front is in cream but the back is starting at the teal trim at the bottom continuing on up in that color on that side. You work with what you’ve got.
At one point I saw out the window a young dad playing with his three kids where the street dead-ends and I thought about it and then grabbed my project and ran out the door.
Are you Judy’s son? (Instantly thinking, no, make that grandson.)
No, I’m the son-in-law at…
Oh cool! And then I explained my quest: I had no idea whether this would fit my three-year-old grandson, would he mind if I held it up to his little ones to guesstimate? (I did not say that I’d seen pattern sizing that varied crazily, and I do mean crazily, 12″ width’s difference for a size 4 and it did not leave me confident.)
Sure! Let’s see, she’s (pointing at his shy, petite daughter) two and a half.
She however saw this stranger coming near her with this strange thing with weird dangly strands and understandably wanted nothing to do with me. I chuckled, understanding, and stepped back and tried to make her feel better about it while not imposing on her again. She watched me shyly while I did what I should have done first, which was to sound the all-clear by going to her five year old brother. Let him decide whether I was okay.
He was eyeing that sweater front from the get-go with great appreciation: now that, that is something that could get a little boy excited about a piece of clothing. He liked it. Most definitely. Hey Mikey.
And it was a tad small for him, as it needed to be, but whatever, the proportions are right so it’ll fit Parker later if not now. But that little kid did me the huge favor of letting me know this thing would pass muster at an older age if it doesn’t fit till later. I like to think Parker will never want to take it off no matter what size it is.
I know the grandmother to those little ones. She’s a knitter. I’ll ask her quietly if she’d like to use the intarsia pattern when I’m done.