Rosie's Sweater

Ever since I finished Molly's Swing Jacket, Rosie has, somewhat understandably, being nagging me about knitting something for her. (And boy, can she nag ;)). Avid readers of this blog (ha!) will know that the initial plan was to knit her a rusty red version of the Ink Flare Sweater that I made for myself. But since I dont love that sweater, or knitting with the yarn (Noro Cash Iroha), I just kept putting it to one side for more exciting projects. Then I started a raglan sweater in the same yarn, using the top-down raglan calculator...but again, got bored after a few rounds and kept putting it to one side. Poor Rosie, every time she saw me knitting on something else, she would ask when was I going to knit on her sweater. Ah she does a good line in guilt.

So, finally I decided to go the chunky/big needle route and get something finished. I went with Click Chunky cos a) its, well, chunky and b) its cheap yet soft and springy. Surprisingly so for 70% acrylic. I like it. And I found a Sirdar pattern for a simple raglan sweater....so the plan was definitely coming together. After a small hitch where I took the yarn but not the pattern on a 3 day visit to my mothers (=lots of knitting time), followed by lots of ranting and stomping then loosing of the will to live as I tried to find something online using her dial up, I finally got started a few days ago on our return.

I knitted up the back quickly, but as I started the front I began to yawn a bit, so decided to stick a pattern on the front. I searched for a dishcloth pattern or similar, but nothing was quite right. So I ended up designing my own fish pattern on graph paper. First one (the little fish) fell foul of that problem where graph paper is square, but knit stitches are oblong, so he is longer and thinner than I wanted. But still OK. The bigger fish I tried to compensate, but he still came out too long. I tried to pretend he was OK and finished the front, but figured every time I looked at it, it would piss me off, so I frogged back and redid it, adding some bubbles this time for a larf. Am quite happy with the result :) It the spirit of sharing, the pattern for the fish is below.

As for the whole sweater, it is pretty snug on Rosie, despite me working to gauge (had to go up a needle size as usual), so I wish I had done the next size up, but hopefully she wont grow too much over the summer. She loves it :) Which is good, because I had started to wonder if I was going to be one of those people who knits awful ill-fitting sweaters that are obviously handknitted that people only wear out of obligation. Maybe I should stick to shawls and bags.....

Moss/Seed stitch Fish pattern

Big Fish (left facing)
Row 1: P1 K1 P1 K18
Row 2: P3 (K1P1)3 K1 P7 K1 P1 K1 P1
Row 3: K2 P1 K1 P1 K4 (K1P1)5 K2
Row 4: P1 (K1P1)6 P4 K1 P3
Row 5: K2 P1 K1 P1 K4 (K1P1)5 K2
Row 6: P1 (K1P1)6 P2 K1 P1 K1 P3
Row 7: K4 P1 (K1P1)8
Row 8: P1 (K1P1)8 P3
Row 9: K4 P1 (K1P1)8
Row 10: P1 (K1P1)6 P2 K1 P1 K1 P3
Row 11: K2 P1 K1 P1 K4 (K1P1)5 K2
Row 12: P1 (K1P1)6 P4 K1 P3
Row 13: K2 P1 K1 P1 K4 (K1P1)5 K2
Row 14: P3 (K1P1)3 K1 P7 K1 P1 K1 P1
Row 15: P1 K1 P1 K18

Small Fish (right facing)
Row 1: K3 P1 (K1P1)2 K5 P1 K1
Row 2: K1 P1 K1 P3 (K1P1)3 K1 P2
Row 3: (K1P1)7 K1
Row 4: P4 (K1P1)5 K1
Row 5: (K1P1)7 K1
Row 6: K1 P1 K1 P3 (K1P1)3 K1 P2
Row 7: K3 P1 (K1P1)2 K5 P1 K1