my first sweater: finished!

On Saturday, I cast on to knit my first sweater ever, and on Saturday evening, I finished it off.

That’s me, a natural at knitting. Here’s a photo:

Okay, so it’s not exactly a sweater anyone can wear, but it’s a sweater. It has sleeves and a front and a back. I made it with sock yarn and sock needles and followed the Unique Sheep pattern for the mini sweater.

Why would I do something lame like that? Well, I have a pattern for a real sweater, but I made the mistake of reading it before trying to knit it, and I couldn’t at all comprehend what they were talking about with the sleeves. I couldn’t imagine how the thing they told me to do would result in anything resembling a sweater. Or, for that matter, fabric.

But the mini-sweater pattern had the same instructions, only scaled down to this tiny size. My logic was: if I have to screw something up, why not screw up some left over sock yarn and discover the mistake within two hours, rather than spend a dozen hours and mess up lots of good yarn?

Well, you saw it worked. The funny thing is I still have no clue why it worked. I can’t make an image of it in my head. I can at least follow directions, though.

Kiddo#2, when I asked for Barbie so I could take a picture of the sweater, got a dreamy look in her eyes and said, “Oh! You’re going to make these to donate them to kids who have dolls but can’t afford clothes for them?”

Bless her heart: she thinks the reason to knit is to give it away. That’s so sweet.

I’m being selfish, though. I made a nice little four-part braid with the remaining two feet of yarn and used that to hang it off the handle of my violin case. Because really, it’s very cute. I love it. It’s my first sweater.