Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Sirdar Baby Sweater Finished

I knitted another sweater from the book, "Early Arrivals 3" by Sirdar. The book is meant to knit small treasures for little babies who arrive too early. I thought this would be the perfect book of patterns for my charity knitting since most of the babies are extremely tiny. However, the patterns are pretty poorly written. This pattern, named specifically "Pattern A", is a V neck sweater with a raglan sleeve. The pattern has a stitch count problem (many times it didn't match with the amount of stitches I had on my needles) and the raglan decrease section was extremely poorly written - hard to follow which led to a messy looking raglan. So I just "winged it" when it came to the raglan, placing a stitch marker at the appropriate spot for the raglan and just made the decreases as I saw fit. This turned the sleeve much neater looking and all in all the sweater turned out just fine. However, if you're new to knitting and want a pattern that is quick and easy to follow - this is not it.I knitted the sweater in inexpensive Vanna's Choice (by Lion Brand) Baby in the color Cayenne (a orange-red color) I'm not thrilled with Vanna's Choice yarn which is 100% acrylic, but I had a skein on hand and thought it would be easy to care for with the hospital washing machines. But I don't think the yarn is soft enough for such small preemies. If I had this to knit over I would probably use a cotton/bamboo blend.All in all, the sweater is finished and ready for donation. I think I've given up on this book of patterns - too much headache for something that should be so easy! F.Y.I...

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