Pinwheel

This is my latest project, a cute little circular sweater that apparently fits a baby from age 6 months to 4 years. I think it looks a bit funny with the "hood" for the baby size, but I like the bigger "collar" size. (You turn it upside down to go from one to the other). I spent all my cash on the 5 different needles and 8 balls of 10ply they thought I needed ($70) but it's been worth it.

At first the (stupid!!) thing took me 6 tries to get started. I was wrestling with 8 stitches on 4 long 5.5mm double pointed needles, trying not to get them twisted while knitting into the front and back... But finally I got going. Once my hands got used to the dpn's again (it seems to take 5 or 10 rounds) I was right, and once I got onto the circulars (after about 16 rounds) I was laughing.

The yarn is Patons Jet, and they didn't have many colors. But I'm liking the colors I picked. They're very Autumny together, and just a bit different than what I would have picked, had I more choice. I'm not the sort to mix orange, purple, cream, white, red and a caramel kind of brown. But they look ok. The final color is a variegated (sort of) yarn that cycles (on the 3 different plies independently) between the purple, red and orange, though it's hard to see in the photo.

The edging was fun, though it took about 3 days. The final round had 216 stitches (though I think it should have had more, but never mind that!) and was finished by incorporating a 3-wide icord. Each bump of icord was 6 rows, the 6th being knitted together with the next 3 stitches to be cast off. So the icord was about 1300 stitches. Not difficult, but fiddley, and mostly done with Jasmine on my knee. lol.

The two lines of "caramel" in the orange section will be pulled out to make 36 live stitches for the sleeves. Haven't worked out how I'm going to do them, yet. I still get ladders with dpn's and it would be a shame to ruin it like that. I'll probably have a go, though. I can always rip it out!

A pinwheel group on Ravelry gave me the ideas about the sleeves and the contrasting edge color.

And here's my little helper! hehe. He taps the needles together and says, "knit knit knit!" But he doesn't quite get the concept... he gets annoyed if I try and put wool in his way!