Sweater 1 and 7 of 9

As you know i have taken on a hefty amount of knitting projects for this years Christmas/birthday giving haul. I am currently working on 9 sweaters as well as some smaller projects. I will feature sweater number 1 now, though technically it's not the sweater i started first, it's just the first one i finished blocking. This sweater is for my nephew Gabriel who is 5 years old. Over the years Gabriel has been my main focus for knitting. I have knit him a number of sweaters and toys since he was a baby. My sister even had him photographed professionally with two dinosaur toys and a dinosaur blanket i made him. I think that may have been more for my benefit though. I will post pictures of Clappy and Brainiac later. Those were the names we gave to the dinosaurs.

For Christmas i'm knitting Gabriel a raglan sweater. It has a matching toque as well that i did. Complete with a fun pom pom. I have done the sweater in a size 6 in Paton's Classic Merino Wool. It is 100% Pure New Wool. The colour i'm using is Denim Marl for the main and New Denim for the contrast colour. This sweater should be nice and warm and hopefully stylish.

The fun part is the Sweater 2 of 9 is a matching sweater for Gabriel's dad, my Brother in Law, Gary. It will be really cute seeing them dressed alike. I've got 23 days to finish all these sweaters. I'm feeling pretty good about it.

*UPDATE*

I got a lot done on the back of the Train Sweater for Gavin last night. I can already tell this sweater is going to be a darning nightmare. It is super cute though so it will be worth it. I'm surprised how quickly this is actually knitting up. I was concerned that with the 2.25mm needles it would take a whole lot longer but it's coming along nicely.

Once again i ran into where the graph was slightly off and i don't know why. It is specifically at where you start binding off for the shoulder. I usually photocopy the graph and then mark off each row as i go. Unless i missed a row, which who knows maybe i did in a sleep deprived knitting obsessed late night moment but i find that with these old knit o graph patterns that this happens a lot. What should be a knit row, where i am to then bind off for the armhole, turns out to be a purl row. I usually have to add in an extra row, which isn't the end of the world but still bothers me that it's off. I'm hoping to have this sweater's parts all knitted up by the end of this week. Then i just need to start sweater 8 of 9 and sweater 9 of 9. Oh did i mention that sweater 9 is done on 2.5mm circular needles using fingering weight yarn? Yeah i'm not going to be able to move my hands for like a month after all this.

Gift Sweater 7 of 9

Today i started sweater 7 of 9 for this holiday season/birthday gift giving haul. I have not only x-mas but three birthdays this December and January to knit for. My approach this year is to knit all the pieces of each sweater (front, back, sleeves) then start the next. What this will leave me with is a pile of sweaters to block, sew and do the necks for just before x-mas. I don't know if that is brilliant or stupid.

The Sweater started today is a Train Pullover for Gavin. My soon to be 2 year old nephew. Thankfully childrens sweaters knit up reasonably quick. I'm using an old Knit O Graph pattern from the 50's so i have to make sure to read it carefully as i find sometimes these patterns can be confusing. For example on another sweater I'm doing, which i will post about later, the graph doesn't match the written instructions. It's those small details that can drive you insane. This one seems to be rather straight forward though so i'm thankful for that. It took a little while to find the right needle size to get the gauge required as i'm using Astra yarn and that is a bit thicker than what the pattern calls for. I'm using super tiny needles for this. 2mm for the ribbing and 2.25 for the main body. I like how Astra knits up (for an acrylic) though so i wanted to use it, plus i have a lot of it in my stash and part of the goal for this years holiday knitopoluza was to use up a bunch of my stash and save money.

More to come later as i feature the other knit projects i'm doing for this holiday season.

My first Blog Entry

Everything has a beginning and this is mine.

Welcome to my knitting Blog. My name is Cathrine and I'm a knitter. This blog is going to be about my past, present and future knitting projects. My thoughts, emotional ups and downs regarding knitting.

Currently it is the end of November 2009 and I've been working on my Christmas knits for a couple months now. I plan on buying a condo early in the new year so this year for x-mas i thought I'd dive into my over flowing stash and knit presents for my family and friends. It's not bad when you can knock off 7 Christmas presents and 2 birthday presents all for under $100. Well that's not counting the money that was originally spent on my stashed yarn, but hey that money was spent years ago so that doesn't count right?

In the next couple days I'm planning on uploading photo's of my current projects and then over time start posting my past projects and the history behind them.