The downside of winging it....

Here is a cute sweater I made for newborn Henry. This blue yarn is variegated and the color runs from pale blue to pretty dark. It's cotton and very shiny.



After you do about a dozen baby sweaters, the patterns all start to run together and you start thinking, "Hey, maybe I don't need a pattern at all."

Well maybe you really do.

This is an absolutely adorable sweater, only it's just too small (as Henry is showing you). And besides that, newborns don't wear clothes - maybe hats, but beyond t-shirts and diapers you can just forget it.

Back to this sweater - I used pieces from a bunch of patterns and it came out exactly as I thought it would, only like I said Henry's barely a month old and already it's too small. (The back measures the standard 9 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches in most patterns, so maybe it's not about not using a pattern after all.)

What I will say about this sweater is this - small or not, there are several successes here: I hate to sew in sleeves so I did this one by picking up the stitches and knitting the sleeves out from the body of the sweater. I love to do this and am currently working on a Sweater That Wouldn't Die on which I plan to do this also. I also picked up the stitches to do a cute little roll neck and that came out great.

The sleeve deal may be a bit trickier for a grownup garment, though, and again this is when winging it can really cost you.

For baby sweaters if you knit the sleeves by picking up stitches you make the back and fronts straight - in other words none of that annoying Shape Armhole decreasing and binding off.

I guess I will tell you later if doing the same thing for an adult size will work or not.

(more on The Sweater That Wouldn't Die soon)