Thank you all for your kind comments on my last post; I do hope to respond to them, but time management and I haven’t been very good friends lately, so it might take me some time.
I actually finished a sweater, y’all. That’s a big deal to me right now. It happens to be a toddler-sized sweater, and one that I started in November of last year, but it is FINISHED. (Well, not quite – it still needs to be blocked, and it also needs a zipper. Details, details.)
This past weekend, we drove to Ohio to visit my in-laws for Memorial Day. I wanted an in-car knitting project, but it’d been so long since I’d done much knitting I had no idea where to start. Then I remembered that I’d nearly finished a sweater for Madrigal several months ago (before I stopped knitting altogether). My original intention had been to knit a second babyStripes! sweater as a Solstice present for M, but it was nowhere near done for the Solstice, and I worked on it while we traveled for the holidays, but it just sort of languished after that. When I dug it out of its hiding place before our trip, all that remained was the i-cord zipper facings, kitchenering the underarm stitches, and weaving in ends. That seemed like doable car-knitting to me!
I really love doing attached i-cord, and I think it’ll turn out great as a zipper facing. I use a sl1, p1 edge on my cardigans, and then pick up from the back side of that purled stitch when I make button bands, so I did the same thing for the i-cord edge – I knit the last stitch of the i-cord together with one leg of the backside of the purled stitch.
It looks really nice from the front, because that first slipped stitch lays neatly next to the i-cord:
After my last experience knitting a sweater for my girl only to have her outgrow it before it was done, I’d tried to err on the side of bigness (2T size) for my big girl, and fortunately, it fits her now, 6 months after I cast on! And, though it was inconvenient given my poor packing decisions (hello, nothing but flip flops and t-shirts when the lows dipped into the upper 30s!), it was actually chilly enough for Maddy to wear her sweater when we visited the zoo on Saturday. I took several pictures of her wearing it while watching the polar bears:
Isn’t her hat cute? It has PUPPIES!! on it. M loves PUPPIES!!
I’m hoping it’ll still fit her in the fall, but we’ll just have to wait and see. She’s such a big girl! She had her 18 month well-baby visit this week, and she’s still rocking the 90th percentile range for both height and weight. But she’s slowed down some, thankfully. Only on the growth front, though…
…she’s a runner! (Just like her mama used to be). And a climber, too. She’s such an amazingly physical kiddo.
We’ll see if I ever get around to sticking a zipper in this sweater. I hope so – I’ve still never installed a zipper in a handknit sweater, but it’s something I want to figure out.
Perhaps it’s the sunshine, perhaps it’s something else, but I’m feeling the creative pull again…we’ll see where it leads me this summer. Hopefully I’ll have more to share soon.
whit::knits 
OMG, how adorable! We should take them to the zoo together some day. Kestrel has a hysterical love for all animals.
So very cute! Wish my little girl (now 5, about to start KG) would still wear hand knit sweaters. Sigh. She loves the socks and mittens I make, at least.
Installing zippers isn’t hard, just kind of time-consuming. Go for it!
Adorable sweater; just like her Mom’s. And Maddie’s getting so big! You won’t have any trouble with the zipper.
So cute! I’m glad you got a chance to finish it. I’m curious about your creative plans for the summer. I have a few things to finish, but I’d like to make a new sweater for my LO, I’m thinking the antler cardigan looks good, and it has a broad size range in case I don’t finish it soon! :)
I’ve been having a huge burst of creativity lately, too! It must be the season for it. (Or something.)
I’ve never installed a zipper either but I saw a terrific tutorial for it. I want to say it was Splityarn? I’m not positive.
This is the one Annika means, I think: http://splityarn.com/2011/03/27/easiest-knitted-zipper-install-ever/ I don’t actually own blocking wires, but I think I need to now! I have a sweater for Ada that’s going to need a zipper this fall, and any tool that makes the process simpler is worth it to me. I am such a slow hand-sewer. (Can I write “sewist” instead? “Sewer” is something else I really don’t want to be…)
I love your tiny Stripes sweaters! (And the model, and the polar bears at the zoo.) Hmm, let’s see… if I start a Stripes sweater for H-bear now, I should be able to finish it in the next 4 months… or 6 months… shhh… don’t tell my other projects that have been neglected for over a year.