Insubordiknit

mismatched sweater

Freeform pattern knit with bemidji natural wool.

Jump into a sweater

Ugly animals, ugly bag, cute bag hmmmm...what next? oh yeah, A friggin sweater! I stood undaunted, even more so since it was for a three year old. My LYS recommended some wool, the same that I made the bag from actually. Dark and light gray, natural, from a small humane farm in WI. I bought 750 yrds for $18 and after reading a few patterns for inspiration, not swatching or checking guage, I pulled out a set of bamboo 9s and began a sweater that, for all I knew, coulda' fit Little Bit, me, or my step father.

I plodded through a whole front of stockinet stitch, then a back, then finally 2 arms. The only thing new was the arm shaping, which included a few m1 increases. The neck was easy, no shaping, just slash-y.

I blocked with some antique hat pins on the floor of my mom's living room.

Then came time to stitch up. huh? First the side of the body, the arm number one, by arm number 2 I had the hang of mattress stitch and then it was over.

Viola, sweater!

Needle points of pride

It's a silly little point of pride for me that I've yet to make a scarf. While it's the first project of many, and rightly so, I just didn't have it in me to start with a project so long. Instead I knitted a menagerie of small and unattractive animals that Small Bit adored for a while and that now reside in a bin aptly named people and animals.

From there I moved on to a large but still unattractive bag knitted on pink 15s and out of a huge skein of no-dye-lot redheart acrylic yarn and three old pairs of pants I ripped into strips and tied together. A kind of rag rug bag but without the durability or frankly, quaintness. All my friends were kind and used kind words as I proudly carried this monstrosity around. 'Tis a dark day in my knitting history, long as it is.

My next project was a joey-less marsupial bag from the first stitch and bitch book. Knowing nothing of yarn or of felting, again I used, you guess it -- red heart acrylic yarn. It did not felt. I was, however, quite impressed with the right-twist seams, learning to pick up stitches, and knit in the round. Very cool. I decided to make another for my mother, this time out of some lovely natural wool yarn from my new favorite place, my local yarn shop. I dyed the 2 skeins red and wine with kool aid and got started. It turned out lovely but unfortunately I've only pictures before the felting process and never remember to take them when I'm visiting the 'rents.

yes, back-dated again.