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Quarantine Diaries: Knitting a Sweater

June 12, 2020 RWM
Blog, Personal

 

Full disclosure: I am secretly a grandma. If unoccupied, I can spend a whole day knitting and then sleep excellently, feeling like the day was perfectly spent. Quarantine seemed like an opportunity to finally attempt a grand knitting endeavour  – making a sweater.

 

The final fit isn’t perfect, mainly because I eyeballed the measurements and tried to make my own pattern. The sweater ended up looking like something Prince Humperdinck from The Princess Bride would wear but overall I’m happy with the end result. Now, the only thing stopping me from an all-out sweater-knitting frenzy is a shortage of yarn, cause it turns out that one sweater needs an absurd amount. Who knew! It’s probably for the best.

 

(Thanks to my sister Krista for taking the pictures!)

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The Pattern

I based the pattern off of my favourite sweaters – the frumpy, oversized ones – and knitted everything separately before sewing all the parts together in the end.


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Front and Back

There was a lot of trial and error here. I initially made the front too narrow (I only casted on 42 stitches), so it wasn’t able to cover the sides of the torso. To fix the problem without having to redo the front entirely, I added 10 stitches on each side of the back piece. (Casting on tutorial here).

 

Though the front and back were supposed to be identical, the back ended up having left and right flaps so that the sweater would fit. In the end, I liked the addition, since it added more variety in texture.

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Process Pictures

This is the midway point, when I completed the front and back pieces and sewed them together.

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Sleeves

To knit the sleeves, I switched to circular needles. I think I made the arm holes a little too large, but I figured that too big was better than too small.

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Sewing Together

I sewed everything inside out so that the seams and loose threads would be hidden. This sweater took over 500 yards of yarn and a week of furious knitting to complete, so here’s to hoping it’ll last a while!

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P.S. …

There was some extra yarn, so I made my baby nephew a little sweater to match. The arms are a bit big but it’s fashion.

 

Update: A few months later, a different project!