Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

After many years of knitting scarves, hats, dishclothes, and mittens, I finally decided to knit a sweater. But being a cautious person, I want to knit a mock-up to work out any problems I would encounter knitting the full size project.

I decided to use the pattern for Nora’s Orange Sweater with a simplified fair isle pattern. I picked this pattern as the sweater I want to do in the future is knit from the waistband up and in the round. I used a simplified snowflake motif, as it is my first attempt at knitting fair isle.

Here is a picture of the sweater when the body and the sleeves are partially finished:

Here is picture of the finished sweater:


I general, I think the finished project turned out nice. There are two things that I’ll to work on: collar shaping and fair isle on double pointed needles. The shaping of the back collar went well, however the problem came when it was time to pick up stitches along the edges. Incorporating this shaped section into the knitting introduced small holes in the pattern. They’re not bad, but noticeable to a seasoned knitter. A friend suggested picking up an excess of stitches along the edge and k2tog to decrease the number of stitches along this section to avoid getting these holes. Second, I think I got too tight working the fair isle portion of the sleeves. I tend to tighten up working on double pointed needles as I’m trying to avoid having the work come off the needles.