Pink, Pink, Pink

Pattern: Debbie Bliss Ribbon Tied Hoodie
Yarns: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran; Cashmerino Astrakhan 31016, 31015
Needles: 4.5mm circulars
Buttons: Painted wooden buttons from stash
Started: March 2010
Finished: November 2010

The dark pink yarn was left over from several previous versions of this top which I supplemented with a couple of balls of light pink from the stash. This sweater would need to be stripey, as there wasn't enough of each yarn to knit the whole project in. When I weighed the yarn there was roughly twice as much light pink so I decided to knit wide stripes, 8 rows of light pink then 4 of dark pink.

Rather than knitting this in flat pieces and seaming them I decided to try and eliminate as many seams as possible. I knit the body in one piece, casting on all of the stitches required for the back and both front pieces. Once I reached the point that the armholes need to be I used the extra balls of yarns to knit the 3 sections. I then cast off the shoulder seams together leaving just the collar stitches live. These were then knit across and cast off in the purple that I'd cast on in.



The sleeves came next. Once again I weighed the remaining yarn and now I had more dark than light pink, so I decided to reverse the body stripes knitting 8 dark to 4 light pink. As it didn't look as though I would have enough yarn to knit full size sleeves I decided to pick up stitches around both armholes and knit the sleeves together from the top down until I ran out of yarn. I looked at the shaping of the original pattern to work out how many stitches to pick up and when to decrease. On the first attempt I picked up too few stitches and decreased too quickly giving me a very oddly shaped pair of sleeves. So I ripped them out and tried again, finishing these normal looking sleeves with 1 round of purple before casting off.



The next step was to create some button holes. I did this by crocheting up the left front leaving 6 chain loops for each button hole. The final step was to sew on buttons and weave in all the ends.

This was the first of the baby knit kits that I put together. The aim of the kits was to stash bust and end up with a supply of baby goodies to gift to friends. I pulled yarn and patterns together into baggies so that I could quickly pull a new project once one was finished. When a friend announced the arrival of a little bundle of joy all I needed to do were the final stages, button holes, buttons and weaving in ends. Luckily this cardigan has gone to a little girl despite her dad requesting pink whatever the sex!