I also promised a post of the sweaters I’ve made for La La in the past year.  I’ve made 3 and have started on a pair of mittens and a new hat but I have til next winter to finish those.  She actually picked out the yarn for the hat and mittens (and scarf if there is enough).  She picked purple Encore, which should work out OK since it’s washable and her favorite color is purple!

The first sweater I made for her is this one, in a marled Cotton Fleece in a Raspberry/Pink colorway. 

I was itching to do something with a crochet collar and so this is what I came up with. 

 

I didn’t have a pattern, and for everything but the sleeves, I think it worked out OK.  For the sleeves, I decided to pick up and knit down, and there are some areas where I don’t like the way the increases look.

But otherwise, I think it’s OK.  For the crochet part, I just measured around the opening and picked a motif out of a book that had a repeat that would fit in space I needed.  I then centered it and attached it to the inside edges.  I like the yarn, but I think the idea that I had would have worked better in wool than in cotton.  La La likes the sweater and often picks it when we ask her which sweater she wants to wear.

 

The next sweater I made is this one.

This was done a la Barbara Walker… from the top down.  It’s in KnitPicks Swish Bulky, a yarn that I really like.  I bought a few skeins that were on clearance and was bummed when I decided to make a sweater with it and the colors were all sold out.  I decided to call anyway and they were able to get me one more skein of the purple, so I went on with the sweater and used the purple for the cuffs and collar. 

I did make a swatch, and despite my measuring and working from the top down, the sweater is still to big for La La, so she will grow into it.  I thought that would happen, so I made the cuffs extra long so that they would roll up in the beginning, then could be unrolled as she got taller. 

I still need to put the buttons on.  La La picked them out at JoAnn’s.  I’m not kidding – she was only 10 months old but she picked out the buttons, in fact I didn’t even see them until she pointed them out.  They are little purple flowers. 

The final sweater I made was for her Halloween costume. 

For many, many months, her favorite animal has been the Lion, so it was a natural pick to make her a Lion sweater for Halloween. 

 

 

I started with a basic sweater pattern, added a hood, ears, tail, and foldover mittens that could be buttoned open since she’d be wearing it to school and would need to eat, color, etc with her hands. 

I had the hardest time trying to figure out the mane. I scoured my knitting books, knowing that I’d seen this stitch somewhere that left loops on the front of the work.  I couldn’t find it anywhere and was starting to think I was crazy.  I even looked through my harmony crochet guides, thinking maybe it was not a knitting pattern at all, but still nothing could be found. 

So then I turned to Google, and after much searching, I finally found something that looked perfect on Knitty.  There was a pattern for a knitted lion washcloth that was really cute and had a lion face in the middle with a mane all around.  This wasn’t the place I saw the original loopy stitch, but it worked perfectly for the mane and the end of the tail. 

Again, I used KnitPicks Swish, but this time in worsted weight.  This is a really good washable yarn and I’ve been happy with it for everything I’ve used it in. 

She wore the sweater to school and on Halloween, and seemed to love it.  She would put up her paws and RAWR!! and roar on cue.   She wouldn’t let me paint her face though, so she only got some semi-decent whiskers and nose. 

At school, they had a costume parade.  First they wheeled out cribs filled with the infants.  Next was the toddler room, which is where La La is.  Some kids walked out holding onto a rope, and the kids who wander were in wagons.  You can guess where La La was… she takes after her mother with the looking at everything she passes. 

When her wagon was facing where I was sitting at the perimeter of the play yard, she saw me and wanted to be with me and so she started crying.  This was only a few weeks after her transition to the toddler room, so she was still upset in the mornings when we dropped her off.  So, I picked her up and we sat and watched the rest of the parade, and then went to visit with her friend NickNick and his parents. 

After the parade, I took her back to her classroom and had a long tearful goodbye.  That’s always the hardest part of leaving her.  Most days she’s fine, but once in a whil
e, even now, she doesn’t want us to drop her off and she whines or actually cries.  

Here she is waiting for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween night, dressed in her PJs and her Lion sweater.