I have been knitting gifts for the new babies in my friend’s lives since I learned to knit a few years ago. Each sweater is a new challenge for me, either trying a new technique or designing my own sweater. The latest is both a new technique for me and my own design.
J is a work friend that I met only a few years ago. It was like I met my almost-twin. The Venn diagram of our intrests intersects in so many strange ways that as we were getting to know each other while working on the same project at work, it was kinda freaking us (and our colleagues) out a bit. We both like Sci-Fi, conspiracy theories (and we both are interested in them without beleiving in them), we are both married to people who are not native Americans, and our favorite drink is an Amaretto Sour (which many people have never even heard of!). Other wierd syncronicities occurred while on the project, such as me reading one night about the independent discoveries of calculus (something that I never knew) and a few days later, J mentioning that very thing in casual conversation after the two of us came up with different ideas on how to solve a problem we were having. That was weird.
On the outer ends of our Venn diagram, I love knitting, of course, and am a TV junkie, and he is a fanatic of Horror films, never watches TV, and loves comic books. Now, I like comic books, but I buy them to read them, or watch the comics on the WB or Cartoon network. He collects his favorites, and is a resource for all things Marvel or DC, or other. We talked about Spider-Man, Batman, Super-Man, X-Men, Hellboy and others as the came up in life or work.
When he told me his wife was expecting a boy, I knew exactly what I was going to make for the new addition. The Green Lantern! I knew from previous conversations that is favorite GL was Hal Jordan, because I had asked him what the deal was with the attitude of John Stewart, the grumpy Green Lantern that’s on the Justice League Unlimited program on Cartoon Network. This turned out to be great research for this project.
I knew I would never find a pattern for a Green Lantern sweater. The first thing I did was find an image of the Green Lantern logo of the Hal Jordan era. Luckilly I was able to find an image of a t-shirt that J actually has, which was perfect. I had to figure out a way to transfer the image to graph paper so it would come out the right shape when knitted.
Before I did that, I had to find some yarn. I loved the green color of Knitpicks Shine, and chose that color for the body. But do you have any idea how hard it is to find white and black cotton in sport weight? I ended up with a DK weight Jo Sharp cotton in a natural color, and a navy blue, because no one had it in black or white. Putting it all together worked really well. So, I knitted up a swatch and took my gauge so I could start planning.
Next was a trip over to the ABC’s of Knitting to generate some graph paper that matched my gauge. Next was to break out my little math set from college and use the compass and rulers to measure the dimensions of the logo and replicate them on the graph paper so the image would come out as a circle and not an oval.
Here is the body, blocking on my new blocking board, along with my first swatch for Eris. I’m on my fourth now, by the way. I knitted the hem in with the sweater which I thought looked really nice, and I will probably do that again depending on the project.
I hadn’t knitted any intarsia before, so I had to learn that technique as I went. I decided to knit the white and green parts together, and then duplicate stitch the black later so it would sort of pop out and look real cartoon-y. During the process of knitting the sweater, I picked up Sally Melville’s Color book, which helped a little in me getting the intarsia and the duplicate stich working right together.
I did do something a little wonky though. I did the duplicate stitch by bridging two half-stitches instead of actually duplicating a whole stich in one color. I thought that might look better in the areas where the knitting wasn’t in a straight line. It was difficult, but I like the final look. Here are the sleeves, also blocking. I actually knitted these in front of J, at our Christmas party at work. Naturally he had no idea what I was working on.
So here it is, the final product. I put buttons on the right shoulder after hearing from my sister that pullovers are better that way for babies.
I gave it to J on Tuesday when I heard that his wife was pretty close to giving birth. Turns out they had to induce on Friday so I should hear on Monday that there’s a new kid on the block. J loved it, and said, now we have to name him Jordan, he’s got the outfit!