Pattern: Baby’s First Fair Isle Sweater by Susan Gutpearl
Yarn: Opal Uni 4ply, two-thirds of 100g in colour: #1999 Magenta and Zitron Trekking XXL, two-thirds of 100g in colour: #76 maroon-mauve
Needles: 2.5mm circs and dpns

Hand me that gold medal right now – I am a winner. Finished neatening the steeks on Saturday evening and then left it to block on Sunday. The photos had to wait til this morning due to the model needing her beauty sleep.

I am really thrilled with the end result. It has been a bit of a slog. Pre-baby I could have finished this in a week, easily, but having a small person interrupting at random times makes everything so much harder and at the beginning I honestly did think that I’d be posting today with half a sleeve done and a vague promise to finish it off before stuffing the whole sweater into a Tesco bag and hiding it at the back of my wardrobe.

This is the first fair isle sweater I have ever knitted. To date, the biggest project has been the Deep V Argyle Vest, but that at least didn’t have sleeves to bother me. All the other stranded projects I’ve done were mitts or hats, so it was even more of a challenge.

I like the pattern and I’ve said before that there were a couple of problems which I queried and worked out. I didn’t swatch because of time constraints. I wanted a slightly bigger sweater than the small, so I just used the stated needle size and ended up with a chest width of 25cm which gives lots of wriggle room.

The sock yarns aren’t great for steeking as they don’t stick together, but they make for a lovely soft sweater. The colours of the Trekking change ever so subtly throughout so it looks as if I’ve done clever shading with a million different colours, a la Kaffe Fassett. It also means I can put the sweater in the washing machine without fear of it shrinking as they’re my two favourite workhorse sock yarns.

All in all, I am a very happy knitter today.

The end is in sight! I am halfway through the patterning on the second sleeve, the collar is done and now I need to turn my attention to the insides, which need a good tidy up.

Before that, I just wanted to mention that I decided to Magic Loop the second sleeve instead of using dpns, to see if it was easier. I’m wary about pulling the floats too tight when using this method, but so far it seems to be working and is proving to be quicker as there are half the number of needle changes per round.

So, the inside of the sweater. The crochet has held up well for the most part, but a few threads are sneakily slipping out and I think it needs tidying up. I was planning on knitting facings but firstly I am going to try reinforcing the edges with cross stitch. Mainly it’s going to be quicker than knitting facings and time is of the essence. But having a sweater that doesn’t unravel is kind of important as well, I know.

It’s a horrible grey day today, so the light indoors in pretty rubbish, hence the duff lighting on today’s pics. However, that doesn’t stop me doing a happy dance at the progress made over the weekend.

The steeks have been crocheted and cut. Unfortunately, they’re looking a bit messy and will definitely need facings added. But let’s concentrate on the outside of the sweater for today, as it is much better looking. The actual crocheting took the best part of my knitting time on Saturday. I’m not a natural crocheter, but I can work functional stuff and it does its job, most of the time, even if I’m very slow.

Now the neck steek is cut, you can see that it’s not actually designed for a pin headed baby, but will fit nicely over Rose’s noggin. I’m planning to knit the neck ribbing after the first sleeve so that I don’t get bogged down with sleeve knitting which is what usually leads to knitting boredom for me.

I did have a moment of panic after picking up the sleeve stitches when I thought I’d misread the directions and was merrily knitting away on too many stitches. But after contacting Susan, the designer – who I have to say has already answered one stupid question from me about the pattern with friendliness and politeness and without calling me an idiot, which I was – discovered what was wrong and am now back on track. I will be adding an extra pattern repeat to the sleeves for my orang-utan baby, so I’ve about 15 more rounds plus the ribbing left to go on the first sleeve. I don’t want to tempt fate, so I won’t say anything about possibly actually making the deadline at all.

*waits for fanfare*

Yep, the whole body is done. It looks like the neck opening is absolutely tiny, but that’s because the back and front neck stitches are on holders and the front neck steek is only 11 stitches which pulls it in. Once they’re cut, it’ll be easier to see the shape.

For Marji and Vikki who asked (and anyone else who’s interested), I’ve put a 30cm/12 inch ruler next to the body to help with scale. I’m knitting the smallest pattern size, but on the specified needles. I knit looser than almost everyone in the entire world, it seems, so the sweater will end up slightly bigger than the smallest size, which is perfect. I was concerned that it would be too small otherwise, and I’m sure Rose will get plenty of wear from it in the next few months, knowing what the British weather is like!

Lakaya asked what steeking is. The short answer is a pained scream. The long answer is that it’s a way of knitting fair isle in the round to avoid having to work the wrong side – you just insert an extra strip of stitches which are cut to make an opening. I will write a post with my favourite steeking resources in at some point. I’ve gleaned bits and pieces from all over the place and they all come in useful at various points.

So all I have left to do is:

Crochet the steeks

Cut the steeks

Pick up the neck stitches and work the neckline

Pick up the sleeve stitches and knit a sleeve – twice

Knit steek facings (possibly)

Wash and block the whole sweater

And there’s just 10 days left? So much for relaxing!

The steeks are in place! I now have just under 3 more pattern repeats until the neck steek is added, the shaping worked and then the whole body cast off and ready for cutting.

I have adjusted the steek width to an odd number of stitches to allow for a crocheted steek. I’m not brave enough to cut my knitting without reinforcements yet – maybe the next steeked project! – and a crocheted steek is worked over the 3 centre stitches of the steek panel so it needs an odd number.

I am also thinking about how I will tidy up the inside of this sweater. With the Deep V Argyle Vest, after having to unravel the shoulders, I couldn’t be bothered just left the ends of the crochet dangling. But with this being worn by a wriggly small person, it will need securing. I could possibly just sew over the crochet, but think this might be bulky and am thinking about adding some knitted facings instead. It all depends on how long it takes to get the main sweater finished..!

Progress today has been slow. I know it looks like I’m fairly whizzing along right now, but only because Rose has been in a cooperative mood so far and I’m also knitting pretty much every spare minute I have. But it’s supposed to be a challenge; if it was just “knit something during the Olympics” I could’ve done a dishcloth and then twiddled my thumbs for the rest of the time.

I confess I didn’t cast on during the opening ceremony. I haven’t seen that hour of the morning for a long time: once Rose is asleep in the evening, I’m pretty much nodding off straight after. So instead I cast on on Friday evening before bed and hope that won’t get me accused of being a big fat cheat and thus disqualified.

Progress is good as of this morning. I have knitted three pattern repeats, so that’s halfway to placing the sleeve steeks and almost a third of the entire body completed. I should do some mathematical doodad to work out just how long it will take to knit the entire sweater based on my current pace but a) that will eat into my knitting time and b) babies are unpredictable.

This weekend, for example, was a rare occasion where Rose wanted to snooze and snack a lot, so with the assistance of some cunningly placed cushions, she could eat with my hands free and I knitted merrily for several hours yesterday afternoon.

The sweater is looking great so far. The hardest slog was the corrugated ribbing. I have only tried this once before and it took forever because I had to drop one yarn and pick up the other as I couldn’t purl with my left hand. But I’m wiser now: I’ve discovered Norweigan Purl. There are good photos explaining how to do it on this site. It’s simply a way of purling with the left hand that doesn’t need the yarn to be moved from the back to the front and back again each time. It was tricksy at first and my left index finger got stabbed a fair bit, but by the final few rounds, I was whizzing along and it was, without a doubt, miles easier than purling in the old way.

Though I’m using Opal and Trekking sock yarns which are superwash, they are both developing a nice hairy halo, a bit like traditional Shetland yarns. I’ve no fear of steeking, anyway, and as I’ll be reinforcing the steeks with crochet like before, they’d have to try very hard indeed to unravel.

I’m in. And what am I knitting? Remember this?

Bearing in mind that it took me the best part of a week to finish a moss stitch baby hat, I think the only excuse for me choosing this project can be the fact I’ve got a raging cold and throat infection and am slightly delirious with it all. But stranger things have happened. Watch this space.