posts tagged: finished!

Pull Gaspard

This pattern has been in my Ravelry favorites for quite some time; I was excited to finally knit it! My cousin and his wife are due in May, and this little “sweatshirt” type sweater was just the thing. The whole front “apron” part is a big pocket!

I dove into my stash and found two remaining skeins of Cascade 220 in this gray. It was exactly the amount I’d need—though I ran so close to the end of the yardage, I didn’t even attempt the crochet edging in the same color. I did make the body slightly longer, as other reviews on Rav indicated it was off proportionally. (I think I added 10 rows.) I cast this on during a KBC retreat weekend in Lancaster, PA, and had finished nearly all of it except for one sleeve by the time I got home. I knit the body in the round to the armholes, then knit both the front and back simultaneously so that it took as little brainpower as possible.

The folding open of the lapels before starting the sailor flap seemed straightforward enough, and I’d read a few Rav posts that warned that this was tricky so I was prepared. I could see it clearly in my mind—I understood what was intended! And yet I got it wrong on the first try anyway. It was an easy enough fix, though I didn’t realize it until I was a few rows in because of the way the piece kept flipping on me. Not a big deal; ripped and restarted.

After knitting on both sleeves, though, I had a moment of crisis: The neck opening was too small, and it did not have a lot of give. I have relatively limited knowledge of babies, but I know they usually have giant noggins. With my mantra of “when in doubt, rip it out” echoing in my head, I laboriously frogged the sleeves, un-Kitchenered the shoulders, undid the sailor flap, and frogged down to the neck split. I decreased a few more times at the neck edge until I felt it was satisfactorily wide. This time, the sailor flap gave me no issues—aided, I think, by the fact that I did not bind off the top of the back on the second go-around. That time I left the stitches live, so I just knit them into the flap.

I wanted a neon yarn to do the edging, but also needed so little I didn’t want to buy a whole ball of neon (and I couldn’t find any neon around the office!). So this spring green made do, but I love the effect even still.

Of course, knitting for a baby due in May means making something for cold weather and then having to wait… and wait… to see them in it! Hopefully the 6-month size I made will be a perfect fit come next fall/winter for little Henry!