A sweater for Grace

I have been so busy making things for our upcoming Valentine's day party and am anxious to show them off.   But before all that, here is Grace's new sweater!

This sweater seems to be targeted for boys as there was a boy modeling the sweater on the pattern but it didn't scream boy and Grace likes plainer items.  So we decided on this one.  She picked the yarn.  Here are my notes from Ravelry if you are interested in the specifics.

This yarn was lovely to knit.  Thick and soft.  Very nice.  The pattern was easy enough.  This sweater is not knit in the round and I enjoyed the change.  Sometimes I get sick of knitting in the round especially near the end of the sweater when you are knitting say the last sleeve.  You keep turning that big heavy sweater round and round.  So variety is nice.  I knit the second band of ribbing completely and totally wrong.  Like I wasn't even reading the pattern.  I didn't catch this mistake until was knitting the other side and it was too late to rip out.  So I had to recreate the mistakes on the other pieces of ribbing.  As it turns out I like this piece of ribbing.  It's unique, adds interest and provides a nice texture.  So it was a happy mistake.  It's kinda hard to see on this photo.  I was supposed to knit a more traditional ribbing.  But instead I did not.  

I actually forgot how slow seaming a sweater is.  I really just wanted to take it to the machine and finish it.  It would have taken me a matter of minutes.  But I didn't.  I sewed this sweater up in two nights.  Seaming is a slow process though I suppose knitting the sweater is even slower.  But I was impatient to be done so the sewing seemed too slow.  I should have taken a picture of how I seam the sweater.   I was pretty pleased with the results and my technique is not fancy.  I just take kinda big horizontal stitches but I overlap them and pull tight.  

Grace loves it and wore it these last two days.  It's really thick and soft and warm. 

Now I desperately want to start a new sweater for Margot but I promised Brent I wouldn't spend any money on crafting supplies this month.  I over spent last month buying the yarn for this sweater, a fabric order from fabric.com and the kits to make two stuffed foxes- which by the way, Mr. Fox is done except for his clothes.  Well worth the money.  Wait till you see him.