July Sweater

July Sweater
Originally uploaded by Big Sister.

A co-worker of mine, who was incredibly helpful to me last semester, is having a baby girl in July. I like this co-worker, and like I said, she really helped me out, but she is one of those people who says her daughter will never wear pink. She wants neutral for her baby. For these purposes that was fine because I have quite a bit of Pakucho, which only comes in neutral, but come on, people, pink is not the devil. It is OK for girls to wear pink from time to time because face it, for the most part, at some point, they will demand it. You can try to keep them away from the Disney Princesses, but somehow it seeps it. Maybe the best course of action is to act non-chalant around pink and when the time comes girls won't go too wild with the pink.

The specs
Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmerman's February Sweater from the Knitter's Almanac
Yarn: Pakucho Organic Cotton, Chocolate, 3+ skeins
Needles: Addi 6

As soon as these starting popping up everywhere, I knew I would have to make one. Because it is EZ, there are a lot of knitter's choice options here. I love that about EZ and I wouldn't want it any other way. However, it does mean a little more work for the knitter, in this case, me. Because she wrote in a very conversational way, it is very easy to miss things in the instructions like "switch to pattern." I was at nearly 4 inches of garter  stitch (which did seem odd, but I was going with it) before I caught that little gem, so there was a bit of ripping back after having ripped back twice previously (forgot to increase, forgot a button hole). But once I got past the frogging, it was smooth sailing.

I made two small modifications, one intentional and the other not so much. The first was to knit the sleeves in the round, that I meant to do. The other was to reduce the number of buttonholes. I misread (surprise!) the instructions and made the first two buttonholes too close together, so instead of ripping back for that I decided to have four close together buttonholes, as opposed to an astronomical number of close together buttons. Speaking of buttons, I got these at Imagiknit after considering several green buttons. The red just popped.

The Pakucho worked very nicely for this sweater. The yarn has a nice crispness that highlights the stitch pattern. I washed it cold and got a little shrinking, but not much. I had foolishly thought I could knit this with two skeins (~178 yards), so thankfully Jenny convinced me to use the color I had three skeins of. Even then I had to go back and frog some swatches and pieces from the Corset Pullover that I hadn't used. I would say having three hundred yards of your chosen yarn on hand is a good idea.

It's an adorable sweater that is easy and quick to knit. I would definitely knit it again!

Comments

[Tanya]

The sweater looks great, very adorable! I agree with you about pink but I also agree with the new mum on this one too. My daughter wears pink sometimes (mainly due to gifts) and the main reason we aren't crazy about it is because the corporate world tells us she should. You wander into a girls section and pink (and purple) is it. Like babies/kids/parents would care about colour unless an advertising company told them they had to. They have hijacked a lovely colour (I like pink) and make it a statement of sexuality (and how "pretty" the girl is), it is so mad. One thing we don't waiver on is all of the ridiculous over the top slutty girl clothes out there. Last time we went shoe shopping in the US she was 3 and about half of the shoes available were high heels! If she can't be comfortable in it, she doesn't wear it (and we are totally ok with dresses because they are comfortable and make sense). I however do get annoyed when something that is normally associated with women is thrown out without a thought, like knitting. Women = bad, men = good mentality is crazy. That isn't feminism. Maybe this is too much for a post on knitting, damn you got me started, imagine how much fun I am at parties!

[Karma]

I'd love to see how long your colleague can go without succumbing to pink. I'm not too wild about it, either, but Amelie wears it quite often because of all the gifts and hand-me-downs. It's not bad.

Your EZ Baby Sweater turned out beautifully! I love it in that organic cotton look. And the buttonhole fiasco is probably a good thing; more often than not I just button the top button(s) on Amelie's cardis anyway. The red buttons are a great complement to the chocolate cotton. I think I used about 300 yards of Cascade 220 for mine, too. Must be the magic number!

[alison]

Oh my goodness, I *love* how this turned out. The chocolate-ice-cream colour with the red buttons! Love it.

I had a conversation recently about girls wearing pink, with a fellow student who has a 2-year-old. It's a tricky thing, because of course you want to resist gender stereotypes, but at the same time you don't want to demonize femininity. Because there's nothing inherently wrong with pink, or dresses -- after all, femininity/femaleness isn't devalued *because* it's feminine/female.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is this: Please convert this pattern into adult sizes so I can have a chocolate EZ sweater with red buttons. Thanks!

[anne]

Okay, so, my mother had this aunt whom my grandmother raised. She had that enviable gift of looking at an item and then going home to reproduce it. So, she made that sweater, almost exactly in crochet, edged in blue with ribbon ties. No pattern. Really darling for the tiny babies. There are a couple of them floating around Princeton Street. One is on Teddy, my childhood bear. It looks good on him. Swear to god it's almost exactly the same. It's crazy. She made those little sweaters in the 40's.

[Rayna]

It seems the best way to insure your daugther ends up longing to be a Playboy Bunny is to let her know how offended you are by pink and all things girly. What better way to drive a mother positively batty, which I believe is the goal at some point.

[Jenn]

The sweater is darling!!! I agree, EZ is wonderful, and I think she would praise your alterations - they look great!
- Jenn
http://www.rhymeswithsocks.blogspot.com

[Jessica K.]

Hi! I'm a big fan of Stash&Burn so i had to check out your blog. I agree with the comment above, and would like to formally request that if you need a new project in the next few months (ha!) it would be simply amazing to have this pattern in an adult size. You know, if you want to.

Thanks, and keep podcasting! Yours is one of the best.

Jessica
flickr.com/photos/jkaufman

[Maddie]

The sweater looks great! Hopefully I will be able to finally finish a sweater of my own and stop drooling over the ones that everyone else keeps making!

[Bonnie]

That is adorable. Wish I could make one but everyone I know is having boys. It is amazing! Not a single little girl in the bunch.

[Paula Daniel`]

I love this pattern, but where can I get it? If you know, would you please email me at: baconsgram@yahoo.com.
I knit and crochet for the babies at the county hospital, and am always looking for easy and/or pretty patterns.
Thanks from baconsgram!!!