Design my own knitwear: Check. Please welcome Iris Sweater.

A while ago I thought a raglan sweater with sleeves in a different color than the body would look cool, and those sleeves would be even cooler if they had some sort of fair isle pattern in them. Kind of like a long sleeved baseball T-shirt. That's got to be on Raverly, baseball is popular right? Turns out I couldn't find what I had in mind. So I thought, hey, why not make it myself! How hard can it be? Remember how I said I tend to start things and have no idea what I'm doing, or what I'm getting into? Yeah. Now I think there was a reason the design wasn't on Ravelry (until now!) It's because it's kind of pain in the ass to make, at least until you separate the sleeves from the body.

 "Is it going to be that short? And the neckline looks bad"-Mom

I had an image in my mind of what I wanted, and also how I wanted to do it...sort of. I did not know I had to learn intarsia knitting if I wanted the sleeves to actually be connected to the body. Nor that I would have 7 little wads of yarn to work with until I separated the sleeves. And ok, I get that a lot of raglans have you work flat for some neckline shaping and stuff. But I did not know that my intarsia sleeves did not lend themselves to round knitting. So I had to roll with it and shape the neckline into more of a scoop-neck and keep on knitting flat all the way till the sleeves were separated.

Don't worry Mom, I'm not making a boob shirt.

Once I figured the top out, the rest would be easy! Just plain circular knitting with some waist shaping. Except I didn't figure out beforehand how many decreases or increases to make, or how often. Patterns usually have sizing all spelled out for you! Oh but I'm making this up...crap. When I thought I was done I noticed the top fit fine, but the bottom didn't, and had to rip out my stitches about 10 inches. It made me sad.

Then it came time to write the pattern. Generally patterns exist in real or virtual space. As in someone wrote up what they did, instead of leaving it in their head. I wrote down what I was doing, while I was doing it, about 75% of the time. I think I did a pretty good job filling in the rest to make a pattern that can re-produce my sweater, but I didn't feel comfortable writing the pattern for other sizes when I had to reverse engineer instructions.

Ok enough complaining! Yes, this was hard to design, and I messed up my own design a few times in the process. But I'm very pleased with how Iris turned out. Plus I learned lots of knitting skillz for future designs. So, without further ado: Iris Sweater is available as a free PDF download on Ravelry or by clicking this link: http://www.ravelry.com/dls/stephanie-bora-designs/182625?filename=Iris_Sweater.pdf. I'm not charging for something that could have a decent amount of errors. So if you try making this and run into trouble or find errors, please contact me! I'd be happy to help as much as I can, and I'd like to fix errors in my pattern as they come up. Once you get the concept of how this sweater is constructed it's pretty straightforward, but keep in mind that it uses round and flat knitting, and intarsia and fair isle color work, so it may not be best for beginning knitters. Though that never stopped me. Enjoy!

For the love of knitting

"How can you even stand to do that?" is what my mom usually asks when she sees me knitting. And some times I think she may have a point. Modern industry has removed the need for us to make our own clothes, good yarn is not cheap, and knitting is time consuming.  So why knit?

I started knitting less than two years ago. Before that, if someone asked me what I thought about knitting I'd probably have said something like: lame, waste of time, and isn't that for old people? I was so scathing I would even roll my eyes walking by the local yarn shop (gasp!). At the ripe age of 24 I apparently became an old person.  I was waiting around at my pharmacy, and a woman next to me was knitting. She was working on a tube-shaped thing with some pretty small needles, but I remember it being a really lovely variegated red. Deep and vibrant. We had a pivotal conversation in which I learned how wrong I was, and she inspired a passion in me to learn knitting. I remember it exactly: "Are you knitting?" "Yep." "Is it difficult to do?" "Nope." I was sold.  That very night I bought some cheap yarn and needles, intended to make a scarf (those are simple right?) and I was off! Or was I on? Wait, what's casting on? Casting off, are we sailing? How did I make that hole? Purl?! There's more than just a knit stitch? Basically I had no idea what I was doing, and this has become a theme throughout my knitting.  But after watching the same YouTube videos over and over (shout out to knittinghelp.com) and getting some basics down, I decided to use that holey, uneven, lumpy "scarf" to learn more techniques.  

I've been knitting ever since for a few reasons. The most obvious is sweaters are awesome, and there are a lot of fashionable designs out there.  Who doesn't love a good fall sweater, or summery linen top? But beyond the great fashion potential, I really love knitting. It's steady, rhythmic, and helps slow my mind down. But what I may love most is the progress.  When you knit a stitch, you've made a stitch.  It's right there for you to see.  I love this.  In the lab I work in, that type of visual progress is almost non-existant. I can't see what's going on at the cellular level, but I can see a stitch.

http://www.etsy.com

So why do you knit? For me, it's because I love the process of seeing something take shape. Tell me how you got started knitting!  Did you learn as a child? Did you teach yourself after being an ass about it it, like me? Is it a family tradition? Share why you love it! What is it about looping yarn around itself that draws you in? I'd love to hear!