Could this Prevent the Boyfriend Sweater Curse?

My son has been asking me for years to knit him a sweater. He had one when he was younger that he wore to death. But have you ever tried finding a suitible boys sweater pattern for a boy who is older then 6? (or one that out grew that age when he was 4?).

Imagine my excitement when I discovered this year that he was able to wear men's sizes. Out came all of the man sweater patterns that I've been hoarding. And let me tell you, gone is that child who would wear anything I threw at him. He disliked some patterns for being too plane, some for having too many cables. Some he didn't know why he didn't like them, he just didn't. He wanted blue, but he didn't want a pure blue, a sky blue, a pale blue, a bright blue or a purple-blue. By the time we had settled on a sweater, one could have been knit (and how many times I thought I'd drop this project in favor of one of my own, I'll not say.)

We settled on this, it's a Crystal Palace pattern and the yarn is stash, I'll admit that this is a test sweater, it's acrylic. I have to see how an 11 year old boy treats this offering before we look at real wool.

And it will be interesting to see if he's a bit more inclined to desire hand knit sweaters from romantic interests as he matures, or if this expereince alone has scared his knitting aquisition desires for life.

I've joined my first KAL

I'm working on a sweater for my son now (yeah, I'll get the pics up as soon as I have the camera and the sweater in the same room). It will be done soon and I hadn't figured out what I'd move on to and then I saw this KAL today and figured it would be fun.

So I'll go the the LYS this weekend or next to find yarn. The sweater takes sock yarn-- what fun. I'm thinking something autumny, something verigated maybe?

We'll soon find out.

I have gotten to the point where I have to see if Pictures post before I even attempt to start a thought, ick. Today is my lucky day though because I have pictures!!

To Knit a Sweatshirt:

over the past weekend, I recalimed some yarn.

I bought this beautiful verigated brushed cotton five or six (or seven, eight, nine?) years ago. At the time I either didn't know how to knit or wasn't proficent yet as I paired up the yarn with a beautiful crocheted textured fiddley top.

Well the marriage of these two beautiful items wasn't harmonious and it became a DOG-- though I knew it would be re-done some way some how, until this past weekend I didn't invest any thinking or energy to it.

But this weekend when I'd just finished one project and hadn't yet cast on for another, the yarn called to me and said it needed to be made.

So I decided to make a very simple sweater with little or no patterning (the yarn is thick-thin as well as verigated). Found the simple pattern with perfect guage and in 3 days I'm almost done with it.

The bonus is that while it will technically be a sweater--it's already appearing that it's going to wear like a sweatshirt. and it is beautiful.

I am so glad that I didn't push the original project and instead waited for the right time and the right inspiration to really do the yarn justice.

Both the blue sweater below and the pastel above were knit using the Spring Issue of Cast On. I utilized my summer of stash for both of them and the pastel was made with 5 skeins of Sidar Magic that I had purchased two winters ago. Though the price per skein was $5.50, I'd bet I bought it on sale. The blue sweater was made with 4 skeins of Lion Brand Jiffy that I found in my old bedroom at my parents house the last time I was trying to purge there (I think they have a fear that if I don't have any stuff there, I won't come back-- I have yet to convince them that if I haven't used it in 15 years, I'm not likely to want it now). The price tag was from Meijer and I stopped working there 16 years ago and it was a clearence purchase of a whopping 40 cents a skein. Sometimes inexpensive doesn't have to be cheap.