Little Girls Like Red

In January I found this beautiful red yarn in my favorite yarn store. I loved the rich ruby red color and the feel of the yarn. It is a 100% Australian superwash Merino wool by Knit One Crochet Too, called Sebago.

Over winter break we went on a college trip for Kaefer to check out some of the colleges she had applied to. Two of the colleges are in Colorado, and while we were in Boulder we met up with our friends in Erie. Their son with his wife and little daughter were there as well. The little girl is a leap baby, born on February 29th, 2012. This year will be her first "real" birthday, and I was thinking of knitting a cardigan for her. When I asked her what her favorite color is, the answer was "red".

Only a week later I found this beautiful yarn and bought five skeins of it. Before that I had downloaded the pattern for a darling little cardigan called "wee wildflower" by the hugely talented Alana Dakos. You can find the pattern here - it is the children's version of one of the patterns in her book "Coastal Knits".

I can't say that the knitting went smoothly - this challenged me on some levels. First was that the yarn didn't run very fast with bamboo needles. After I changed to metallic needles that problem was solved - the yarn could slide easily from the needle and the knitting was much faster.

Look at the edging of the body and the arms of the cardi:

I first tried the technique for the edging on some scrap yarn - good thing I did, because I completely messed up the first time! I just didn't get the instructions until I read it all over again and tried one more time. It worked. Huge relief on my side since this was only the beginning of the entire project. What if I had been stuck that soon?

The next little challenge were the pockets. They represent a wildflower (even though that is really hard to see) and the making of the bobbles was a bit tedious. Not really difficult, though. Of course mine don't look half as nice as the ones in the pattern, but they are... unique.

Knitting up the cardigan and the arms wasn't difficult, it just took a lot of patience and time. The neck- and button bands were quickly done, although one of them is slightly crooked. However, I felt truly challenged when I had to sew the arms in the armholes. You have to know that I hate sewing, and this experience one more time let me know exactly why. I'm just not cut out for sewing.

The buttons were easy peasy of course (the only sewing I actually master) and I had found a couple of quite cute buttons at the crafts and fabric store.

I took a deep breath of relief when I had weaved in the last tail of yarn and the cardi was done. If I ever do it again I will certainly change up things a little bit. I don't think I can go through the entire procedure again. Now I just hope that the cardi will fit that little girl and won't be too small.

Did you knit anything recently?