Blessed Sweater
Forget sweater curses; this sweater is blessed. It’s made with love for the man I love who has tolerated knitting needles left in dangerous places, has payed for yarn I have yet to use, has moved his Dune collection over on the bookshelf to accommodate more knitting books (To be fair, the Dune series is obnoxiously never-ending.), has almost fallen asleep in yarn stores, has dealt with my moodiness when something I made was too big or too small, has willingly held up his hands for me to lay a skein over while I wind a ball, and has eaten supper on the couch because sweaters were blocking on the table. Yes, finally, after eleven years, he’s getting a sweater out of the deal.
I would have sooner if I’d had confidence that he’d want one or even wear one. We live in the South; it was in the seventies on Christmas Eve when these photos were taken.
The deets– It’s called The Classic Sweater for Guys from Knit Cafe. To make it, I used seven or eight balls of Patons classic wool in Jade Heather, held double with size 9 needles. I cast on the correct number of stitches for a size small (remember, things I knit in Patons have always grown wider with washing) though he usually wears a large at, say, the Gap.
I knit the sleeves two at a time, flat, on my circular. Since I had two balls of yarn per sleeve, I used loosely tied plastic grocery sacks to separate the balls like ghetto yarn bowls.
I rarely get photos of him, so bear with me as the knitwear brings out the model in him.
A note: When binding off stitches for all of these sweater pieces, save a long enough bind off tail to use for seaming shoulders together and sewing sleeves up. This will reduce the amount of ends you have to weave in after it’s finished. I always forget to do that!
All that was left was setting in the sleeves (Did I say picking up stitches was my least favorite thing? I lied. Setting sweater sleeves is.) Then I washed and blocked it with a couple more sweaters, hijacking the dinner table again.
The results: It isn’t too big, he likes it, it does match his eyes (guys don’t really care about stuff like that, though), and after wearing it for these photos he deemed it “a really warm sweater.” Plus, I think he looks really handsome in it.
