Knickerbocker Tee

I did it! Three wearable sweaters for the Summer Sweater Knitalong!  Actually, I only did it because it looks like there’s going to be an extension, but still… yay!

All of the cheering is appropriate because I’m wearing my local high school football tee.  Don’t I look completely natural, here, as I cheer, silently, for myself with dog hair on my freshly blocked sweater?  Oh well, after re-knitting this to correct my mistakes, I feel like I made a winning touchdown.

I grew up in a football family in a Texas town where allegiance to the high school football team is akin to cult membership.  So, of course, I wasn’t into football.  I only remember going to a couple of games in high school.  But now I live in a band geek kind of family and find myself wedged between screaming fans in the stands at every home game.   Of course I ask dumb questions and find I’m watching the band throw a rubber chicken around and the people fussing around me more than the game, but it’s fun.

Since it looks like my son will be going the same marching band route, I thought it was time to have a football sweater.   When I saw Allyson Dykhuizen‘s Vintage Inspired Baseball Knits I knew the Knickerbocker Tee would be mine.

This sweater makes me think of my eighties school photos-  painter pants, Puma knock-offs, and a raglan shirt that says something like “You toucha da shirt, I breaka ya face” across it.  My mom was horrified by that class photo, but I think she’d approve of this sweater.

I love the raglan t-shirt look and short row hem.  It appeals to my tomboy sensibilities.

I’ve mentioned that I botched this once already by having a sloppy gauge.  It was finished- I mean totally done- and I washed it just to find it was ginormous.  It’s a real tale of misery so I won’t rehash.

This time around I think I did it right:

I knit a size 32″ knowing my gauge was off and that it would grow with washing,
I moved down to size 0 needles to actually, really and truly, be off by half a stitch every inch,
I stopped every few rows and checked my gauge like a freak,
I was careful not to knit too tightly on the hem row where the folded edge is knitted together with the next row so it wouldn’t pucker,
I used a different type of increase: k1, m1l, knit to 2 sts from the end, m1r, k1,
I followed the short row wrap directions exactly rather than just fudging it so it looked nice and neat,
I worked jogless stripes on the arm,
I added an extra inch and a half to the length of the body because Stroll Sport seems to be springy and I didn’t plan to block for length at all,
and I did not, in any way, stretch this thing as I washed and blocked it.

It did grow a bit, but by knitting an extra small size that barely fit me, I ended up with more of a small/ medium.  I considered using duplicate stitch to add school initials, but opted to quit while I was ahead.  I can always add them later.

My feelings about the Stroll Sport yarn are complicated.  When it works, it works really well and I can wash and dry this sucker.  But when I don’t anticipate a little growth, it flops hard.  If any of you know the secret to easy knitting with this superwash yarn, please give me a clue because I’m about to use another sweater’s worth of Stroll Tweed for Ravello.

I will be indulging my inner 7 yr old tomboy (as usual) and wearing my football tee with purple and white Pumas if we can just get some cold weather…

More on this knit here: casting on, almost finished the first time, and my mishap.
Also on Kollabora, Ravelry, and Flickr