Quicky Baby Sweater

I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit, in favour of recording the boys’ antics, but it’s time for an update.

After the non-boyish dyeing project, I dived deeper in to the stash and discovered some variegated purple/brown wool that would be perfect for a boy sweater for the New England Fall.

Ruefully, I cast on and got a head-start before our trip began.

Now, I can truthfully tell you that the body of the Flax Jax from Minnies takes about the same amount of time to knit as it takes to drive from near Philly to Connecticut (assuming you’ve done about an inch before you leave home, and that it takes you an extra hour and a half to get across the George Washington Bridge.)

I can also assure you that, if you knit at approximately my pace, one sleeve will take two hours, or the time it took us to drive from Connecticut to Boston. Two hours for a baby sweater sleeve in a worsted weight wool? That seems like a lot. Which might explain why I can never estimate how long anything is going to take.

Well, after we arrived, of course, there wasn’t much time for knitting and I discovered that the ‘baby’ was a whopping great 18-pounder at three months and was probably going to outgrow my 3-6 month sweater in no time, so it didn’t much matter that it was uni-sleeved and buttonless. I grabbed my back-up gift from the suitcase and gave them that instead.

I have another friend due to drop a sprog any day now, so the sweater will find a home. Assuming I can find some buttons…

Flax Jax from Minnies - Front

It’s a lovely pattern, one that I knitted for my firstborn.

Flax Jax from Minnies - Back

The virtue of putting a pattern on the BACK of a baby sweater was clear to me only after I had the baby and discovered how much time you spend carrying them around, with the back of their cute clothes forever on display. (Or maybe I had a particularly colicky baby…)