Knitting for baby versus teenager

First, thanks for continuing to visit my blog and leaving nice comments! These days, I am tied up with sons' final exams coming up next week. I have pressure to ensure that they study ( but they don't ! :( ) and to cook proper meals you know all mom's duties. Also I am still spending time with house chores lately leaving less mind for knitting and blogging. Little progress though as I have hard time letting unused things go. I initially missed the New Year deadline and I am trying to achieve my goal of de-cluttering the house for the Chinese New Year. One lesson learned is to have less things at home, specially if there isn't enough storage around the house. And this should apply for my yarn stash and the knitting books that have accumulate these past few years.

During my clean-ups, I found my sons' pictures from their baby years and spotted the little knits I had made for them. Here are couple ones that I have forgotten with time. First photo shows elder son at about 9 months. Look the vest, it's intarsia!! This one below, is second son when he was only a few days old. I don't recall how long it took me to knit these little garments but I am sure it was much faster than finishing this one below,
Above is second son after 14 years, sporting his new sweater. In general, it fits him with the exception of the shoulders that are too wide. This is the first time that I am knitting a custom sized sweater. I normally just take one size from a pattern and roughly adjust the width and length. supposedly with a precise calculation the teacher at LYS would come up with a custom pattern. However, it's not perfect due that I have no experience in taking correct body measurements. Initially she felt that the shoulder length I gave her was too wide but I assured her ( proudly! :D) that it was correct as my son was a swimmer. Anyway, I emphasized that it needed to be oversized as the young man wanted it to fit his style. Besides that, the sleeves turned out to be big and short but by the end it was compensated by the shoulders. Also the yarn is not the best quality, it's rather scratchy and hard. In despite of these problems, it was a good project that facilitated me to learn some basics techniques that I was having trouble to learn by my own. Among those are the mastering of closing the tubular stitch , attaching the sleeves and knitting fair-isle.

Both son and I felt that it would look nicer as a vest but then it was too late, as for vests the cut for armholes are deeper than in sweaters. I would have to take apart the v neck and redo 1/3 of the front and back and that would be too much work, specially that the sleeves were all done just waiting to be attached.

In the end, the young guy seems to be satisfied with his sweater after the girls at his school noticed and made nice comments about it! :D

Pattern: Ondori Men's knit Fall 2003

Yarn: Steinbach Wolle 100% wool - Austria ( 14 balls) and some remnants of red and taupe yarn

needles: straight Japanese size 7 ( 4.2 mm) and circular 3.75 mm for the ribbing

note: ribbing bands knitted in round, top down from provisional casting on and binding off using tubular stitch method. It yields to a nicer band.

I had a nice surprise during the holidays that I have not shared yet! Look at the lovely things that Yuvee had carefully prepared for me! As always, she is so thoughtful with her gifts and I have only to agree when she said these things reminds her of me. It's a complete knitting set to indulge me! Oh the the yarn is Zephyr wool-silk from Fiddlesticks that I wanted to try but can't get it here.