Never get too cocky with your knitting. This project is a pure case in point. Having knitted this sweater recently, I thought it would be a no brainer to knit again... HA! First problem was that I forgot which knitting needles I used last time. And since the nature of this yarn is such that it is virtually impossible to see the individual stitches, counting them to see if you have gauge is quite the challenge. After three false starts and three different needle sizes, I switched back to the initial needles I tried, only to figure out when the sweater was partially done that this time the sweater was considerably smaller than last time. Since baby is already here, I decided to press on, and simply have a smaller size - however, that means that speed is even more of the essence as wee boy is growing daily, naturally... I was trying to adapt this sweater for a boy. The original sweater, done with pink and green trim, is very clearly girlish, but I thought that with blue trim and some minor adaptations, I could make this suitable for my new grand-nephew. I do like the blue, and I decided to do less of the shell crochet for the edging, since that seemed frillier. I like that look. However, the embroidery on knitted fabric remains a huge pain, and I started the sleeve embroidery at least three times in an effort to get it to look right. I thought a wave pattern, instead of zig zags would look nice in the blue. I do like the results, but this came at a price. It took easily twice as long to do the embroidery and the crocheted edgings as it took to knit all four pieces - and I took out the bootees and did them a second time. (Too big first time around.) One innovation I am pleased with is that I took some iron on interfacing (very soft) and placed it where the embroidery was going to go. This made it easier to set the stitches where I wanted them, and I was also able to draw directly onto the interfacing so I could see where I would be stitching. All in all, this helped, but it was still a fairly time intensive project for what is, after all, a very easy knit. Hope that it is appreciated, and will still fit baby boy for a little while, anyway!
