Orange You Glad I Knit You a Sweater?

A recent splurge has become this: 

A top-down raglan pullover for my son. I've used tubular cast-off on the cuffs and waist, and TECHknitting's post on the subject is really well done. After having my son try on the almost-finished product, I abandoned the idea of also using this bind-off at the neck and instead just picked up stitches and worked a few rows of stockinette stitch for a nice rolled edge. I used a suspended bind-off that I've used before.

Knit 1, *slip st back to LH needle, k2tog through the back loop; rep from * until one st remains and draw end of yarn through last st to secure.

I knit the sleeves straight until just before the cuff, where I did a few rounds of decreases before switching to 1x1 ribbing. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred using paired decreases from the elbow to the wrist: next time, right?

Striped Raglan Sweater

I've spent the last three weeks knitting a sweater for my 2-year-old. Due to his age and proclivity for messes, and my general dislike of handwashing, I used a superwash DK wool. I had a little bit of dark green left over from my ice cream cozy, so I added some stripes to keep it interesting. It's a percentage sweater. I used Elizabeth Zimmermann's wonderful book, Knitting Without Tears, and tried a tubular bind-off method for the first time. I can't say enough about the percentage method: you get exactly the sweater you want, and as EZ promises, you get it without shedding any tears.

Honey Cowl

I just wove in the ends on this yummy cowl from madelinetosh. This was the larger pattern option, which can be worn doubled around the neck. I used about three and a half skeins of Knit Picks Merino Style, a DK merino wool, that were left over from my Fairy Tale Cardigan. It was a very fast knit, thanks to slipped stitches on every other row, and was knit in the round, so all in all a pattern built for speed. I used a bind off of *k2tog through the back loop, place st back on LH needle, and repeat from *. It proved to be a good choice: more forgiving and stretchy than the classic bind off but not too loose either.

Worn long:




And worn doubled: