Red Sweater

Recently I have been able to work from home a few days a week, and on chilly days I want something to wear other than my bathrobe. I thought about getting a souvenir sweatshirt somewhere. Or getting a plain sweatshirt and decorating it like this.

While mulling over that decision, I had been wearing my owls sweater. It is very cozy, and I got a lot of compliments on it, despite it being knit at too loose a gague.

I made the owls sweater from an unraveled goodwill sweater, and I had bought a same style sweater, but in red and 2 sizes smaller, around the same time. I decided I would make another cozy sweater and use up this yarn that had been sitting in my stash for over a decade.

Do you ever peruse your knitting books, only to have a pattern jump out at you that you never noticed before but absolutely love?

That happened to me with the book Essentially Feminine Knits. The Nikita sweater was so simple, yet so unusual in the construction. And the Jumbo flower motif was pretty cute.

Once I decided to make something with the red unraveled yarn, it didn’t take me long to decide on the Nikita pattern.

The pattern is made by knitting 2 squares from the center out. You stop knitting the back once it is as wide as you want the sweater to be. The front is knit the same way, but you stop knitting the center of the neck a few rows early. Once you’ve got your 2 squares knit, you join them at the sides and shoulders.

Now, if you are smarter than I am, you would know by now that the width of the square is also the length of the square. And that 17.5 inches is awfully short for a sweater. Starting at the shoulder, 17.5 inches comes about to my natural waist. The pattern has you pick up stitches at the bottom of the square and knit a few inches in ribbing. I knit several inches plain and then did the ribbing to make it look halfway decent and not like something 3 sizes too small. I did the ribbing in 2 parts, front and back, as opposed to all joined together. I think pullovers work better like that for me, so I don’t have to increase too much for the hips. I did the same thing with this sweater too.

After the bottom of the sweater was finished, I did a few rows ribbing at the neck. By this time, I was running quite short on yarn, and I kinda lost steam on the project. I picked up stitches for the sleeve and knit a few rows, then weighed my yarn. I knew I’d only have enough for cropped sleeves, and that wasn’t what I originally wanted. So the sweater languished for a bit before I finally decided to finish it.

The sleeves are cropped, but that’s OK. I can wear it over a long sleeve shirt and won’t be too cold. I do kinda wonder if the cropped sleeves make it look like something 3 sizes too small, or if it looks intentional.