Baby's First Stripes

It turns out that when you focus on one project, it does get finished!

Pattern: Flax Light by Tin Can Knits, size 6-12 months
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (80% superwash merino/20% nylon), OOAK colorway, 0.77 skeins (308 yards/281.6 meters)
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 2 (2.75 mm)
Started/Completed: August 2/August 18

As you can see, this wee baby sweater is still in need of a good blocking, but it's done, with fairly closely matching sleeves to boot. I started both sleeves in the exact same place in the stripe sequence, but I had to fudge things a little on the second sleeve to make them look almost identical. They are just the tiniest bit off, but I'm not too bothered by this and doubt anyone but me will notice.

The pattern is great -- well written, easy to follow -- and my only modification, if you can even call it that, was to pick up some additional stitches at the underarm when I started the sleeves to avoid holes. I decreased them away in the first few rounds. This is something I often do with top-down sweaters because there's always that gap when you change directions in knitting.

I haven't talked much about Stash Dash on the blog this year, but I have been keeping track of how much yarn I've used up or spun. In the true spirit of the event, I'm challenging no one but myself, and even that has been more casual this year. I didn't set a goal for myself at all but instead have been keeping a tally just to see what the number is. With the addition of this sweater, my current total stands at a bit more than 15,392 meters. It would be amazing to get to 20K, but if I don't, that's fine, too. The event ends at the end of this month, which is not a lot of time left, so we'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I had the urge to start a new project yesterday but forced myself to finish the sweater first, so my reward for finishing was starting a new scrappy charity hat last night:

I had a good amount of the blue/gray variegated yarn, so I pulled some other grays and blues to hold with it and am knitting a marled, double-stranded hat. I decided to do a Musselburgh-style doubled beanie, but mine will be closer to DK weight thanks to the double stranding. The finished product should be a very warm hat for someone and will use up a bunch of scraps. And once I finish the increases, there should be a lot of stockinette in the round (I plan to switch over to a 16" circ then), which should be perfect for knitting while reading!