Sweather for My Mother

As I work on the Argyle socks, I have been remembering the first time I did multi-color knitting. In the early 1990s I made this sweater for my mother.   I have always loved this pattern because it was "so Mom." She was an outdoorsy, casual woman who always enjoyed the color blue. She loved the sweater but didn't get to wear it too often. Kansas doesn't get cold enough for such a warm sweater very often.

I do not like to make large

Mom in 2000

projects. They take forever to knit. This sweater took close to two years to complete. (The heirloom sweater from an earlier post took three years.)  It is not that I am a slow knitter. When I am knitting, I can chug out the stitches like a sewing machine. The slow comes from interruptions. My knitting can languor for months on end while I am gardening, or sewing, or reading or doing whatever has distracted me. Ah, well. They do get done.

I enjoyed knitting this. The diamonds are knitted in, not embroidered afterward. It required me to develop a two-handed knitting technique where I held the main color in my right hand and the carried color in my left hand. I would weave the carried color over or under the knitting needle to be caught by the main color as I created each stitch. Mom, who had always been my knitting mentor, said a sign of good multi-color knitting is for the back to be as tidy as the front. I won't promise that happened for every part of this, my first try, but I was pleased with the outcome.

Today the sweater belongs to me. I'm waiting for Kansas weather to get cold enough to wear it.