I still haven’t made my first “grownup” sweater–I have all the yarn for Ardent but the daunting task of the knitting math needed to alter the sizing means that for now, I’m sticking to my old habit of easy, instant-gratification (well, relatively instant) kids’ sweaters.
Such as Waffles for Brunch, made for The Botswana Project and their recent drive for sweaters:
It was a very satisfying knit–fast, simple, and yielding an extremely warm and useful garment. I really like the pattern as a charity project, because it takes so little skill and really does make for a warm sweater. I used some recycled Jaeger Shetland (85% wool, 15% alpaca) I had kicking around the stash for the last five years, and four skeins produced a sweater that would fit a small-ish child. The only thing I wasn’t quite happy with was the presence of a few holes after picking up stitches for the sleeves, but I filled them in with some extra yarn at the end.
Sometime I will sit down and work out the math for Ardent. I liked math in school, all the way through calculus, so why is figuring out how quickly and where to make my decreases such a pain in the ass? This is obviously why I’m not a designer.