finished! another AFA cardigan

Pattern: Top-down child's cardigan by Knitting Pure and Simple. I chose the button-down crew-neck version and made the biggest size.
Yarn: Elann.com Peruvian Highland Chunky, almost 9 skeins in Mocha Heather
Gauge: 16 st = 4" on no. 10 (6mm) needles
Made for: Afghans for Afghans' latest campaign for children's sweaters.
Comments: This was actually my first top-down sweater! Well, nearly. I made a baby cardigan four or five years ago, but it was itty bitty. Since this one is for AFA, I didn't have a model to try it on for fit, but it ought to fit someone. Supposedly it's sized for 10-12yo. Some knitters sing the praises of top-down sweaters, but I have to tell ya, I wasn't thrilled with knitting those sleeves on big fat DPNs with the weight of the rest of the sweater pulling down. Not having any seaming was nice, though.



Does anyone else have problems with wavy buttonhole bands? I don't know what to do about it. I tried sewing grosgrain ribbon on the buttonband, which was nice -



- but it doesn't solve the problem of stretchy buttonholes. See, if you back the buttonholes with ribbon or twill tape or something, it would surely stabilize it, but then you'd have to do machine-stitched buttonholes into the ribbon or twill tape and I stink at machine-sewn buttonholes. I can't think of another way to do it, unless I'm missing something.

In any case, I'm pleased with this project. It will be a warm sweater for someone in Afghanistan this winter. Only problem is, I've got yarn left over, a good 7 skeins. It's enough to make a smaller version of this sweater for Daniel, but it seems pretty boring to make two sweaters out of the same yarn with the same pattern. Blah. So...anybody want the yarn? Leave a comment and it's yours!