FO: Harvest Cardigan for Anya

I'm just going to be straight up honest here and say that I am having a shitty week. It's spring break for my teaching job and I have spent ALL of it taking care of sick kids (one's a puker, one's a cougher) and frantically re-scheduling rehearsals to make up for days I had to stay home. Stuart even had to take a sick day because I had rehearsals for a concert this week that just could not be postponed. I hear that attendance is down and there is a shortage of substitute teachers, so there must be several varieties of crud making the rounds in the Madison schools. 

I'm also increasingly frustrated with my work situation, feeling very much stuck between a rock and a hard place. It is very, very difficult to find anyone who can identify with my particular circumstances and I feel quite isolated. It could be worse, certainly, but it could also be so, so much better and I don't know what to do to get there.

Now that I've laid all of that out for you, let's look at some knitting, shall we? Here is Anya in her new favorite sweater.




She loves it. She adores it, in fact, and this pleases me very much. In fact, I believe she wore it to bed over PJ bottoms (also handmade, never blogged, but I will eventually) without even wearing a shirt underneath.

This expression is just so...Anya.

Yes, I do have another child, and yes I do love him every bit as much as this one, but he is 10 and not nearly as receptive to handmade clothing. He also tends to make goofy faces whenever I bring out the camera, so he does not make as many appearances here.


The yarn is Swans Island worsted something or other that I bought from a friend of mine who posted it as a destash on Ravelry a few months ago. It was totally an impulse buy, but I saw the lucius teal color and knew Anya would like it. When I brought it home and showed it to her, she got this huge smile on her face and her eyes widened and I knew it was a winner. We did a pattern search on Ravelry and she chose the Harvest Cardigan by Tin Can Knits. Anya still wears her Rhymes With Shawl sweater ALL THE TIME, so when she specifically requested an open-front cardigan, I knew she would wear this one, too.  


Truthfully, this was intended to be a Christmas present for Anya, but I got caught up in a couple of test knits for Thea and Anya's sweater got pushed to the back burner. 



She loves this sweater and I love it too. The color is perfect for her. Perfect. I'm actually getting sick of seeing teal everywhere, but it's a good alternative color for a girl who refuses to wear pink or purple, and the way this yarn is dyed is brilliant. It looks like solid teal from afar, but when you view it close up there are subtle variations that give it depth without looking busy.


It was easy to knit, and would have gone lightning fast if I hadn't kept putting it down for other projects (like the afore-mentioned test knitting). The sleeves didn't work out as written, partly because my gauge got tighter in the round (this happens with me sometimes, but not always consistently) and partly because the decreases are weird in her size. It wasn't hard to fix, though.

I love this girl.
I still haven't found that missing sock I started. I'm kinda bummed about it. Meanwhile, I finished a couple of hats and started a new sweater, all of which I'll blog about eventually. While "my" spring "break" (quotes are intentionally ironic here since none of it really rings true) is wrapping up, the kids have theirs next week and my parents are coming for a visit. So assuming everyone is healthy enough to go to school tomorrow (and I'm not holding my breath, given how things are going this week) I get to spend tomorrow cleaning up and figuring out what the heck we're going to eat over the next week.


Comments

Anonymous said…
What a gorgeous sweater, and such beautiful pictures of lovely Anya! That teal is pretty much my favorite color, too! It looks incredible with her coloring. The dye job on that yarn looks so wonderful - the ever so slight variations add so much depth without looking streaky or pooling (which is always my fear with kettle-dyed type yarns).

So sorry about the shitty week! Sounds like the past couple weeks we've been having...I'm really hoping that things turn around and get less crappy and crazy soon.

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