Macaw Sweater Finished

Sewed on the buttons and finished up this sweater yesterday.  The yarn is Red Heart Super Saver in the color Macaw.  The sweater took 5 236-yd skeins with a little left over.  As usual, this yarn works very well in the knitting machine (LK 150) with the bands knit by hand.

The sweater has 3/4-length sleeves and waist shaping on the sides.  The bands are 1x1 rib and the buttonhole band is stabilized on the edge with backwards crochet.

Next in line is the royal blue jacket which is a pattern I have made three times before.  I've made a pink one, a navy one, and a green one.  It's a nice change to do garter borders and they give the cardigan a more boxy, jacket look. Several have a garter/eyelet border which I really like.  Here's the green one:

There are plans to make a coral one of these too and the borders are already knitted for that one.

On A Roll

After sewing and sewing for a long time, I finally went to the knitting machine and got it ready to get back to business.  In two weeks I knitted up 4 sweaters whose ribbings have been waiting in the knitting basket for, in some cases, years.  Here's the holder full of the sweater parts:

This session every sweater I knit is a raglan.  In the holder are a pale plum empire cardigan, a royal blue eyelet/garter bordered cardigan, and a variegated plain cardigan.  All of these sweaters have 3/4-length sleeves and all the patterns were self drafted.

I have been sewing together the latest knit which is all finished except for sewing on the buttons.

 I like variegated yarns and this one was one of the prettiest I have ever seen.  It's been a long time since I put together a sweater so I had to remember all my little tricks and methods.  This time I made sure to write down everything I did, like how many rows are in the bands and the spacing of stitches to pick up the bands, etc., so I won't have to reinvent the wheel next time.

There are at least 7 more sets of ribbings ready to be knit into sweaters, so I have lots of pleasant knitting ahead of me.  In addition, lots of ideas for pullovers and tunics are percolating so I may be drafting up new patterns soon.