Last year, the judges criticised me for mattress stitching a baby garment. I supposed that they thought seamless was probably better, so this year, I made a few changes to the orginal pattern.

1. Knitted the body in the round


2. Knitted the sleeves in the round.

To reduce sewing, I picked stitches on the armhole of the body of the sweater, and did a 3 needle bind off to cast off the sleeve in the armhole. It makes for less sewing and less ends to weave in.

3. But where the pattern was let me down was in the collar and button placket. I haven't done one before (yes I should had read the instructions before started knitting and getting advice if I was concerned, but I didn't and it was 9pm on Friday night when I got there) and the instructions were in a word 'PANTS'. If I picked up at the edge for the collar, the bit that wasn't sewn up, what happens, does on leave it with a nasty raw edge (and give the judges more ammo on me)? It also gave instructions for picking up the total number of stitches but none on how many for the front, back or the edge. Hello....? I expect better from an Interweave pattern. Although perfectly normal for most Norwegian patterns that I have seen, American and British patterns usually spell it out (and at 10pm on Friday night wondering if I'll fall asleep or finish this thing, it was a bit annoying).

4. So I improvised. I picked up stitched on the placket where the buttons were to be sewn and did a 1x1 ribbing. Then I picked up the stitches on the edged of that and did a 1x1 ribbing for the collar.

5.The one thing that I'm not entirely happy with, the button placket. It said something about using a crochet hook. My mind went blank. It's been about 2 years since my last crochet lesson with Sue and at midnight, I didn't have the heart to call Jacinta or Rowanette Jill, so I improvised. I picked up 25 stitches , did 1 row garter stitch, then k2, cast off 3, knit 3, etc. Next row, I cast off, and when I got to the gap, I knit into the stitch on the needle. If it wasn't yet 12:45, I would had ripped it and did it again just to make it neater, but my eyes were closing

6. Let's not eventalk about how long it took to find these buttons. I went to John Lewis and Liberty. I manged to find these in Peter Jones on Friday night. I was considering at the point to sewing 2 flat pearl buttons together to give the buttons a bit more height. Yes desperate times means desperate measures.

Yes, button 3 looks slightly off kilter, but I could had sworn that it looked perfect when I went to bed on Saturday morning.

7. Despite the effort involved, double moss stitch, is very pretty.

with an artistic arrangement

Honestly, knit this for a very special child. It might be small, but it takes ages to do and you find any inattentiveness will result in a rip-fest. I used a cashmere silk blend that I got from School Products years ago. It's a heathery light blue eventhough it photographs grey-ish.